What with the inmates running the asylum, you might think it’s an odd time to talk about what I’ve been calling the OPA (Osawatomie Policy Agenda), i.e., the concrete ideas that grow out of the speech President Obama gave recently in Kansas…ideas in the spirit of actually building an economy that works a lot better for a lot more of us.
The NYT editorial page weighs in on the same topic today, stressing these policy objectives:
–job creation
–stopping foreclosures
–financial market regulation
–raising taxes, reducing the deficit
On jobs, the ed board wants the President to “continue to offer stimulus bills that include spending for public works, high-tech manufacturing and an infrastructure bank.”
True that, but the short term is pretty much toast. Remember, this battle-to-the-death we’re having over payroll/UI are for measures that are already in the 2011 economy…no one’s anywhere close to considering anything new. Still, we can’t give up on the present and unexpected things can happen in an election year (e.g., tapping federal help to prevent local layoffs is a very long shot, but it’s about the smartest thing we could do right now, as each month we add private sector jobs and shed public ones—and those are teachers, cops, etc.).
That said, when it comes to jobs, I’d advocate thinking and planning for the long term and I’d start with this chart. In every decade since the 1950s, employment grew 20-30%; in the 2000s, it grew 4%. And then it fell of a cliff.
Source: BLS payroll data.
What happened?
I’ve suggested a number of reasons for the slowdown, including accelerated labor-saving technology, allocative inefficiency (the devotion of too many resources to unproductive financial engineering), weak startups, the inequality feedback loop (extreme income concentration generates less robust employment growth), and lousy public policy (regressive taxation, the wars, unregulated asset bubbles, etc.). But more work needs to be done on what went wrong and how to fix it.
At the very least, we want a Federal Reserve committed to full employment and a public investment strategy that supports innovative growth in expanding sectors, like clean energy.
And that, to repeat, is at the very least. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in decades of analysis, it’s that it takes truly full employment for the American economy to really work. Only with very tight labor markets will we see the benefits of growth broadly shared. Absent such conditions, workers simply lack the bargaining power it takes to get employers to bid up compensation such that the gains from productivity growth reach more than just the top few percentiles.
If that 4% job growth (see * in chart), or anything like it, sticks, we will need ambitious infrastructure programs not just in bad times but in good times too. We’ll need explicit manufacturing policy that builds domestic supply chains (because that’s where the job quantities are). We’ll need national, multi-year programs to repair the public schools, replace the failing electric grid, ensure that both the old and the young have the care they need to not just survive, but flourish.
Again, it may seem strange to start planning such an agenda when the polar opposite is transpiring in the halls of power. But then again, maybe this is exactly the right time. Maybe, as Congress creeps under the impossibly low bar we’ve already set for them, it’s actually the right time to start promoting a new vision.
After all, I can hardly stand to look at the old one, and I can’t be alone in that sentiment.
I’m sorry, but this is irrelevant — Obama can’t get anything passed, and even if he wanted to, he’d throw absolutely everything away to keep impunity for banksters.
There’s no time to lose.
Obviously, the GOP House thinks it is ‘taking a stand’ and apparently caught up in some sort of ‘Braveheart’ fantasy. I’m skeptical their ‘Braveheart’ approach will create many jobs — after all, a ‘*genuine* Braveheart economy’ needs cartwrights, candle stick makers, horse farriers, and other trades that aren’t all that useful today, including the talent of making blue body paint.
Alas.
Meanwhile, in the UK in 2012, minister Vince Cable is now publicly stating that the ‘whinging’ of banks does not equate with the national interest. He implies that finance is perhaps not the sole, viable foundation for a complex, post-industrial economy.
This seems an act of political courage, sans blue body paint.
I hope we’ll see this kind of conversation stateside in 2012.
Personally, I’ve been waiting a generation to see this conversation and I’m just thrilled and delighted to watch it unfold. Long overdue.
“I’ve suggested a number of reasons for the slowdown, including accelerated labor-saving technology, allocative inefficiency (the devotion of too many resources to unproductive financial engineering), weak startups, the inequality feedback loop (extreme income concentration generates less robust employment growth), and lousy public policy (regressive taxation, the wars, unregulated asset bubbles, etc.).”
I was surprised not to see what I thought had the biggest impact. Globalization wiped out whole classes of low-skill American jobs that proved hard to replace. Our average skill/education level stopped rising, while our international competitors made huge gains, reducing our global share of high-skill jobs.
On the policy side, I’d add that our already static and corrupt corporate tax system became uncompetitive, too, because of improvements by our global competitors, diverting investment to friendlier climes. Further, tax and regulatory policy contributed to the housing bubble, and the accompanying waste of vast amounts of capital that could have gone to productive use.
Finally, it’s worth noting that a terrifying share of the net jobs that were created in the 00’s before the crash were in health care and government. That was not sustainable, either. (Where does the money come from?) Gulp.
Maybe completely rethinking our institutions and creating new ones, with a more grand, humane and ethical basis, to compete with the old will make a difference. For example the new banking system discussed on Rachel Maddow last night by Carne Ross. If such a banking system were formed, and offered an alternative to the mega-banks, I think there are a whole bunch of people who would be supportive, including myself.
I don’t believe that our ponderous, bureaucratic system can change without there being some revolutionary thinking causing it to change. If Corporate America could find itself losing customers to a new way of doing business, they would need to change to survive. And that could make a huge difference.