Their Assignment
By Mitch Berg
I got this email from a friend of mine who works in a sector that interacts closely with government:
Earlier this year staff members of a Minnesota Congressional Delegation met with workers of a state agency to discuss the sequester. They asked the gathered workers to relate stories of how the sequester was hurting Minnesotans. None of the gathered workers could think of any immediate problems but assured the delegation that they would send along anything they could.
Now lo and behold this story in the Strib.
Mitch, perhaps someone will take up the mantle of “the sequester hurt very few.”
And oh, the tidings of woe the Strib “found”. I’ll let you read it on your own.
Now, I have no hard evidence on which to base my conclusion; just a couple of observations.
First: Journalists rarely stumble upon their own stories. The myth of the old school gumshoe reporter hanging around city hall or the Capitol looking for isolated threads of a story to start pulling does exist – largely in places with Republican politicians. But they get stories fed to them, too, by special interests.
So why did theStribfind tales of sequestration horror that nobody else could find? Because somebody – meaning “some group or organization that either lives off of government, or works to further the politics of those who do” – fed them the story.
Nope, no evidence of that. But I’d bet money.
June 19th, 2013 at 6:50 am
/The fiscal policies that reduce the deficit will lead to less demand for goods and services, thereby holding down economic growth this year, as CBO reported in The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2013 to 2023. If not for that fiscal tightening, CBO estimates, economic growth in 2013 would be roughly 1½ percentage points faster than the 1.4 percent real (inflation-adjusted) growth that the agency now projects, under current laws, from the fourth quarter of calendar year 2012 to the fourth quarter of 2013./ http://www.cbo.gov/publication/43961
June 19th, 2013 at 7:16 am
/In the absence of sequestration, CBO estimates, GDP growth would be about 0.6 percentage points faster during this calendar year, and the equivalent of about 750,000 more full-time jobs would be created or retained by the fourth quarter./ http://www.cbo.gov/publication/43961
June 19th, 2013 at 7:35 am
GDP is a measure of ALL domestic spending, including government spending. So yes, if government spending continued to grow, GDP would continue to grow. That’s not the kind of “growth” we want.
The jobs estimate comes from applying the standard multiplier: every dollar of government spending creates X number of jobs. Except it’s plainly not true, as we’ve spent umpteen Trillion stimulus dollars and have fewer jobs now than when we started.
CBO estimates are politically influenced, which is why they are so consistently aligned with what office-holders want and so consistently wrong in reality.
June 19th, 2013 at 8:26 am
Non-partisan does not mean the same thing as unbiased.
If the what the CBO says it true, the government could fine-tune economic growth by increasing or decreasing deficit spending. In reality this has not worked, or, at least, it has not worked as well as the keynesians thought it would work. It will not address structural changes in the economy. Deficit spending is no way to make up for government policies that hinder economic growth, in the same way that taking out a second & third mortgage on your home is not a remedy for stagnant wages.
-Any taxes taken from the private sector reduce demand by reducing private sector spending and investment.
-Government spending CANNOT substitute for private sector spending because government spending is not expected to generate a return on investment > 1.
-There is evidence that the dreaded forward-lookers are reducing spending and counteracting increased government debt. This means that, for example, the response by consumers to trillion-dollar deficits is to increase savings because they no longer trust the government to pay their SS benefits in the future.
-Increasing the velocity of money will not increase the GDP if the multiplier per transaction < 1.
June 19th, 2013 at 8:45 am
We were going to upgrade a detector especially for viewing comet ISON later this year. The NSF turned down our grant app. The amount was around a million bucks. “The sequester was blamed”.
NSF budget allocation in 2008 was 6.065 billion $. In 2013 it is 6.9 billion $. That’s a 13.7% increase over FY 2008.
NSF says it would have gotten 7.0 billion w/o the sequester. NSF got 6.8 billion $ in 2011, and a hair over 7 billion $ in 2012.
http://www.nsf.gov/about/budget/
June 19th, 2013 at 9:42 am
“Dustin Hawkins has been socking away money and putting off home repairs for months. An electrician with the Minneapolis-St. Paul Air Reserve Station, Hawkins knows that starting next month he’s looking at a 20 percent cut in pay, courtesy of federal reductions known as the sequester.”
If Dustin can’t find work as an electrician, there’s something seriously wrong with his skills. Just have a look at Craigslist.
“A single mother of five living in north Minneapolis, Yvonne White frets about whether Head Start will be there for her youngest son come September.”
Wouldn’t it be a mortal sin if she had to spend some time with her son?
I think he’d learn a lots by going with her while she’s “picking up” parenting and nutrition tips. “Don’t make babies until you’re married” would be most excellent place to start….maybe he won’t grow up to have a bunch of baby mamas running his and his homies kids around to Head Start.
“Six months after Mueller suffered a stroke last year, volunteers from Metro Meals on Wheels began delivering meals to her home, helping her stretch her strict budget.
[But] the organization plans to redouble its efforts to get clients like Mueller to contribute $1 to $5 per meal, said Executive Director Patrick Rowan.
Wait for it….
At that price, Mueller said she’d probably rely on the occasional meals her adult children bring.
“Hopefully, it wouldn’t make that much difference,” she said.
Wouldn’t make any difference at all if her kids would help her out a little more than occasionally…
I swear, everytime the lefties try to impress the importance of government on us, it just makes them look worse. Right now, I’m thinking we should triple up the sequester cuts….maybe Ms. White would have to put up her iPhone and use her Obama phone!
June 19th, 2013 at 10:05 am
CBO says passing the immigration reform bill will reduce the deficit. The 11 million Mexicans already here will be joined by 10 million more, which will cost $262 billion in welfare but would generate $459 billion from income and payroll taxes.
Well, that’s a no-brainer, I guess. Hell, if 20 million Mexicans is that good for us, why not annex the whole country and we’ll all be rich?
.
June 19th, 2013 at 10:07 am
EmeryDoug probably didn’t run into this fact while chasing after stuff to cut and paste but the CBO uses numbers provided by Congressional comittees to provide answers to carefully framed questions the committees ask.They are may or may not non-partisan (see also IRS), but their work inherently carries the bias their “customers” bring to them.
June 19th, 2013 at 10:50 am
“Nope, no evidence of that. But I’d bet money.”
I’d say that’s a winning bet.
June 19th, 2013 at 11:42 am
” . . . the CBO uses numbers provided by Congressional comittees to provide answers to carefully framed questions the committees ask.”
The CBO vs. reality:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/actual_versus_cbo_projected_revenues_and_outlays%2C_2000-2009.png
Graph from Ezra Klein, a big-government favoring liberal.
June 19th, 2013 at 12:32 pm
The track you hear accompanying Terry’s graph is the sound of
EmeryDoug’s sizzling spleen, punctuated by the *pop* of his wee brain exploding.June 19th, 2013 at 1:06 pm
“A single mother of five living in north Minneapolis”
They’ll breed em, it’s everbody elses job to feed em. And meet their every other need as well. The real problem with the sequester is that it should’ve been to the tune of several Trillion!
June 19th, 2013 at 3:29 pm
Some days I think that I am the only person who has read actually Smith and Keynes. In The economic Consequences of the Peace, Keynes admits that the prosperity and growth of the Victorian Age was due to the Victorians’ ethic of hard work and thrift. He believed that government needed to become the driver of the modern economy because, after WWI, the reason for that ethic had vanished.
June 19th, 2013 at 5:02 pm
Most folks realize the deficit is declining and public employment is down significantly over the last four years. In the short term we should not be looking to cut the deficit further. Longer term deficit reduction is a different topic and which is mostly related to healthcare costs for an aging population.
These policies are contractionary in nature as the data shows. Fiscal policy (specifically the U.S. House) remains the key downside risk for the economy this year. Too bad there are politicians which remain impervious to data.
June 19th, 2013 at 6:22 pm
“Too bad there are politicians which remain impervious to data.”
Good point Zippy, but not complete. It’s obviously a waste of time and effort to educate dip shits such as yourself.
But it’s just as wasteful hoping for a politician of either party to “get it”, ’cause they already do. They just don’t care.
Grover had it just right.
June 19th, 2013 at 6:58 pm
Emery, politicians aren’t acting rationally. The voters aren’t acting rationally. The government increased taxes (anti-stimulus) across the board. It then wants to engage in deficit spending to act as an economic stimulus. WTF?
It used to be argued that a balanced budget amendment was unwise because there are times when deficit spending is advised, such as in war time and in times of economic contraction.
It now seems certain that the cure is worse than the disease. War and depression may happen, but a government that can deficit spend will inevitably do so until we are bankrupt.
June 19th, 2013 at 7:16 pm
Face meet palm.
June 19th, 2013 at 8:47 pm
Public employment is down? Not so’s you’d notice. Federal is pretty constant:
http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-documentation/federal-employment-reports/historical-tables/total-government-employment-since-1962/
State and local government is down 1.3% across the nation, but that includes places like Detroit and Birmingham that are literally bankrupt so they have no choice but to reduce workforce. If the overall decrease is that small even with municipal bankruptcies, somebody is adding state and local jobs to balance it out. http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jan/09/business/la-fi-mo-state-budget-cuts-20130109.
The amount we’re short each year is a little less than before, because Republicans forced through the sequester and slowed spending increases. But we’re still short every year. We still borrow the shortfall and add it to the national debt. If we’re always short, we can never pay down the debt. And then the entity going bankrupt will be the nation itself.
June 19th, 2013 at 9:06 pm
Grover Norquist is an idiot. He is very much an open borders advocate. Somehow he believes that if poor people are given a chance to vote themselves other peoples’ money, they will decline to do so. The world supply of poorly educated, low-skilled labor is in the billions. Almost all of them would love to come to the US and vote themselves someone else’s money.
June 19th, 2013 at 9:24 pm
OK, I’ll bite..
Those people who want to immigrate to the US — they’re people, just like you. The things that they want — a superior economic system, property rights, a functional court system, less corruption, incentives to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship — you didn’t create them, they were given to you by accident of birth, and you don’t lose them by granting them to others.
It’s good to have a barrier to entry, as barriers modulate the flow, and limit the chaos of transition. But the barrier should make it difficult to enter, not impossible. A background check, a fee (payable from earnings after entering), and a strict verification of credentials by employers. That is sufficient to ensure that all who enter are motivated to succeed. I have no problem accepting anyone into the country who is motivated to succeed and prepared to pay for the privilege. Make the fee high enough to avoid a rush. Use part of the fee to offer language and citizenship courses. Immigrants are the hardest working, most honest people I know. Only the brave and enterprising cross that border to gamble on success in a strange society where they have no roots. Welcome them. Treat them like humans. They enrich our society.
June 19th, 2013 at 9:52 pm
“they’re people, just like you”
No they aren’t. They are not American citizens. They have another country they can call home. I don’t. It makes me value the United States and my US citizenship more than nearly any immigrant. Did you know that Mexicans — even those who are now American citizens — can vote in some Mexican elections as well as US elections? I can’t.
There is a profound difference between native Americans and illegal immigrants.
Emery, you are living in a fantasy world. No one is seriously proposing your system where immigrants are ‘motivated to succeed and prepared to pay for the privilege’. The reason the senate rejected strengthened border controls is because it would be senseless. Between amnesty, loosened immigration requirements and increased numbers, and a guest worker program, there is no need for a fence. Everyone who wants in, will be let in.
How in the world can you square the 14th amendment with the concept of ‘guest workers’? It is idiocy to remove 1/4 the population of Mexico — not a small country by any means — and give them what amounts to dual citizenship with the US. This is not 1900. There is no shortage of poorly skilled, poorly educated native born Americans. The growth of our economy is not being held back by a labor shortage.
June 19th, 2013 at 10:23 pm
/There is no shortage of poorly skilled, poorly educated native born Americans./
Most all of the fast food and low end service jobs across the country are held by immigrants. Why is that Terry? There must be a few native born willing to work for those kinds of wages….
You sound as if your Cialis has diverted your blood flow.
June 20th, 2013 at 8:49 am
“a superior economic system, property rights, a functional court system, less corruption, incentives to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship — you didn’t create them, they were given to you by accident of birth, and you don’t lose them by granting them to others.”
You are an incredible idiot Doug.
I’ve spent a lot of time in Mexico; I’ve talked to the people that are sneaking across our borders and most of them are not entrepreneurs. They are illiterate, unskilled people that bounce across the border to scoop up cash in whatever manner they can and bounce back.
They are the people that take Mexico to within spitting distance of a genuine Socialist dictatorship every election cycle. They are not the uncomplaining laborers you think they are; they work when they have to but they’d much rather have the government handle their lives.
The reason the maquiladora’s failed is because the workers were not only unskilled; they were unreliable…you never knew how many were going to show up for work on any given day. Production planning was impossible; shipment schedules were a joke.
The workers would work a week, get paid and not show up until the money was gone, or they didn’t show up again at all because they’d hopped across our border to have their kids born in our hospitals.
Mexico is a country that doesn’t have the historical background to even understand what entrepreneurship is. And Mexicans are not the same immigrants that came from Europe with nothing but the shirts on their backs. They walk across the border with their hands out; that’s the fact,
We didn’t create America, but we are why it continues to prosper despite the best efforts of leftist scumbags like you and your lik, Doug. It’s up to us to protect it against all enemies; foreign economic raiders and domestic, America hating leftists intent on reducing it to a third world country they can control….y’all are the same to me.
June 20th, 2013 at 9:32 am
I can tell the moon is waxing when swiftpee’s hyperbole turnings into howling.
June 20th, 2013 at 10:54 am
Public employment is down? Not so’s you’d notice…
And thus Emory’s face meets his Ass as facts hit him upside the head.
June 20th, 2013 at 11:02 am
But the barrier should make it difficult to enter, not impossible
You really are an idiot, Emory. We are talking about ILLEGAL aliens here. You know what ILLEGAL means, right? And the word IMPOSSIBLE? If it was IMPOSSIBLE, I would not be a LEGALLY naturalized citizen. Why do you hate LEGAL immigrants? What rights do ILLEGAL immigrants have that LEGAL do not? Why should ILLEGAL immigrants be treated with more care than LEGAL ones? Why do you advocate ILLEGAL action AGAINST the sovereignty of the Unites Startes of America? Why do you hate the CONSTITUTION of the United States of America? Why do you live HERE if you HATE the United States of America and its CONSTITUTION so much?
June 20th, 2013 at 11:24 am
“There must be a few native born willing to work for those kinds of wages….”
There are times, Emery, when I believe that you do not understand how supply and demand work.
Hint: Two curved lines on a cartesian plot, wages on the Y axis, number of workers on the x axis. The lines can move left, right, up, or down. They have to cross. The point where they cross tells you how many people are employed at what amount of wages.
June 20th, 2013 at 11:59 am
JPA, the word today is that Reid & the gang have agreed to STRICT NEW BORDER CONTROLS!
This is a sham. The senate bill legalizes virtually all wetbacks in the country, dramatically increases the number of legal immigrants allowed in, and dramatically increases the number of h1b1 visas. If you are going to let in anyone who wants to get in anyway, a security fence and more border patrol people is a sham.
June 20th, 2013 at 7:07 pm
JPA, turn that frown upside-down.
I noticed you managed to use your shift key for an entire word. Who says the sun don’t shine on the same dog’s ass every day….
June 21st, 2013 at 9:40 am
And it still hasn’t sunk in… You do prove an axiom there is no arguing with idiots.