Well…Imagine my shock this morning when I opened the Detroit News (a staunchly conservative repub paper) and found an article by a Nobel prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, who destroyed the normal repub arguments for their economic plan of cuts and austerity by the use of facts and history…something that will fall on deaf ears on the right but was still surprising to see in their propaganda rag. He went on to stress something that I have been harping on for almost the past two years that the concentration of wealth in the top 1% distorts the economy and is the primary factor why the economy is not recovering…because the people who would spend the money no longer have it…and that lowers the aggregate demand in the economy…again, something that I have been saying for a long time…that no business is going to add jobs until demand rises and the top 1% can’t spend as much as the middle class would if they had the money that the top has stolen by rigging the system….in this era of opinion and ideology that replaces objective facts, I am starting to lose hope that things will ever change…geez…
Tag Archives: demand
Just some musings…
Well…it has been a nice day so far with having a surprise lunch with T…but that’s not what I wanted to talk about…what do I want to talk about? Oh…are Americans getting more stupid every day or have they always been this way? that little question was spurred by an article that I just read saying that the percentage of people that believe in global warming here in the US has jumped by almost 20% since the weather has gone screwy this year…no, I’m not sure if any of these events is a harbinger of climate change; some of it may be but it strikes me that this is like the naysayers who point to blizzards as say “where’s your global warming now?”. Hmmm….oh, I want to deal with the conspiracy theory that says that business won’t hire until Obama is defeated and that is what is driving the poor employment numbers. You may remember that I proposed the same theory a while back (somewhat tongue in cheek), but it was supposed to be taken as comedy….but now, it appears that the idea is getting some traction in the media…I hope not, since it is demand, demand, demand….that drives hiring and until demand increases, or the forecast of demand increases, you would be an idiot to hire anyone…so, let’s keep to the science of economics, not to wild speculation…even if wild speculation is much more fun….
Let’s burst one republican talking point….
Well…this is going to be a short one while I wait for the laundry to finish so I can get out on the bike before lunch….there was an interesting little article about a poll taken over the past week that asked small business owners what their largest impediment to growth and adding jobs was…and, guess what? It wasn’t the old repub screed about too much regulation…in fact a majority of those polled felt that good regulation helps level the playing field for them…something I have been saying since I started this thing almost two years ago…but, the surprise of the poll was that, by a large majority, these small business owners said that lack of demand was the biggest barrier to them growing their companies…and where do we get demand? By increases in the disposable income of consumers that is driven by sharing the stellar growth in productivity that big business has hoarded for the top 1%….and more stimulus from the government….so, the next time you hear a repub cry about too much regulation in the economy…just shout “nonsense” at them and let’s call out these “truths” that are anything but…geez…
The uncertainty boogeyman…
Well…I am getting a little tired of the…no, a lot tired of the talking point of the right that it is the uncertainty of the implementation of the healthcare law and other federal regulations that is keeping the economy from taking off. These assumptions are just a lot of hooey and speculation on the part of the right’s pundits and alleged experts…nothing more than a bunch of guesses that have no basis in history or fact. There is not one instance in the history of the American (or any other) economy that this type uncertainty has had anything to do with growth or job creation…in the face of slack demand that is rampant in our economy and the overcapacity that still exists, along with the productivity increases that have more than kept pace with that tepid growth….there is no reason for any business to hire anyone. But, the right is still using the lie of uncertainty to drive what is their main agenda…to remove any checks and balances and return us to the robber baron days of the early 20th century..or the deregulated financial days of the early 21st. This is just utter nonsense and ultimately highlights the lack of economic honesty in their arguments…it is all about demand…in this same environment of uncertainty, do you think that businesses wouldn’t hire if there were increased demand for their products or services? Geez….
It’s a lack of demand, stupid…
Well…I had to laugh the other day when the repubs continued to push tax cuts as the only way to create jobs here in the US….and you’ve heard me talk about how boneheaded that is considering the excess capacity that exists in the economy. Corporations will not add one job when there is no demand for the products that that job will create…and lowering taxes, even to zero, will do nothing to create that demand. What is the mechanism that tax cuts use to create jobs? I’ve never heard that described by any of the repub idiots out there…but they don’t believe in the science of economics any more than they believe in the science of evolution so why should anyone be surprised? I still think that the lack of demand in this economy is the direct result of the collusion between the repubs and business to cut the real wages of working people by making them compete with overseas workers that earn a dollar an hour and by the union bashing that is one of the central tenets of the repub philosophy. I’ll ask the same question I’ve asked many times before…”who is going to buy your 40 thousand dollar Suburban when everyone is making minimum wage?” Geez….