Obama-Reid ‘Jobs’ Bill Soaked in Greece
A stated aim of the Obama-Reid jobs bill is to preserve the “competitive edge” that our “world-class” education system purportedly gives us. In an attempt to do that it would throw tens of billions of extra taxpayer dollars at public school employees.
A few problems with that: we’re not educationally world-class; we don’t have a competitive edge in k-12 education; and this bill would actually push the U.S. economy closer to a Greek-style economic disaster.
First, the belief that increasing public school employment helps students learn is demonstrably false. Over the past forty years, public school employment has grown 10 times faster than enrollment. If more teachers union jobs were going to boost student achievement, we’d have seen it by now. We haven’t. Achievement at the end of high school has been flat in reading and math and has declined in science over this period. I documented these facts the last time Democrats decided to stimulate their teachers union base, just one year and $10 billion ago.
So what has our public school hiring binge done for us? Since 1980, it has raised the cost of sending a child from Kindergarten through the 12th grade by $75,000 — doubling it to around $150,000, in 2009 dollars.
And what would going back to the staff-to-student ratio of 1980 do? It would save taxpayers over $140 billion annually.
But don’t those school employees need jobs? Of course they do. But we can’t afford to keep paying for millions of phony-baloney state jobs that have no impact on student learning. We need these men and women working in the productive sector of the economy — the free enterprise sector — so that they contribute to economic growth instead of being a fiscal anchor that drags us ever closer to the bottom of the Aegean. Freeing up the $140 billion currently squandered by the state schools would provide the resources to create those productive private sector jobs.
Continuing to tax the American people to sustain or even expand the current bloat, as Obama and Reid want to do, cripples our economic growth prospects by warehousing millions of potentially productive workers in unproductive jobs. The longer we do that, the slimmer our chances of economic recovery become. This Obama-Reid bill is such an incredibly bad idea, so obviously bad, that it is hard to imagine any remotely well-informed policymaker supporting it… unless, of course, they think the short term good will of public school employee unions is more important than the long-term prosperity of the American people.
Obama Jobs Plan to Push More K-12 Bloat?
In a recent interview, President Obama hints at the core of his much-anticipated jobs plan:
PRESIDENT OBAMA: what we do have, I think, is the capacity to do some things right now that would make a big difference …
TOM JOYNER: Like?
OBAMA: For example, putting people to work rebuilding our roads, our bridges, our schools all across America…
We’ve got the capacity right now to help local school districts make sure that they’re not laying off more teachers. We haven’t been as aggressive as we need to, both at the state and federal level.
So we haven’t been aggressive enough with our hiring at the K-12 level, hmm? Perhaps I’m an unusually timid sort, but the trend below looks pretty darn aggressive to me: k-12 employment has been growing 10 times faster than enrollment for forty years.
And the $300 billion question is: what impact has doubling the workforce had on the cost and performance of America’s public schools? According to federal government data, the answer is this:
We’ve nearly tripled the cost of sending a child all the way through the K-12 system, while performance near the end of high school has been stagnant (reading and math) or even declining (science). Just returning to the staff-to-student ratio of 1980 would save almost $150 billion annually—and somehow students weren’t performing noticeably differently in the ’80s than today.
And yet President Obama apparently wants more hiring and more spending. I wonder if voters will want more of President Obama if he indeed continues to flog the failed policies of the past two generations?
Cato Unbound: Are Men in Decline?
This month’s Cato Unbound looks at the intersection of education, work, and gender, and asks: Are men in decline? As women have advanced in education, the workplace, and even politics, some fear that the emerging new economy—or perhaps some other factors—are dragging men down. We’ve all heard talk of the Mancession, and it’s well known that men are in the minority now on many college campuses. How long will the trend continue?
Lead essayist Kay Hymowitz makes the case for male decline; Jessica Bennett, Amanda Hess, and Myriam Miedzian give reasons to be skeptical. Hymowitz replies to her critics. (Men, alas, were so far in decline that I couldn’t find a single one to write for this issue.)
The conversation is just getting started, so be sure to drop by again or subscribe to Cato Unbound so you’ll never miss a post.
Barack Obama, Luddite?
In the video clip above, President Obama blames America’s current unemployment problem on… automation. ATMs and airport kiosks are singled out.
These words could only be uttered by someone who knows very little about economics or the history of human progress. In fact, they could only be uttered by someone who has never reflected on this question before in his life. Because if you reflect for one moment, you come up with this glaringly obvious counterfactual: we use a lot more labor-saving technology today than in previous generations, and yet we also employ far more people. Therefore, increased automation does not lead to decreased national employment.
If you do more than just think for a second — if you read an economic history book, for instance — you discover that increased automation doesn’t even necessarily lead to decreased employment in the industry being automated! The classic example is the 19th century British textile industry. The so-called “Luddites” smashed automated looms fearing that they would lead to rampant unemployment in their industry. But, as the new technology proliferated, textile industry employment rose. Among other reasons, increased efficiency drastically lowered the prices of textile goods, that shot demand through the roof, and to meet the new demand new workers were required to operate and maintain the new machinery.
There are other examples, of course, and the president will save the American people a great deal of hardship, and himself further embarrassment, if he familiarizes himself with them. Here’s a good brief introduction from the British Secretary of State… under Margaret Thatcher.
Update:
For those having trouble viewing the video, here is a transcript of the relevant Q&A:
Q: Why, at a time of record profits, have you been unable to convince businesses to hire more people Mr. President?
A: [....] the other thing that happened, though, and this goes to the point you were just making: there are some structural issues with our economy, where a lot of businesses have learned to be a lot more efficient with a lot fewer workers. You see it when you go to a bank and there’s an ATM, you don’t go to a bank teller. Or you go to the airport, and you’re using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate.
UK To Make It Easier To Hire, Fire Workers
In Britain, the coalition government of David Cameron hopes to stimulate much-needed hiring by reducing state interference with private employers’ right to choose their own workforces. Per the Telegraph, Cameron “hopes that relaxed employment laws will help to boost the private sector and encourage firms to take on thousands of new workers.”
For all the high hopes, the changes are in fact quite modest. Newly hired workers will wait two years, rather than one, before obtaining the power to challenge later firings before official tribunals. To discourage doomed or trivial claims, disgruntled workers will be charged a fee for resorting to a tribunal. The smallest employers will be exempted from some portions of the law, and so forth.
Judged by the “employment at will” principle that best exemplifies liberty of individual contract, Britain’s job market will remain far too highly regulated. But the direction of change is interesting. Despite the frequent impression that “Eurosclerosis” (and its equivalents elsewhere) puts the patient on a one-way course of decline, nations around the globe have repeatedly sought to shake off economic malaise by pulling back from labor regulation toward liberty of contract. Often these steps have stimulated exactly the economic expansions hoped for, as with Margaret Thatcher’s reforms in Britain in the 1980s and with New Zealand’s less famous yet more radical 1991 reforms. Alas, in both Britain and New Zealand, later Labour governments reimposed some (not all) of the previous types of regulation in deference to their union and Left constituencies.
What of the United States? For the most part, we’ve resisted the worst Euro labor-market practices — which has required us to ignore prevailing opinion among labor and employment specialists in our law schools, most of whom (as I’ve argued at book length in the past, and mention again in my forthcoming book on the influence of law schools) tend to support a great many bad proposals to restrict private employers’ liberty to hire and fire. Yet in our own distinctive way — which owes more to lawsuits and less to administrative tribunals — we keep edging toward European-style notions of workplace tenure. Newly released numbers show that federal complaints of employment bias surged to record levels last year, up 7 percent, led by a 17 percent spike in disability-discrimination claims, which now represent one-quarter of the nearly 100,000 total.
The newly activist posture of the Obama Equal Employment Opportunity Commission may have contributed to the trend a bit, and so may the state of the economy: laid-off workers may be more willing to pursue lawsuits when job prospects are bleak. But the main responsibility goes to the ADA Amendments Act passed by Congress in 2008 and signed by none other than Republican President George W. Bush, in this respect continuing his father’s tradition of uncritically endorsing almost any measure labeled as a matter of disabled rights. Among its other provisions, the 2008 ADA Amendments Act reversed a series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions that had tended to limit the scope of coverage of the ADA to persons with more severe disabilities. It also bestowed new rights to sue on persons “regarded as” disabled whether or not their actual medical condition so qualifies. The overall effect of the changes is to make it hard if not impossible to argue that a disability is too minor to deserve accommodation: “Challenging the employee’s ‘disability’ status is a waste of time with the new expanded definition of ‘disability’,” per one employer advisor. Karen Harned and Katelynn McBride have much more on the amendments in a new article in the Federalist Society publication “Engage.”
Once again, both major political parties pave the way to excessive regulation. And that makes it harder politically for an equivalent of Cameron’s reforms to come along here.
President: “We Need More Teachers.”
Reality: “Yoohoo! I’m Right Over Here! Hellooo!”
This week, President Obama called for the hiring of 10,000 new teachers to beef up math and science achievement. Meanwhile, in America, Earth, Sol-System, public school employment has grown 10 times faster than enrollment for 40 years (see chart), while achievement at the end of high school has stagnated in math and declined in science (see other chart).
Either the president is badly misinformed about our education system or he thinks that promising to hire another 10,000 teachers union members is politically advantageous–in which case he would seem to be badly misinformed about the present political climate. Or he lives in an alternate universe in which Kirk and Spock have facial hair and government monopolies are efficient. It’s hard to say.
“We’re Talking Bridges…”
On Labor Day, President Obama announced his plan for an additional $50 billion in spending, mostly on transportation. An area Obama specifically mentioned was more spending for bridges, playing on the widely held perception that America’s bridging are falling apart. While clearly there are bridges that are greatly in need of repair and represent a threat to passenger safety, what has been the overall trend in bridge quality? In one word: improving.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics only about 1 in ten bridges today can be characterized as “structurally deficient”, this is, in need of serious repair. This may sound high, but it is down from 1 in four back in 1990. As one can tell from the accompanying chart, the percent of deficient bridges has been on a steady decline over the last two decades.
It is also worth noting that over 80 percent of the deficient bridges in the U.S. are in rural areas, and subject to much less passenger traffic. Many of these bridges likely see little, if any, traffic.
Perhaps more important from the perspective of “economic stimulus” is that additional bridge construction and repair would take years to have any real impact on employment. Rather than coming up with policies designed with solely political appeal in mind, the President and Congress should focus on broad policies that allow the private sector to determine what investment needs should be addressed.
Grigori Rasputin Bailout
Sending billions of federal taxpayer dollars to teachers and other public school employees is the bailout that just won’t die. It’s been sliced, shot up in a firefight between Democrats, and even had a battle with food stamps, but it just can’t be killed!
Now, let’s be clear: This is not some wonderful crusade all about helping ”the children.” It is pure political evil, a naked ploy to appease teachers’ unions and other public school employees that Democrats need motivated for the mid-term elections. It has to be, because the data are crystal clear: We’ve been adding staff by the truckload for decades without improving achievement one bit. Since 1970 (see the charts below) public school employment has increased 10 times faster than enrollment, while test scores have stagnated.
But suppose there were some rational reason to believe that we need to keep staffing levels sky-high despite getting no value for it. Lots of teachers’ jobs could be saved without a bailout if unions would just accept pay concessions like millions of the Americans who fund their salaries. But all too often, they won’t.
Sadly, this is all just part of the one education race that Washington is always running, and it absolutely isn’t to the top. It is the incessant race to buy votes. And guess what? Despite its reputation even among some conservatives, the Obama administration, just like Congress, is running this race at record speeds.
Pearlstein Wants Tough Trade Measures Against China…and the U.S.
Steven Pearlstein’s ready for the nuclear option. With the conviction of a man who knows he won’t be held accountable for the consequences of his prescriptions, Pearlstein says the time has come for action against China. Hopefully, those whose fingers are actually near the button will recognize Pearlstein’s suggestion for what it is: an outburst of frustration over what he considers China’s insubordination.
In his Washington Post business column yesterday, Pearlstein criticizes U.S. policymakers for blindly adhering to the view that China will inevitably transition to democratic capitalism, while they’ve excused market-distorting protectionism, mercantilism, and state dominance over the economy in China. Pearlstein writes:
Up to now, a succession of administrations has argued against directly challenging China over its mercantilist policies, figuring it would be more effective in the long run to let the economic relationship grow deeper and give the Chinese the time and respect their culture demands to make the inevitable transition to democratic capitalism.
What we have discovered, however, is that the Chinese don’t view the transition as inevitable and that, in any case, they really aren’t much interested in relationships. If anything, they’ve proven to be relentlessly transactional. And their view of business and economics remains so thoroughly mercantilist that they not only can’t imagine any other way, but assume that everyone else thinks the way they do. To try to convince them otherwise is folly.
Pearlstein’s suggestion that the Chinese “aren’t much interested in relationships” strikes me as frustration over the fact that China is no longer a U.S. supplicant. Perhaps the truth is that China isn’t much interested in a one-way relationship, where it is expected to meet all U.S. demands, while seeing its own wishes ignored. Calling them “relentlessly transactional” is accusing them of naivety for missing the bigger picture, which, for Pearlstein, is that the U.S. is still top dog and China ignores that at its peril.
Pearlstein is not the first columnist to criticize the Chinese government for putting its interests ahead of America’s (or, more accurately, putting what it believes to be its best interests ahead of what U.S. policymakers believe to be in their own interests). In a recent Cato policy paper titled Manufacturing Discord: Growing Tensions Threaten the U.S.-China Economic Relationship, I was addressing opinion leaders who have staked out positions similar to Pearlstein’s when I wrote:
Lately, the media have spilled lots of ink over the proposition that China has thrived at U.S. expense for too long, and that China’s growing assertiveness signals an urgent need for aggressive U.S. policy changes….
One explanation for the change in tenor is that media pundits, policymakers, and other analysts are viewing the relationship through a prism that has been altered by the fact of a rapidly rising China. That China emerged from the financial meltdown and subsequent global recession wealthier and on a virtually unchanged high-growth trajectory, while the United States faces slow growth, high unemployment, and a large debt (much of it owned by the Chinese), is breeding anxiety and changing perceptions of the relationship in both countries….
The Obama Labor Market
In a recent speech on the economy at Carnegie Mellon, President Obama took great pains to remind us that he inherited an economy that was “shrinking at an alarming rate.” Of course his implication was that everything wrong with the economy today is George Bush’s fault. While Bush does deserve considerable blame for current recess, a new working paper by economists at the University of Michigan and the New York and San Francisco Federal Reserve Banks paints a picture of a recession that was on par with previous deep recessions until well into 2009, when the labor market started to deviate, for the worst, from past trends.
For instance the authors find that during the first part of the current recession, labor force participation remained high, despite increasing unemployment, yet starting in May 2009 the labor force participation rate fell at its steepest rate since the 1950s.
The authors also focus on what economists call “Okun’s Law” – which shows a relationship between GDP growth and employment. Historically Okun’s Law has shown that for every 2% GDP falls below trend, unemployment increases about 1 percent. Under the Bush half of this recession, that historical relationship continued to hold. Yet under Obama it broke down, and not in a good way.
The paper also examines the relationship between unemployment and posted job vacancies, called the “Beveridge curve” by economists. They also find that the Obama economy has been far outside of this historical relationship, so there has been growth in vacancies but little improvement in the unemployment numbers.
The paper offers a description of recent labor market trends, without being able to completely explain why current trends have been so different (and worse) than previous recessions. The authors do calculate that the extensions in unemployment insurance have likely increased unemployment by between 0.7 and 1.8 percentage points.
The real story, however, which this working paper misses, is that in the Obama economy, massive uncertainty coming from Washington and the increasingly intrusive nature of government is keeping employers from hiring, even when they are expanding output. President Obama needs to get past the blame game and start moving us back toward a country that rewards private enterprise and values free markets.
Food Stamps on Campus
Food stamp usage is on an upsurge as a result of the economic downturn and liberalized eligibility. Thanks to some good journalistic work from Aleksandra Kulczuga of the Daily Caller, we’re getting a better picture of how government dependency is spreading to a new generation.
Kulczuga reports that college students are increasingly going on the dole thanks to encouragement from college officials and poverty organizations dedicated to fomenting government dependency.
From the article:
Adam Sylvain, a sophomore at Virginia’s George Mason University, recounted a recent conversation with friends in his dorm room. “My roommate told me he applied for food stamps, and they told him he qualified for $200 a month in benefits,” Sylvain said. “He’s here on scholarship and he saves over $5,000 each summer in cash.”
“A few of our other friends who were in the room also said if there were able to, they would get food stamps … They think that if they’re eligible it’s the government’s fault, so they might as well,” Sylvain said.
Students at GMU can buy a meal plan for $1,275 that provides 10 meals a week for the semester — that’s $71 a week.
When I was in college, my friends and I worked during the school year and through the summer to fund our expenses. My father worked multiple jobs to pay his way through college while supporting a young wife. He grew up in a family headed by a single mother that relied on extended family and charities to help them through tough times. He may have been eligible for food stamps in college, but he would have never taken a government handout.
Today’s generation seems to be different. This Salon article tells of unemployed college grads using food stamps to purchase organic food at high-end grocers like Whole Foods.
From the article:
At Magida’s brick row house in Baltimore, she and Mak minced garlic while observing that one of the upsides of unemployment was having plenty of time to cook elaborate meals, and that among their friends, they had let go of any bad feelings about how their food was procured.
“It’s not a thing people feel ashamed of, at least not around here,” said Mak. “It feels like a necessity right now.”
Savory aromas wafted through the kitchen as a table was set with a heaping plate of Thai yellow curry with coconut milk and lemongrass, Chinese gourd sautéed in hot chile sauce and sweet clementine juice, all of it courtesy of government assistance.
Remember that many of these students probably had their college educations subsidized by the government as well.
Son of the Stimulus
Like the sequel to a horror film, the politicians in Washington just passed another stimulus proposal. Only this time, they’re calling it a “jobs bill” in hopes that a different name will yield a better result.
But if past performance is any indicator of future results, this is bad news for taxpayers. By every possible measure, the first stimulus was a flop. But don’t take my word for it. Instead, look at what the White House said would happen.
The Administration early last year said that doing nothing would mean an unemployment rate of nine percent. Spending $787 billion, they said, was necessary to keep the unemployment rate at eight percent instead.
So what happened? As millions of Americans can painfully attest, the jobless rate actually climbed to 10 percent, a full percentage point higher than Obama claimed it would be if no bill was passed.
The President and his people also are arguing that the so-called stimulus is responsible for two million jobs. Yet according to the Department of Labor, total employment has dropped significantly — by more than three million — since the so-called stimulus was adopted. The White House wants us to believe this sow’s ear is really a silk purse by claiming that the economy actually would have lost more than five million jobs without all the new pork-barrel spending. This is the infamous “jobs saved or created” number. The advantage of this approach is that there are no objective benchmarks. Unemployment could climb to 15 percent, but Obama’s people can always say there would be two million fewer jobs without all the added government spending.
To be fair, this does not mean that Obama’s supposed stimulus caused unemployment to jump to 10 percent. In all likelihood, a big jump in unemployment was probably going to occur regardless of whether politicians squandered another $787 billion. The White House was foolish to make specific predictions that now can be used to discredit the stimulus, but it’s also true that Obama inherited a mess — and that mess seems to be worse than most people thought.
Moreover, it takes time for an Administration to implement changes and impact the economy’s performance. Reagan took office in early 1981 during an economic crisis, for instance, and it took about two years for his policies to rejuvenate the economy. It certainly seems fair to also give Obama time to get the economy moving again.
That being said, there is little reason to expect good results for Obama in the future. Reagan reversed the big-government policies of his predecessor. Obama, by contrast, is continuing Bush’s big-government approach. Heck, the only real difference in their economic policies is that Bush was a borrow-and-spender and Obama is a borrow-and-tax-and-spender.
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