Creating jobs: A politics-reality disconnect, part 1

Dealing with economic issues is unsettling. Unlike most traditional sciences (physics, math, medical science, chemistry, climate science) where there usually is a clearer consensus for major issues, some economic debates over central issues just don't seem to more or less "resolve" themselves into consensus. Or, if they do, the resolution doesn't come across to very clearly. Not to me at least.

On the one hand, . . . . . (X), but on the other . . . . . (not X) 

Some economists say that the federal 2008 TARP program and the 2009 economic stimulus bill had positive economic effects. Some disagree with that. Some economists say that the cash for clunkers program and the tax incentive for 1st time home buyers (part of the 2009 bill) worked, some don't. Some economists say that those programs did have their intended effects, but that after the programs ended, so did most or all of the benefit, or there was a negative rebound effect, e.g., by taking future buyers out of the market for cars or homes.

Visiting Japanese warships

The spinable science

Politicians added to the confusion for a while. Now they don't. Ignoring them as biased spinners (pervaricators) when they talk about economic issues removes that source of confusion. Nonetheless, it is still hard to find consensus among economists who are reasonably unbiased and willing to acknowledge reality for what it is. Bias can be very hard to spot, unless you carefully vet the people you are listening to. Essentially nobody has the skill, time and inclination for that.

Jobs, jobs, jobs . . . . . .

The question is how does one create jobs in the U.S. That has to be done in the face of low cost competitors, labor and environmental laws some of our competitors do not have, chronic dependence on expensive energy imports, chronic negative trade balance, chronic national debt and a few other factors. To some extent, maybe a large extent, we play by a different set of rules than some of our competitors. That arguably imperils our standard of living, despite coming from a recent history of advantages compared to other countries.

Hm, no 18" guns - how disappointing - what 

kind of an ally is that?

If you listen to the two parties and their elected leaders, each knows how to fix things. Democrats want, among other things, to invest in education, build some infrastructure and try not to decrease spending so fast that it knocks down the current anemic recovery. Republicans want to decrease taxes, crush government, kill regulations and generally unleash the raw power and beauty of unrestrained capitalist impulses. None of it is enlightening or provides details needed to understand how their ideas would work in the real world. They aren't convincing.

What's in those little boxes mounted on that 

radar/computer controlled precision mount?

Burger flippers with a history degree?

The Democratic plan to get everyone to get a college education seems misguided. Why would someone need that to work in an average minimum wage job in a restaurant, retail store, hotel or food supplier (e.g., meat packing plant or lettuce picker)? How do those degrees help in view of their high cost and four years of lost productivity, especially for degrees from expensive private schools? Does having a degree in history, English literature or philosophy make one a commensurately better burger flipper, truck driver or retail clerk? Maybe we need more engineers or scientists in specific specialties, but that has little or nothing obvious to do with training that is relevant to the vast majority of jobs in the U.S. economy.

It is hard to see how the Democrats' unfocused college education will change much of anything for the better any time soon. How does college for everyone create jobs? Unless I am mistaken, the vast majority of people that go to college in the U.S. are not going to be engineers, doctors, lawyers, computer scientists and all that hard core stuff. Right? If nothing else, we don't have the educational bandwidth to come even close to graduating everyone as an engineer, lawyer, doctor and/or another professional.

Assuming we did, how many people with a professional / engineering degree wants to be a hotel desk clerk, worker in a meat packing plant, gas station attendant, grocery store clerk or sewer plant worker? If they did, why on Earth did they get a professional degree? That would have been unnecessary and very expensive. That isn't a criticism of those jobs. They are critical to our economy. It is a statement of the disconnect between getting an expensive 4-year (at least) education and low paying jobs in our economy that arguably don't need that qualification.* And, we can't all be engineers, lawyers or scientists, in any economy. Someone has to do the other things and those other things constitute the vast majority of jobs. There is no way to deny that. The disconnet between universal college education Democrats advocate and creating good mainstream jobs is glaring. It seems to be just more empty, hopeful rhetoric from clueless, powerful ideologues on the left.

* In a perfect world, everyone should have a college education because it helps people think for themselves and usually adds to one's ability to understand others and situations one might be uncomfortable with. It may even make some people more civilized and tolerant. Education usually isn't bad. Its usually good. But, it isn't clear if college education is worth it in our relatively ruthless, unforgiving capitalist economy.

One redeeming idea: On the other hand, Democratic suggestions to rebuild infrastructure do make sense, if one assumes that good infrastructure helps our economy. I assume that is generally true. Infrastructure spending should therefore help, at least transiently if the countervailing debt increase didn't negate the spending.

The need for good jobs is obvious. I just would like to know how to create those jobs under some reasonably persuasive scheme from the left, right, center or elsewhere. So far, the thinking on the left is not good enough. Its too generalized and unfocused to be persuasive. We have to be able to do better.

End of part 1 (link to part 2)

Things we don't understand - the Afghan war - part 6

This is probably my last post on this fascinating, sad topic. Stories from a military officer stationed at Baghram AFB made me realize how very little average Americans know about Afghanistan (part 1) or about how our military operates (part 2, part 5), either there or probably anywhere else. This is about how little we know about even trying to help people in a society and cultural context we know essentially nothing about and cannot understand. This story comes from the mainstream media, not my information source at Baghram.

Heartbreak

At page A11 (Friday, June 17, 2011), the Los Angeles Times reported that two years ago the State Department concluded that the billions of tax dollars had America spent on aid for Afghanistan was a "heartbreaking" failure. According to the Times, since then we have tried even harder to pursue the strategy that had failed. Maybe the idea was that trying harder, whatever that means (spending more, faster?), would work.

Apparently, trying harder didn't work. Recent U.S. government reports conclude that the large sums we have spent has "fueled corruption, distorted local economies and left Afghanistan with technology it won't be able to maintain after NATO forces leave." This was due to "incomplete analysis, poor planning" and some other U.S. failures. One former administrator said that the U.S. reasoned that spending large amounts of money would make Afghans like us.

Some of our efforts were hopelessly misguided. On one big hydroelectric project ($100 million), half the electricity went to insurgent controlled areas and the Taliban wound up charging local citizens for the electricity we enabled. They use that money to kill our troops. That's just logical because they hate our guts and our way of life.

How much has been spent? About $20 billion so far. $10.7 Billion under Bush and about $7 billion in 2009-2010, with about $3.2 billion planned for 2011. Not all of that was wasted, but we don't know how much was. Regardless, our own government concludes that our aid program failed.

Who is accountable?

I understand that complicated projects can go badly or fail entirely. Humans are not perfect. But when that happens there should be at least some accountability. However, under our broken system of government there usually is no accountability for "incomplete analysis, poor planning" and so on. The fact that unknown billions out of the $20 billion was wasted has no consequences for politicians and federal agencies. No one is accountable.

That is partly because no one can be identified who is to blame. And, it doesn't matter if the failure was under Democratic or Republican leadership. Under business as usual, there is no accountability for "small" or "routine" failures like this.

So far, we have spent about $425 billion in Afghanistan. I imagine we will spend at least another $150 billion before we reach some claimed "success" or simply leave. Remember the "Mission Accomplished" claim from the Iraq war? As we pull out and decrease spending, the Afghan economy will certainly collapse. According to the World Bank about 97% of Afghan economic output comes from international military and civilian spending.

Unless I am missing something very, very big, Afghanistan is a lost cause, if the goal was building some semblance of even a quasi-modern nation. Most of our money was wasted. The Taliban will come back into power and Afghanistan goes back to the dark ages, politically speaking. It may or may not become a new haven for terrorism. One thing that is sure, they will be growing poppies for opium like they never have before. After all, we will have left them nothing else viable. That's just one ramification of our failure.

So much for nation building. I wonder if Democrats, Republicans or the ivy league deep thinkers in federal agencies have learned much of anything from any of this? Probably not. After all, it's just our tax dollars. There's plenty more and wasting even lots of taxes carries no penalty. All regular voters can do is vote for a Democrat or Republican.

That's no choice at all.

The partisan divide - who owns it?

One can reasonably argue that the partisan divide belongs to the two parties. The Democratic and Republican parties have had all the power all of the time for a long time. The ideological differences are stark and deep. That raises a few questions.

One is whether the differences of opinion, or views of reality, have been there all along but the fights played out more quietly in the past. Another is whether the partisan divide is good, bad or indifferent. Arguably, differences are good if it tends to generate better and more efficient government and policies. Its not so good if it mostly goes the other way. At the moment, it feels like we are in the latter mode, i.e., mostly going the other way or heading south.

Maybe one good thing is that the divide represents an opportunity for people to more clearly see the failure of the two parties, which might generate some serious interest in a new political party. Its hard to imagine everyone being happy with the discord and attendant blizzard of spin that invariably accompanies strongly held partisan political opinions these days. That ought to get at least some folks to start looking elsewhere for satisfaction.

Who owns it?

For me, a more interesting question is who, if anyone, is responsible for our current state of affairs. One commentator (don't recall who) recently put much of the blame for our current state of hard core partisan divisiveness and attack mode politics on folks like Newt Gingrich and his ilk. After all, Newt was the bomb-throwing, take-no-prisoners partisan when he was House speaker. Two party politics has been polarized since at least then. To me, it seems that there's a bit longer history than that. Things got hard core partisan in U.S. politics as long ago as the 1700s, if I am not mistaken.

It seems natural to heap the credit, if you like politics this way, or blame if you don't, on the two parties. I don't think its that simple. As I see it, there are five major players in how we got here - each gets some of the credit or blame.

The big five

One and two: First and most important are the two parties. The Democratic and Republican parties are special interests with great power and resources. They are masters of spin, deception and self-delusion. Their hard core partisans have much power and devoutly worship their respective political and/or religious ideologies. They see reality through the distorting lens of those sacrosanct beliefs.

That not only hurts America because it stifles creating thinking, it makes the partisan divide easy to see and tends to push people to one or the other side of the divide. It masks the fact that both sides can be wrong and that there are potential solutions that neither side seriously and properly considers. That tends to keep political power concentrated with the two parties - no one wants to risk going with a third party, given the allegedly stupendous "risk" of the other side gaining power if "our" side becomes fragmented. Its brilliant tactics and it works.

The third: Another major player is special interest money. It is always present, ruthless and powerful. Politicians clearly understand that no money means no election. Period. Special interests are called that for a reason - they are there to defend and advance their own interests.

The assertion that special interests usually act in their own interest with little regard for the public interest isn't a criticism. It is a neutral statement of fact. There is no reason to expect anything else. To a large extent, government is there to protect the public interest, not special interests. The business of business is business, not protecting the public interest. That's just common sense and the way the world works.

That can be good, bad or indifferent to the larger public interest. But, that is usually of little or no concern for most special interests. Those interests include the Democratic and Republican parties, corporations and many wealthy individuals. Money coming from the public into political party coffers is much less influential than money coming from wealthy special interests. In other words, we have private and public sector special interests buying influence from special interests who happen to be political parties in power. Creepy.

Anyway, if you can accept the reality that special interests operate in their own self-interest, it shouldn't be too hard to see that the public interest could be short changed more often than not. Could that maybe be part of how and why we are where we are today?

Fourth: The fourth estate, the press is also a player. From one point of view, they are there to mostly look out for the public interest. They use their resource to look for wrong-doers in government and the business community. Many members of the press truly believes that is their main mission. They get Pulitzer prizes for exposing corruption and evil. Right?

But, on second thought, why should they look out for the public interest? We have a capitalist system. It is competitive and media outlets have to generate profits or go out of business. The way they generate money is by selling ads. Who buys those ads? Special interests who are interested in advancing their own interest. See any potential issues there?

Has it ever been the case that a wealthy individual or entity has come along and bought media outlets that advocate for the interests or the wealthy individual or entity?

Fifth: We live in a democracy and if we don't like our politicians, we can vote them out of power. Ultimately, it is up to voters to pierce the veil of spin and try to see reality for what it is. Admittedly, that is very hard and time consuming. The spinners are intelligent, very sophisticated and have vast resources at their disposal to obfuscate everything. Most average people don't have the interest and/or time to pierce the veil for most issues. That includes me. Nonetheless, average voters are part of the story (myself included).

Who gets the credit (or blame)?

After careful consideration the following seems like a reasonable and defensible assessment of credit:

Republican party: . . . . . . . . . .  25% (divisive, deceptive ideologues)
Democratic party: . . . . . . . . . .  25% (clueless, leaderless, inept ideologues)
Wealthy special interests: . . . .  20% (money never, ever sleeps)
The public: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  20% (deceived, distracted, disengaged & self-centered)The press: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10% (out manned, out gunned, co-opted & distracted)

Differences of 5% don't mean much - maybe the public gets 25% 

of the credit and some of the others get less. This isn't precise science.

Others will, of course, see this differently. Especially Democrats, Republicans and special interests.