Thursday, March 04, 2010

Crowding Out in Pictures

HT: Russ Roberts



21 Comments:

At 3/04/2010 11:00 AM, Anonymous gettingrational said...

I wonder what gains in productivity were acheived by government workers last quarter or all of last year? This may be a rediculous question because producitivity is probably falling and so, is there any measure?

What about private sector producitivity?

"Productivity in U.S. climbed 6.9% in Fourth Quarter"

"Labor costs dropped at a 5.9% pace, more than anticipated, and fell 1.7% for all of 2009, the biggest drop since records began six decades ago."

Sacrifice and hard work vs. something completely different sums up this expanding dichotomy(ex. the military and associated intellegence operatives).

 
At 3/04/2010 11:44 AM, Anonymous Le Milieu d'être au jus said...

The steady public curve shows low volatility, but the tremulous private employment curve indicates volatility thus future decline. Things are going to get worse. Vote for gridlock.

Grazia,

Le Milieu (The Mob)

 
At 3/04/2010 11:56 AM, Blogger jeremy h. said...

The two graphs don't really equal the cartoon. If private sector employment fell by 7.34 million but government employment only increased by 98,000, there is still 7.24 million unexplained jobs. These pictures only explain 1.3% of the problem.

 
At 3/04/2010 12:28 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yeah, that sucks, but the truth is the private sector (excluding health care) sat on its royal ass all of last decade and did squat for hiring - despite the fact several generous rounds of tax cuts were implemented. Now we're going to have another jobless recovery, too boot. So while it's all fine and dandy to gripe about government jobs (and ya'all have legitimate reasons to do so), at the same time, take a few swipes at the private sector for being lazy, too.

 
At 3/04/2010 1:11 PM, Blogger KO said...

Great observation jeremy h. There should be a big pile of knotted, useless yarn on the floor. And he should be knitting ankle warmers or parachute pants, which aren't good replacements for a shirt and only a few people actually want.

 
At 3/04/2010 1:32 PM, Blogger Bill L said...

Mark, what do you make of the charts at Consumer Metrics Institute foreshadowing a double dip? http://www.consumerindexes.com/index.html

 
At 3/04/2010 2:53 PM, Blogger commoncents said...

WOW!

Thank You for posting this! I really like your blog!!

Common Cents
http://www.commoncts.blogspot.com

ps. Link Exchange??

 
At 3/04/2010 4:04 PM, Blogger PeakTrader said...

Too many people focus only on the benefits of big government and not the costs. They don't realize how much their standard of living has been stunted (you can't miss what you never had), and it'll get even worse from here. Many are in for a rude awakening.

 
At 3/04/2010 5:23 PM, Blogger juandos said...

"Too many people focus only on the benefits of big government and not the costs"...

Hmmm, good point except I've yet to see ANY benefit emanating from big government...

Kevin Hassett at Bloomberg noted in his: How to Create 3 Million Jobs With Pencil, Ruler the following:
"Last week the Congressional Budget Office reported that the stimulus enacted a year ago created 1.4 million to 3 million full-time-equivalent jobs in the fourth quarter. The CBO drew heavily on commercial forecasting models and the macroeconomic model used by the Federal Reserve.

Both of these old-school Keynesian models, by the CBO’s own admission, “tend to predict greater economic effects” from legislation like last year’s stimulus
"...

 
At 3/04/2010 5:35 PM, Blogger PeakTrader said...

Juandos, what about the $250,000 to create a $50,000 job? or was that save instead of create? :)

 
At 3/04/2010 6:52 PM, Blogger juandos said...

Hey PeakTrader its all about the new math and lots of assumptions...

USAToday seems to be all over the job map on jobs stimulated by the stimulus bill...

Pro Publica on the other hand thinks that the BS is flying so hot and heavy that its rather impossible to determine how many real jobs are being created...

 
At 3/04/2010 7:42 PM, Blogger sethstorm said...


Yeah, that sucks, but the truth is the private sector (excluding health care) sat on its royal ass all of last decade and did squat for hiring - despite the fact several generous rounds of tax cuts were implemented. Now we're going to have another jobless recovery, too boot. So while it's all fine and dandy to gripe about government jobs (and ya'all have legitimate reasons to do so), at the same time, take a few swipes at the private sector for being lazy, too.

Well, they're not interested when the nation doesn't want to be played like a fiddle by business interests. It doesn't help that SCOTUS made it easier for foreign interests to make indirect requests to buy influence.

If business won't work with the nation, it shouldn't be surprising to see government work increasing.

 
At 3/04/2010 9:13 PM, Blogger juandos said...

"Yeah, that sucks, but the truth is the private sector (excluding health care) sat on its royal ass all of last decade and did squat for hiring - despite the fact several generous rounds of tax cuts were implemented"...

"Well, they're not interested when the nation doesn't want to be played like a fiddle by business interests"...

Meanwhile back on planet earth there was low unemployment rates between 2001 to the middle of 2008...

Stark difference from what's happening today...

 
At 3/04/2010 10:18 PM, Blogger sethstorm said...


Meanwhile back on planet earth there was low unemployment rates between 2001 to the middle of 2008...

Doesn't justify any of the offshoring that happened during that time at all.

 
At 3/04/2010 11:17 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Meanwhile back on planet earth there was low unemployment rates between 2001 to the middle of 2008..."

Meanwhile, back in reality, the job creation of last decade's economic expansion was one of the most paltry on record. (http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/01/09/bush-on-jobs-the-worst-track-record-on-record/tab/article/). Also, it's rather common knowledge that the official unemployment record doesn't reflect reality; so, no, while it's not as bad as today, it's not as peachy as claimed either.

 
At 3/05/2010 3:46 AM, Blogger PeakTrader said...

Wall Street helps facilitate offshoring, creating enormous value for the U.S. masses, which is why it deserves those big bonuses.

In the 1990s, Wall Street promoted revenue growth, and in the 2000s, it promoted earnings growth.

U.S. multinationals offshored goods with declining prices, high-cost goods, unprofitable goods, or heavy goods, imported them at lower prices and at higher profits, while freed limited resources were shifted into higher quality "core" goods in older industries, into emerging industries, and into industries that distributed the gains-of-trade to the masses.

Consequently, the U.S. created and captured trillions of dollars of wealth in the global economy, and leads the rest of the world combined in the Information and Biotech revolutions (in both revenues and profits).

 
At 3/05/2010 7:47 AM, Blogger juandos said...

"Meanwhile, back in reality, the job creation of last decade's economic expansion was one of the most paltry on record"...

Funny how that blog posting made the claim that it was using data from the Labor Department but didn't have a link for it...

"Doesn't justify any of the offshoring that happened during that time at all"...

Sure it does sethstorm since its NOT YOUR MONEY these people are using to set up off shore facilities...

 
At 3/05/2010 9:29 AM, Blogger sethstorm said...


Sure it does sethstorm since its NOT YOUR MONEY these people are using to set up off shore facilities...

They interact with the same federal government. I'd expect them not to just use it as an end-run. They want to get around the laws, there are consequences for trying(regardless of success or failure). The lack of honesty and disclosure (even to those affected, who have a need to know) makes the situation even worse.

See the HEHS 00-157 & GAO 06-720 articles I referred to in a previous post.

Again, it still does not justify offshoring. It doesn't matter whose money it is, the law is the law.

 
At 3/05/2010 10:08 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'll give this to "sethstorm", he realizes that if you're going to run a socialist kleptocracy you have to build walls. Otherwise, the productive people, refusing to be enslaved by the state, leave.

 
At 3/05/2010 5:21 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Juandos,

So the WSJ is now part of the liberal media, huh? Well, that's too bad, I guess, but the truth is Clinton's high job creation numbers in the '90s are fairly common knowledge. I'm not surprised you don't remember though: I recalled you once chewed out another reader for linking a PBS article, declaring it as "liberal bile," even though you linked an article to PBS earlier in the spat.

But let the pudding speak for itself: if Bush's job creation numbers kicked ass, where are they? (And you can take a swipe at Obama, I don't care.)

 
At 3/06/2010 12:18 AM, Blogger sethstorm said...

Anonymous said at 10:08AM...

Regardless of what names you use, there is nowhere to hide from the US. Unlike most countries, the United States has the ability to pursue anyone and anywhere. Given that, it is a very powerful deterrent against anti-US applications of Galtism. It would be regretful, but if you're undermining this nation, no country will be safe for you.

There is nothing wrong with protecting one's country. It is not "durrr, socialism!" to protect against foreign entities which want to use economic warfare(China, India, Russia, Brazil). Nor is it such to block those "fellow travelers" from assisting them because it gets rid of a undesirable group (labor unions). It doesn't matter what political party you support, economic liberty doesn't mean you have the right to create pro-business feudalism.

If you want to make a Faustian deal, be sure to know that you're signing your soul (and in the case of country, its sovereignty) for a temporal want. You get to undermine a political enemy, but then you've just agreed to also hand over the country.

--

If anyone's wanting to bring back slavery, it's the South with its version of being "business friendly". It has no issues of prejudice except it disfavors those whom do not form businesses and/or are "costly" US citizens. The only thing that's changed in the 130+ years is that particular adaptation.

 

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