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    Hamilton Project White Paper: Should the United States Have 2.2 Million More Jobs?

    By trkingmomoe on Sun, 05/05/2013 - 1:46am |

    Last Friday the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institute published their final working paper by Micheal Greenstone and Adam Looney.  The research shows through charts and grafts, that we would have 2.2 more million jobs in the economy if we followed the same policies that we had during the last 5 recessions.  The authors compare this recovery rate to past down turns and recoveries.  They place the blame squarely on the reduction of public employees in order to reduce debt. Also the authors point out that we fall short of 10 million jobs right now in this economy.

    The grafts and numbers are easy to understand and well worth the read.  In the conclusion of the paper, there is a link to a earlier paper that list 15 proposals for increasing employment and reducing debt.  I think it is a worth while link to read because it gives an insight into where the White House is trying to come from.  Here is the link to the PDF file and I open the discussion up to you.  http://www.hamiltonproject.org/files/downloads_and_links/April_Jobs_Blog_FINAL.pdf

    Comments

    The authors also point out that the fall of the employment rate is lower because of workers have stopped looking.  We do have serious structural unemployment but the unemployment is worse because of the reduction of government spending. We are now into our 5th year of this depression and the small government austerity movement has failed.  There is no reason for us to still be in this mess accept for the politics.  Moreover staying here bumping along the bottom is cruel and austerity is inhuman. 


    by trkingmomoe on Sun, 05/05/2013 - 2:14am

    Thrilled to see the Hamilton Project, normally a spot of bland centrism, follow data in the right direction. Given that the Great Recession was global and the result of systemic financial failure, I would say that the "normal response" to a recession should not be the base line.

    We should have had a stimulus twice the size that we did, no debt ceiling debacle and no sequester. That would have made it a short recession. We'd be talking peaks by now.

     

     


    by Michael Maiello on Sun, 05/05/2013 - 10:32pm

    I found this paper interesting.  You are right, they usually stay in the center of the box but I still look at their site.  The Hamilton Project paper shows how much Washington has failed with their politics.  No one in Congress has the curiosity to learn economics or the courage to be honest about how deep this crisis is currently. Economist Richard Koo shows in his 2011 paper, that you can't pay down public debt the same time as private debt or you will cause a depression.  Because the financial market housing bubble broke, that forced the private sector to pay down debt involuntarily.  At this point the public debt needed to increase in order keep the money supply from contracting and causing a balance sheet recession.  He also covers the failure of all the liquidity injection that the Federal Reserve did that failed to prevent a balance sheet recession.  Here is the PDF file from his work.  http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue58/Koo58.pdf                                                 So if a stay at home grandmother with a house full of little kids can find time on the internet to research, read and understand current economic thought,  then why in world can't Congress?  Instead they just go on making things worse with a sequester because there is a African American President. An now we know that it will only take a couple of days to get rid of it, if the Congress wanted too.


    by trkingmomoe on Mon, 05/06/2013 - 2:22am

    Here is a interview with Richard Koo from a couple of years ago.                                         


    by trkingmomoe on Mon, 05/06/2013 - 3:52am

    Well Mr. Reich, along with several others certainly agree with your assessment.

    http://www.salon.com/2013/05/03/aprils_flacid_jobs_report_partner/

    The Feds are firing people, the states are firing people; every damn day.

    And these firings diminish the number of jobs created every month.


    by Richard Day on Sun, 05/05/2013 - 8:52am

    I enjoy Dr. Reich's blog.  I have been a fan of his since I met him in the late 1980's at a lecture on "Just in time stock inventory, Dr Demming model."   I posted Mark Blyth blog on austerity in the news section last week "The Austerity Delusion"  http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/139105/mark-blyth/the-austerity-delusion?page=show    Here is a clip with Mark Blyth explain the stupidity of austerity from a interview in March 2013 from Canada Public Television. 

     


    by trkingmomoe on Mon, 05/06/2013 - 3:38am