Why Trade Deals Are a Tough Sell

At the Wall Street Journal, "Why Opposition to Trade Deals Is So Entrenched":

HAMBURG—Few places have a longer affinity for free trade than this German city, home to one of Europe’s busiest ports.

The city’s left-leaning government overruled environmentalists in 2012 and approved deepening the Elbe River for bigger container ships. License plates boast of the city’s founding role in the Hanseatic League, a medieval alliance that was among the world’s first free-trade blocs.

But unease over new trade deals runs deep in Hamburg these days, as it does in the U.S. and across much of the developed world. The more aggressively leaders push to expand the reach of multilateral agreements into sensitive zones such as drug patents and investor protections, the more aggressively opponents push back.

Ire here is directed at portions of the proposed Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP, which would join the U.S. and the European Union in a vast common market with more than 800 million of the world’s richest consumers.

The freshly completed Pacific trade deal between the U.S., Japan and 10 other countries has sparked similar outcries, underscoring the challenge of completing sweeping pacts that go far beyond eliminating tariffs—few of which exist between the U.S. and Europe...

Keep reading.

Hey Mr. President, This is How You Create Jobs

A great piece, from Andy Puzder, CEO of Carl Karcher Enterprises, at WSJ, "No Wonder Growth Has Been So Anemic":

Since the problem is too few jobs, it is important to understand who creates jobs. At my company, CKE Restaurants, for example, our franchisees are small business owners who furnish entry-level jobs and management careers every time they open a Carl’s Jr. or Hardee’s. Franchisees generally invest more than $1 million to permit, build and equip restaurants, creating jobs for architects, attorneys and construction workers.

After opening, each store creates about 25 permanent jobs within the restaurant as well as ancillary jobs maintaining, advertising and supplying food and paper products to it.

Our approximately 3,000 domestic restaurants (90% franchised) spend more than $1 billion on food and paper products a year. That creates jobs for everyone from the farmers who plant the seeds to the truck drivers who deliver the ingredients to our restaurants.

CKE also spends about $175 million a year on advertising, great for actors and workers at ad agencies, as well as radio and TV stations. We spend $150 million annually on capital improvements, remodeling restaurants, and purchasing new equipment. This spurs opportunities for construction workers, equipment manufacturers and more. Then there’s the roughly $100 million put toward annual maintenance. That means jobs for window washers, air conditioner repairmen and landscapers.

These workers in turn spend their incomes on food, clothing, housing, health care, education and entertainment—supporting even more jobs. The more restaurants the company builds, the more jobs and the more growth in local economies. Collectively with our franchisees, CKE provides employment for more than 70,000 Americans and supports jobs for tens of thousands of others outside the restaurants.

This engine of economic growth applies to every part of the economy. Whether Ford, Apple, Caterpillar, Wal-Mart or Coca-Cola, the web of job creation is the same. And so if a politician wants to help workers win a raise, he should help businesses add jobs by simplifying the tax code, enacting regulatory reform and replacing ObamaCare with something that works. Republican presidential candidates such as Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio have offered specific plans on these subjects...

Broken City: San Bernardino, Once Solidly Middle-Class, Distills America's Urban Woes in the Age of Obama

So sad.

At the Los Angeles Times, "San Bernardino: Broken City."

As other CA cities rise out of the recession, San Bernardino has become one of the poorest http://t.co/lJhcy7Mwtk pic.twitter.com/b7UsBKUO4S

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) June 14, 2015

Imagine the National Economy with a $15.00 Minimum Wage

I suspect if local governments, like Los Angeles, phase in the $15.00 minimum wage over a few years, the negative economic repercussions will be minimized. Still, once businesses relocate to more competitive cities and states, it's hard to get those enterprises back.

And as always, huge numbers of workers are going to be displaced as businesses shift to increasing automation and flexible (shorter), non-benefit, hours.

At the Los Angeles Times, "A new dawn for the minimum wage":

What has long been a hypothetical question may soon become a real one: What would the national economy look like with a $15-an-hour minimum wage?

Community activists and politicians see a $15 minimum wage as the antidote to the ills of rising inequality, a way to reduce poverty and stimulate the overall economy. Business owners warn it will tie their hands in downturns, drive small employers out of business and lead to millions of layoffs.

The reality is not that simple: An increase to $15 an hour would ripple through the U.S. economy in some unexpected ways that are, generally, not as bad nor as beneficial as each side claims.

The push for a higher minimum wage has gained momentum over the past few years. Seattle, San Francisco and most recently Los Angeles have adopted a floor of $15 an hour to take effect over the next few years. That's more than double the current federal minimum-wage law of $7.25.

Other cities such as Chicago. Oakland and Washington, D.C., have raised the minimum wage, but not as much. At least a dozen other cities and states, including New York and Oregon, may soon follow.

The recent movement is rooted in years of stagnant wages and a general disaffection from the slow and uneven recovery since the Great Recession officially ended in 2009. Like the Gilded Age in the late 1800s, the last quarter-century has seen fabulous income gains for corporations and individuals at the top, but very little for everybody else.

It's true that higher minimum wages would address some of that inequality, lifting many Americans from poverty.

Almost 60% of workers who are paid on an hourly basis — some 44 million people — currently make less than $15 an hour, Labor Department figures show. If the minimum went up to $15 tomorrow, nearly half of those workers would get at least a 50% bump in pay.

And it's not just teenagers and young adults who would benefit. More than 8.4 million people earning less than $10 an hour today are in the prime of their work life, between ages 25 and 54. About 62% of these workers are women, many with children.

Yet the benefits from higher wages would be offset for many by a reduction in government benefits that low-wage workers now receive, such as child-care subsidies or public aid for food, housing and medicines.

Millions of workers would have more money in their pockets to spend, boosting demand for goods and services. But they would also likely face increased prices in the marketplace as retailers, restaurants, child-care centers and other businesses that employ low-wage workers shift the higher labor costs to their customers.

When Oakland's minimum wage jumped from $9 an hour to $12.25 in March, residents noticed many stores tacked on a dime or a quarter to an assortment of items. Creole food caterer David Smith went further, jacking up the price of his dishes by $2 to $3 a plate. "I had to," says Smith, 35, who has three employees.

Longer term, many low-paid workers could lose their jobs or find fewer openings as employers cut back to cope with the higher wage requirements.

An analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office last year estimated that raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, which some lawmakers had proposed, would result in a half-million jobs lost. At $15 an hour, the hit would likely be in the millions.

"Fifteen dollars still scares me," says Harry Holzer, a Georgetown University economist, adding that what might be doable in high-priced cities like Seattle and San Francisco could prove more difficult in other areas...

More.

PREVIOUSLY: "Businesses Will Raises Prices and Cut Employee Hours Under Obama Minimum Wage Hike," and "$15 Minimum Wage Will Hurt Workers."

$15 Minimum Wage Will Hurt Workers

You think?

From Megan McArdle, at Bloomberg":

So Los Angeles is raising its minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2020, and then indexes the wage to inflation, so that it will never fall below this level in real terms. The politicians who have passed this law are understandably very excited that many low-wage workers -- perhaps almost half of the city's labor force -- will be getting raises, some from the current minimum of $9. I'm sure the workers themselves are pretty excited about having more money in their pockets. What's less clear is what happens next.

As I've written before, the existence of studies that seem to show minimal economic impact from minimum wage increases has caused many policy advocates to act as if we can assume that very high increases, like this one, can transfer money from the pockets of the affluent into the pockets of the poor without causing big disruptions. This is wildly beyond what that evidence shows, or could show. The studies in question covered small increases in the minimum wage, over short time frames. They cannot tell us what will happen with big increases over longer time frames (and neither can flat international comparisons, which get influenced by local economic conditions--for example Australia, frequently cited by proponents of the minimum wage, has been having a decades-long commodity boom that is now ending). This matters. It is over longer periods that a minimum wage hike is likely to be most disruptive.

When the minimum wage goes up, owners do not en masse shut down their restaurants or lay off their staff. What is more likely to happen is that prices will rise, sales will fall off somewhat, and owner profits will be somewhat reduced. People who were looking at opening a fast food or retail or low-wage manufacturing concern will run the numbers and decide that the potential profits can't justify the risk of some operations. Some folks who have been in the business for a while will conclude that with reduced profits, it's no longer worth putting their hours into the business, so they'll close the business and retire or do something else. Businesses that were not very profitable with the earlier minimum wage will slip into the red, and they will miss their franchise payments or loan installments and be forced out of business. Many owners who stay in business will look to invest in labor saving technology that can reduce their headcount, like touch-screen ordering or soda stations that let you fill your own drinks. These sorts of decisions take a while to make. They still add up, in the end, to deadweight loss -- that is, along with a net transfer of money from owners and customers to employees, there will also simply be fewer employees in some businesses. The workers who are dropped have effectively gone from $9 an hour to $0 an hour. This hardly benefits those employees. Or the employee's landlord, grocer, etc.

More.

Leftists are idiots. Los Angeles has already had businesses move out of town with the threats of higher costs.

U.S. Growth Nearly Stalls Out

At WSJ, "U.S. Economic Growth Nearly Stalls Out: Businesses slash investment, exports tumble and consumers show caution as GDP expands at 0.2% pace":

WASHINGTON—The U.S. economy slowed to a crawl at the start of the year as businesses slashed investment, exports tumbled and consumers showed signs of caution, marking a return to the uneven growth that has been a hallmark of the nearly six-year economic expansion.

Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services produced across the economy, expanded at a 0.2% seasonally adjusted annual rate in the first quarter, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. The economy advanced at a 2.2% pace in the fourth quarter and 5% in the third.

Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had expected growth of 1% in the first three months of this year, though many were braced for a surprise to the downside.

The latest reading on the economy came hours before Federal Reserve officials released their policy statement, in which they said slower growth reflected, in part, “transitory factors.” The Fed gave no new explicit clues on the timing of interest-rate increases, but the slower growth made the timing a bit more uncertain.

The first-quarter figures repeat a common pattern in recent years: one or two strong readings followed by a sharp slowdown. First-quarter GDP growth had averaged 0.6% since 2010 and 2.9% for all other quarters. That has worked out to moderate overall expansion but no growth breakout.

“This is another quarterly number which confirms the long-term slow-growth thesis, but there are good odds we get a bit of a bounce later in the year from stabilized business spending and the housing markets, which are setting up quite promising,” Guy LeBas, chief fixed-income strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott, said in a note to clients.

Last year, economists pinned much of the blame for a bad first quarter—GDP shrank 2.1%—on unusually harsh weather. This year, multiple factors appear to be at work, including another bout of blizzards, disruptions at West Coast ports, the stronger dollar’s effect on exports and the impact of cheaper oil.

Better weather, a return to normal at port terminals and steadying investment could boost growth later this year.

“We expect the economy will rebound in [the second quarter] and beyond, similar to last year,” said Michelle Girard, economist at RBS Securities.

But not all the factors behind the slowdown appear temporary. A stronger dollar and cheaper oil could persist, keeping exports and energy-sector investment at bay.

As well, rising inventories kept the U.S. economy out of recession, contributing 0.74 percentage point to GDP in the first quarter. A second-quarter repeat is unlikely.

Joseph LaVorgna, chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank, said producers probably will allow inventory positions to run off rather than building them up even more. “This tells us that current-quarter growth is likely to run around 2.5%, not the 4% snapback we had previously been anticipating,” he said.

U.S. households will have to pick up spending to help the economy grow. Wednesday’s report showed consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of economic output, decelerated to a 1.9% pace in the first quarter, down from 4.4% growth in the fourth quarter.

Rather than using savings from cheaper gasoline to buy more goods and services, Americans have been setting money aside for a rainy day. The personal saving rate at 5.5% in the first quarter was the highest since 2012. The figure was 4.6% in the fourth quarter.

Another key driver of the economy, business spending, also has faltered of late. Nonresidential fixed investment—which reflects spending on software, research and development, equipment and structures—retreated at a 3.4% rate, compared with a 4.7% rise in the fourth quarter.

Energy companies in particular are feeling the effects of cheaper oil. Business investment in structures fell 23.1%, led by a 48.7% contraction for mining sector spending on shafts and wells, Commerce said.

A stronger dollar, meanwhile, has made domestically produced goods more expensive overseas and foreign products cheaper inside the U.S. Combined with disruptions at West Coast ports, trade was constrained. In the first quarter, exports fell at a 7.2% rate, compared with 4.5% growth in the fourth quarter. Imports rose 1.8%, compared with 10.4% in the fourth quarter...

Also at Gateway Pundit, "OBAMA vs. REAGAN on GDP GROWTH — NOT EVEN CLOSE."

Owner of L.A.'s Golden Road Brewing Better Start to 'Share His Profits More Equitably...'

Following-up from the the other day, "Los Angeles' Minimum Wage Hike Risks Driving Businesses to Nearby Cities."

No surprise, but leftist readers of the Times took issue, captured perfectly by this totalitarian letter to the editor, "Will a wage boost lift all boats or push jobs out of L.A.?":

To the editor: Golden Road Brewing head Tony Yanow asks, "Do you want to go somewhere you can make money, or do you want to go somewhere where they are stacking the cards against you?" I, an avid IPA aficionado, would respond that I would rather support a brewer who is willing to share his profits more equitably.

I applaud the entrepreneurial spirit of brewers like Yanow. They deserve their profits. Just how much do they think they need to make before they are willing to acknowledge the efforts of their employees by paying them a living wage?

I will be watching and making my decisions about where I enjoy my IPA. The greedy ones need to know they are not the only IPA experts in town.

Sharon Fane, Burbank

Well, she "applauds" them if they're willing to redistribute their earnings. Otherwise she just considers them "greedy" bastards. Typical anti-business leftist. Damn.

Surprisingly, the Times also published a much more sensible letter carefully laying out the logic of the marketplace, from Andrew Chawke in Sherman Oaks (at the link).

Los Angeles' Minimum Wage Hike Risks Driving Businesses to Nearby Cities

Well, you think?

At LAT, "Would an L.A. minimum wage hike push businesses to nearby cities?":

In less than four years, Tony Yanow has boosted Golden Road Brewing's production nearly sixfold, making beers from the Atwater Village brewery a mainstay in supermarkets across California.

He employs 300 workers in Los Angeles at the brewery and his Mohawk Bend restaurant in Echo Park. As part of a planned expansion, he expects to hire at least 100 more — but most of them may not be in the city.

As lawmakers consider potential minimum wage increases to as high as $15.25 an hour by 2019, Yanow is planning to expand into Orange County and is considering a new project in Glendale.

"I love L.A., but that doesn't mean it's my best bet," he said. "Do you want to go somewhere where you can make money, or do you want to go somewhere where they're stacking the cards against you?"

Los Angeles' minimum wage would apply only within city limits. So the city's unique geography — stretching from the northern reaches of the San Fernando Valley down to the port in San Pedro — provides plenty of options for business owners looking to avoid higher labor costs.

Dozens of municipalities directly border the city, but only two — Santa Monica and West Hollywood — are pondering raising their minimum wages.

Business owners also worry about losing customers if they raise prices to cover higher costs. Why not just buy that cheaper car wash, hamburger or piece of clothing in a neighboring city? While minimum wage advocates argue that higher pay for workers would translate into more spending, opponents worry the economic boost would migrate across the L.A. border.

Neighboring cities such as Burbank have a history of making aggressive plays to attract new businesses.

"There's at least 40 jurisdictions that'll be happy to pick our pocket," said Ruben Gonzalez, senior vice president at the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. "Everywhere in the city, you can point to people who can move down the road and serve the same clientele."

Los Angeles' geography differs widely from that of other cities that have passed minimum wage increases, such as Seattle and San Francisco, which have more uniform borders and compact city centers. That means there has been little if any research that would apply to the wage hike being considered in Los Angeles.

"We really don't know what we're dealing with," said Christopher Thornberg, an expert on the California economy who is the founding partner of Beacon Economics. "This is a very aggressive hike they're talking about, in the context of a very convoluted geographic area."

The economics Einsteins of Los Angeles. Driving businesses and jobs outside the city limits.

You gotta hand it to the progs. They're really committed to their ideas, no matter how disastrous.

Keep reading.

Non-employment: The Vanishing Male Worker

This is kinda sad.

At NYT, "The Vanishing Male Worker: How America Fell Behind":

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Frank Walsh still pays dues to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, but more than four years have passed since his name was called at the union hall where the few available jobs are distributed. Mr. Walsh, his wife and two children live on her part-time income and a small inheritance from his mother, which is running out.

Sitting in the food court at a mall near his Maryland home, he sees that some of the restaurants are hiring. He says he can’t wait much longer to find a job. But he’s not ready yet.

“I’d work for them, but they’re only willing to pay $10 an hour,” he said, pointing at a Chick-fil-A that probably pays most of its workers less than that. “I’m 49 with two kids — $10 just isn’t going to cut it.”

Working, in America, is in decline. The share of prime-age men — those 25 to 54 years old — who are not working has more than tripled since the late 1960s, to 16 percent. More recently, since the turn of the century, the share of women without paying jobs has been rising, too. The United States, which had one of the highest employment rates among developed nations as recently as 2000, has fallen toward the bottom of the list.

As the economy slowly recovers from the Great Recession, many of those men and women are eager to find work and willing to make large sacrifices to do so. Many others, however, are choosing not to work, according to a New York Times/CBS News/Kaiser Family Foundation poll that provides a detailed look at the lives of the 30 million Americans 25 to 54 who are without jobs.

Many men, in particular, have decided that low-wage work will not improve their lives, in part because deep changes in American society have made it easier for them to live without working. These changes include the availability of federal disability benefits; the decline of marriage, which means fewer men provide for children; and the rise of the Internet, which has reduced the isolation of unemployment.

At the same time, it has become harder for men to find higher-paying jobs. Foreign competition and technological advances have eliminated many of the jobs in which high school graduates like Mr. Walsh once could earn $40 an hour, or more. The poll found that 85 percent of prime-age men without jobs do not have bachelor’s degrees. And 34 percent said they had criminal records, making it hard to find any work.

The resulting absence of millions of potential workers has serious consequences not just for the men and their families but for the nation as a whole. A smaller work force is likely to lead to a slower-growing economy, and will leave a smaller share of the population to cover the cost of government, even as a larger share seeks help.

“They’re not working, because it’s not paying them enough to work,” said Alan B. Krueger, a leading labor economist and a professor at Princeton. “And that means the economy is going to be smaller than it otherwise would be.”

Keep reading.

Republicans' 2016 Divisions

There's "divisions" every presidential primary season, although what would we do without the Old Gray Lady to remind us of the GOP's?

At the New York Times, "A Deep 2016 Republican Presidential Field Reflects Party Divisions" (at Memeorandum):

BOCA RATON, Fla. — Republican presidential primaries have for decades been orderly affairs, with any momentary drama mitigated by the expectation that the party would inevitably nominate its tested, often graying front-runner.

But as the 2016 White House campaign effectively began in the last week, it became apparent that this race might be different: a fluid contest, verging on chaotic, that will showcase the party’s deep bench of talent but also highlight its ideological and generational divisions.

As Democrats signal that they are ready to rally behind Hillary Rodham Clinton before their primary season even begins, allowing them to focus their fund-raising and firepower mostly on the general election, the Republicans appear destined for a free-for-all.

Balance of Power: What 2014 Elections Can Tell Us About 2016: Not Much at AllNOV. 6, 2014
“I can think of about 16 potential candidates,” said Haley Barbour, the former governor of Mississippi and a veteran of Republican presidential politics dating to 1968. “Almost every one of them have a starting point. But there is no true front-runner.”

The sprawling nature of the race was on display Thursday as an array of would-be candidates took steps to position themselves.

At a gathering of Republican governors here, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey sought to capitalize on the party’s victories this year in Democratic-leaning states while at least six fellow governors tested their messages and met with potential donors.

On the same day in Washington, Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, addressed an education conference and tried to tamp down differences with the right on the Common Core standards. On Capitol Hill, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky continued his outreach to African-Americans by having breakfast with the Rev. Al Sharpton, while Senator Ted Cruz of Texas appealed to conservatives by citing Cicero on the Senate floor in a speech castigating President Obama’s executive action on immigration.

And in California, Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, just back from taking a group of evangelicals from early primary states on a trip to Europe honoring Ronald Reagan’s Cold War leadership, venerated Mr. Reagan in a speech at his presidential library.

If the dizzying activity on a single day captured the depth of the Republican field, it also underlined its factions, split among pragmatists, hard-liners and those trying to bridge the blocs.

Just reading this made me realize how not ready I am for the 2016 presidential cycle. It's on, folks. We're barely out of the midterms and the presidential election is on. Who'll be the first Republican to declare his or her candidacy?

More.

Majority of Americans Says Obama's an Epic Fail

It's a 52 percent majority, and Aaron Blake is sure to point out the question offers a "binary" choice between success and failure (and not other options, like perhaps he's only partially fail).

At the Washington Post, "A majority of Americans say Obama’s presidency is a ‘failure’."

The Obama Depression: Long-Term Job Losses Still at Record Levels

Well, things won't really being to turn around until the Depressor-in-Chief is retired for good.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Despite 'recovery,' long-term jobless still at record levels":

It has come down to this for Brian Perry: an apple or banana for lunch, Red Sox ballgames on an old Zenith TV and long walks to shake off the blues.

At 57, Perry has been unemployed and looking for work for nearly seven years, ever since that winter when the Great Recession hit and he was laid off from his job as a law firm clerk.

By his count, Perry has applied for more than 1,300 openings and has had some 30 interviews, the last one a good two years ago. With his savings running dry, this summer he put up for sale his one asset — a three-bedroom house his parents used to own in this suburb of Providence.

"I'm not looking for pity, just one last opportunity," said Perry, a boyish-looking man with bright blue eyes and a nasal New England brogue.

The national economy, now in its sixth year of recovery, is gaining momentum and the unemployment rate has fallen sharply over the last year to 6.1%. But the number and share of people out of work for more than six months, the so-called long-term unemployed, remain at historically high levels.

Of the 3 million long-term jobless today, about one-third have been unemployed for more than two years, Labor Department data show. A small minority — roughly 100,000 Americans like Perry — have been actively looking for at least five years.

They might be called the super long-term unemployed. While others have quit looking, taken early retirement or entered disability rolls, these workers have pressed on year after year despite the increasingly long odds of finding a new job.

Extreme as their cases are, they reflect the devastating effects of the worst economic downturn in 75 years and how much the risks of being unemployed for extended periods have increased compared with the past.

The longer people remain jobless, the more likely they are to suffer the scarring effects of unemployment that can hurt their earnings permanently and create a cycle of instability.

More.

Frankly, I'd be angry. And that "cycle of instability" could easily devolved into extremist political violence.

Gee, thanks Obama and the "equality"-obsessed Democrat Party.

PREVIOUSLY: "The Obama Depression: In Poll, 7-in-10 Say Economy Has Permanently Changed for the Worse Since '09."

The Obama Depression: In Poll, 7-in-10 Say Economy Has Permanently Changed for the Worse Since '09

The news articles and the survey report don't say it, but the findings from the new Rutgers University poll on the economy are nothing less than a devastating indictment of the Obama administration and its inept --- indeed, malicious --- handling of the economy since the crash of 2008.

Obama's 2009 stimulus bill was a boondoggle that proved Keynesian economics doesn't work.

Today, more than 5 and a half years since Obama took office, the national unemployment rate stands at 6.2 percent, and the most recent report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that unemployment in July increased in 30 states. We're still stuck in a tepid recovery, and Americans are hopping mad about it.

Here's the Rutgers report, "Unhappy, Worried, and Pessimistic: Americans in the Aftermath of the Great Recession":

The protracted and uneven recovery from the Great Recession has led most Americans to conclude that the U.S. economy has undergone a permanent change for the worse. Seven in ten now say the recession’s impact is permanent, up from half in 2009 when the recession officially ended. Much of this is rooted in direct experience. Fully one-quarter of the public says there has been a major decline in their quality of life owing to the recession, and 42 percent say they have less in salary and savings than when the recession began. Despite five years of recovery, sustained job growth, and reductions in the number of unemployed workers, Americans are not convinced that the economy is improving. Only one in three thinks the U.S. economy has gotten better in the last year and only one-quarter thinks it will improve next year. Moreover, just one in six Americans believe that job opportunities will be better for the next generation of workers, down from four in ten five years ago. These are some of the findings of a new survey conducted between July 24 and August 3, 2014 by the Heldrich Center with a nationally representative sample of 1,153 Americans.

Click through for the full report.

And then watch this astonishing focus group segment with pollster Frank Luntz on CBS News This Morning. The usual caveat is that focus groups are statistically insignificant, although the strong opinions held among the participants here, and the near universal disappointment among the participants, provides a crushing snapshot of the public sentiment with just over two months to go before the November midterm elections.

'Claire is a thirtysomething Ph.D.-holder currently living in the South, where she recently completed grad school. Oh, and she’s also a stripper...'

At Vitae, "'Stripping Was the Easiest and Quickest Solution'." (Via Instapundit.)

RELATED: At the Other McCain, "‘She Passed Out in a Bedroom . . . She Wasn’t Strong Enough to Push Him Away’."

The Left's Failing Economic 'Wreakovery' After Five Years

From Michelle Malkin, "5 years later: How’s that Wreckovery working out for ya?":

On Feb. 17, 2009, President Obama promised the sun and the moon and the stars. That was the day, five years ago, when he signed the $800 billion “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.” President Modesty called it “the most sweeping economic recovery package in our history.” He promised “unprecedented transparency and accountability.” He claimed the spending would lift “two million Americans from poverty.” Ready for the reality smackdown?

The actual cost of the $800 billion pork-laden stimulus has ballooned to nearly $2 trillion. At the time of the law’s signing, the unemployment rate hovered near 8 percent. Obama’s egghead economists projected that the jobless rate would never rise above 8 percent and would plunge to 5 percent by December 2013. The actual jobless rate in January was 6.6 percent, with an abysmal labor force participation rate of 63 percent (a teeny uptick from December, but still at a four-decade low).

Five years after the Recovery Act, 10.2 million people are out of work. The number of able-bodied Americans who have simply given up looking for work or are “not in the labor force (but) who currently want a job” has exploded. By some estimates, a record 90 million-plus people are hopelessly sitting on the sidelines.

The unemployment rate for black Americans is 12.1 percent: nearly double the national rate. The Obama campaign excoriated President George W. Bush when it exceeded 10 percent under his watch. The black teen jobless rate is now a whopping record 38 percent. Some 50 million Americans remain below the poverty level. And 47 million are now on food stamps, a third more than when Obama first took office in the halcyon days of Hope and Change.

After $150 billion in stimulus and other spending on green energy boondoggles, what does the White House have to show for it? According to The Green Corruption Files blog, 32 Obama-backed environmental firms have gone bankrupt as of February 2014. These include crony-clogged Solyndra at a cost to taxpayers of $535 million; Beacon Power, $240 million; Abound Solar, $400 million-plus; Fisker Auto, $529 million; A123, $250 million; ECOtality, $100 million; and Ener1, $118.5 million. In addition, 22 other Obama green energy projects are now in dire financial trouble.

Unprecedented transparency? Section 1513 of the Recovery Act required the White House to submit a progress report every three months. Last year, blogger Doug Powers noted: “Under their own guidelines, the administration should have released 14 of these reports by now, but they’ve only submitted eight of them for public review.” Whatevs.

Obama promised an avalanche of “shovel-ready” jobs to build vital infrastructure before signing the Recovery Act. Instead, stimulus money went to wasteful makework and non-work, including: bridges to nowhere; a California project to photograph ants; a University of North Carolina computerized dance program; a privately owned martini bar and Brazilian steakhouse in Missouri; a bogus New Hampshire beauty school; and renovations to Vice President Joe Biden’s favorite Amtrak train station in Delaware. Somehow, stimulus “Sheriff” Biden overlooked the hundreds of millions in stimulus money steered to General Services Administrations junkets in Las Vegas and Hawaii, ghost congressional districts, dead people, and those ubiquitous stimulus propaganda road signs stamped with the shovel-ready logo.

In 2012, Ohio State University economics professor Bill Dupor reported that more than three-quarters of the jobs created or saved by the stimulus were government jobs. Dupor and another colleague also concluded that the massive wealth redistribution scheme “destroyed/forestalled roughly one million private sector jobs” by siphoning tax dollars “to offset state revenue shortfalls and Medicaid increases rather than boost private sector employment.”

America's being taken for a ride by liars and collectivists. But I repeat myself.

More at the link.

IMAGE CREDIT: The People's Cube.

More Than One in Six Men Ages 25 to 54 Don't Have Jobs

Great news!

Just what "progressive" Democrats have been praising! Less able-bodied Americans in the workforce. Praise be to President Obama. His soul-crushing economic policies are bearing fruit!

At the Wall Street Journal, "More Men in Their Prime Are Out of Work: Technology and Globalization Transform Employment Amid Slow Economic Recovery" (via Google):

Mark Riley was 53 years old when he lost a job as a grant writer for an Arkansas community college. "I was stunned," he said. "It happened on my daughter's 11th birthday." His boss blamed state budget cuts.

That was almost three years ago and he still hasn't found steady work. Mr. Riley, whose unemployment benefits ran out 14 months ago, says his long and fruitless search is proof employers won't hire men out of work too long.

"We're poor, but we're not broke," Mr. Riley said. "We still have property. We have cars. We have some assets, we just can't liquidate them."

Mr. Riley's frustration is widely shared. More than one in six men ages 25 to 54, prime working years, don't have jobs—a total of 10.4 million. Some are looking for jobs; many aren't. Some had jobs that went overseas or were lost to technology. Some refuse to uproot for work because they are tied down by family needs or tethered to homes worth less than the mortgage. Some rely on government benefits. Others depend on working spouses.

Having so many men out of work is partly a symptom of a U.S. economy slow to recover from the worst recession in 75 years. It is also a chronic condition that shows how technology and globalization are transforming jobs faster than many workers can adapt, economists say.

The trend has been building for decades, according to government data. In the early 1970s, just 6% of American men ages 25 to 54 were without jobs. By late 2007, it was 13%. In 2009, during the worst of the recession, nearly 20% didn't have jobs.

Although the economy is improving and the unemployment rate is falling, 17% of working-age men weren't working in December. More than two-thirds said they weren't looking for work, so the government doesn't label them unemployed. The January snapshot of the job market is due Friday.

For women, the story is different. In the 1950s, only about a third of women ages 25 to 54 had jobs. That rose steadily until the 1990s, and then leveled off for reasons that aren't clear. At last tally, about 70% were working; 30% weren't.

Men without jobs stand apart in a society that has long celebrated work and hailed the breadwinners who support their families. "Our culture is one that venerates work, that views work as good for its own sake," said David Autor, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist.

The bleak prospects for the long-term unemployed—40% of men looking for jobs say they have been out of work six months or more—alarms policy makers and economists. The longer a person is unemployed, according to historic data, the harder it is to find a job.

Surveys find that most of the jobless spend their days in the same way working men spend weekends—watching TV, working out, sleeping. Economists say part of the problem is that men with few marketable skills and little education can't find work that pays enough to get them off the couch.

Since the early 1970s, the average inflation-adjusted wage for high-school dropouts has fallen about 25%; for high-school graduates with no college degree, it is down about 15%. Simply put, many of the available jobs don't pay enough to get men to take them, particularly if securing a job requires moving, long commutes or surrendering government benefits.

Economists who had expected the fraction of men working or at least looking for work to be approaching prerecession levels by now are dumbfounded. "It's looking worse and worse," said Johns Hopkins University's Robert Moffett, who has researched the subject. "It's unexpected."

Although 10,000 baby boomers turn 65 every day, these unemployed men are too young for conventional retirement. Many are closer to the start of their working lives.

Kenneth Gilkes Jr. , 29 years old, thought he was on his way to a career in government affairs after earning a master's degree in public administration from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2008.

But he was laid off from his first job at Chicago public schools. His most recent position, working in community outreach for former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. , ended in April with Mr. Jackson's resignation over the misuse of campaign funds. Mr. Gilkes collected $500 a week in unemployment benefits until December, when Congress failed to extend the program. He has spent his savings and now relies on family and friends.

Mr. Gilkes applies for at least two jobs a day, he said, but gets little response, especially when applying online, a common complaint by job seekers. He watches documentaries on successful people for inspiration, he said. Mr. Gilkes shares custody of his 2-year-old daughter with this ex-wife and said the responsibility of fatherhood pushes him to keep looking...

Continue reading.

Hey, no worries. Go on ObamaCare (Medicaid), get some food stamps and start schlepping down the welfare office for some Obama bucks. These men now have more "flexibility" than ever, so it's all good! Yay Democrats!

America Has Already Gone John Galt

From Roger Simon, at PJ Media, "Who Needs Ayn Rand?":

Tell all your “Objectivist” friends and the libertarian gang at Reason magazine to break out the champagne. Americans may have skipped the movie of Atlas Shrugged, nor have many read any of Ayn Rand’s works, but they have taken the author’s advice anyway and gone John Galt, quitting the work force in record numbers. According to Zero Hedge, the latest figures show the labor participation rate at 35 year low.

Realistically, it’s even more than 35 because that figure reflects an employment bump when larger numbers of women joined the work force in the seventies and eighties. (They’re gone now, with or without Gloria Steinem.)

Currently a record 91.8 million Americans are no longer looking for work. That’s almost one and a half times the entire population of France.

Although I admit to libertarian tendencies, I don’t think any of us can celebrate because of this. It’s an economic disaster that should be blowing even Chris Christie off the front pages.

In fact, it’s much worse than that. It’s a human emotional disaster. Freud may have been wrong about a number of things, but he was right about this. Two mainstays that get us through life, other than religion, which Freud didn’t cotton to, are “love and work.” I don’t know about love, but the work part of our lives has been brutally kicked out from under us in the Obama years.

Continue reading.

HAT TIP: Theo Spark.

Democrat Unemployment Bill Advances in Senate

Because unemployment benefits expand the economy, doh!

At LAT, "Jobless benefits bill takes small step in an uphill climb":

WASHINGTON — Legislation to resume long-term unemployment benefits for 1.3 million jobless Americans cleared a key hurdle Tuesday in the Senate, though final passage in the chamber, and ultimately the House, remains difficult.

The 60-37 vote, among the first since lawmakers returned Monday, came as six Republicans joined Democrats to advance a bill extending benefits by 90 days.

In a White House appearance shortly after the vote, President Obama criticized Republicans who contend that unemployment benefits sap workers' motivation to look for new jobs.

"The long-term unemployed are not lazy," he said. "I can't name a time when I met an American who would rather have an unemployment check than the pride of having a job."

Republicans quickly fired back, charging that Obama's economic policies — and particularly the passage of his healthcare overhaul law — are to blame for continued economic woes. And they prepared to offer their own conservative policy prescriptions.

Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, a possible 2016 presidential candidate, is expected to propose a "major restructuring" of federal anti-poverty programs in a speech Wednesday, the 50th anniversary of President Johnson's dramatic 1964 call to launch a war on poverty.

The Democratic-controlled Senate was not initially expected to get enough votes Tuesday to advance the unemployment bill and avoid a Republican filibuster. Most Republican senators, who are trying to keep the 2014 election campaign focused on the problems with Obamacare, oppose providing more unemployment insurance unless the $6-billion cost of another three months of aid is offset by budget cuts elsewhere.

But six Republicans, all moderates or from states with high unemployment rates, decided to join Democrats in voting to open debate on the bill rather than be blamed for obstructing it.

Among them was Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.), who said he would ultimately oppose the bill if his party was not allowed a chance to amend it. Along with offsetting the costs, he wants changes to "differentiate between those who are legitimately looking for work and can't find it and those who have turned this into a lifetime welfare system."

Politico has more on the GOP crossover votes, "In surprise move, unemployment benefits advance":

Democrats were able to secure six Republican votes to advance the three-month extension of unemployment benefits, nabbing just the 60 votes that are necessary to move ahead. But now they must work with centrist Republicans to strike a bipartisan accord that would offset the legislation’s $6.5 billion cost, a tall task in a Senate still brimming with partisan divisions.

But it’s not at all clear that the Republicans who sided with Democrats to break the filibuster will vote for final passage. Two of them said Tuesday they would most likely oppose it without the offsets they are seeking.

CARTOON CREDIT: Theo Spark.

A 'Mixed Bag'? Fifty Years Later and That's All to Be Said for 'War on Poverty'?

Because the left has announced its 2014 agenda will be a "war" against economic equality, I can understand why there was little discussion of this online yesterday. But this "mixed bag" after 50 years and hundreds of billions of dollars is a telling commentary on the inability of government to socially engineer economic outcomes.

At the New York Times, "50 Years Later, War on Poverty Is a Mixed Bag":

WASHINGTON — To many Americans, the war on poverty declared 50 years ago by President Lyndon B. Johnson has largely failed. The poverty rate has fallen only to 15 percent from 19 percent in two generations, and 46 million Americans live in households where the government considers their income scarcely adequate.

But looked at a different way, the federal government has succeeded in preventing the poverty rate from climbing far higher. There is broad consensus that the social welfare programs created since the New Deal have hugely improved living conditions for low-income Americans. At the same time, in recent decades, most of the gains from the private economy have gone to those at the top of the income ladder.

Half a century after Mr. Johnson’s now-famed State of the Union address, the debate over the government’s role in creating opportunity and ending deprivation has flared anew, with inequality as acute as it was in the Roaring Twenties and the ranks of the poor and near-poor at record highs. Programs like unemployment insurance and food stamps are keeping millions of families afloat. Republicans have sought to cut both programs, an illustration of the intense disagreement between the two political parties over the best solutions for bringing down the poverty rate as quickly as possible, or eliminating it.

For poverty to decrease, “the low-wage labor market needs to improve,” James P. Ziliak of the University of Kentucky said. “We need strong economic growth with gains widely distributed. If the private labor market won’t step up to the plate, we’re going to have to strengthen programs to help these people get by and survive.”

In Washington, President Obama has called inequality the “defining challenge of our time.” To that end, he intends to urge states to expand their Medicaid programs to poor, childless adults, and is pushing for an increase in the minimum wage and funding for early-childhood programs.

But conservatives, like Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, have looked at the poverty statistics more skeptically, contending that the government has misspent its safety-net money and needs to focus less on support and more on economic and job opportunities.

“The nation should face up to two facts: poverty rates are too high, especially among children, and spending money on government means-tested programs is at best a partial solution,” Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution wrote in an assessment of the shortfalls on the war on poverty. Washington already spends enough on antipoverty programs to lift all Americans out of poverty, he said. “To mount an effective war against poverty,” he added, “we need changes in the personal decisions of more young Americans.”

Still, a broad range of researchers interviewed by The New York Times stressed the improvement in the lives of low-income Americans since Mr. Johnson started his crusade. Infant mortality has dropped, college completion rates have soared, millions of women have entered the work force, malnutrition has all but disappeared. After all, when Mr. Johnson announced his campaign, parts of Appalachia lacked electricity and indoor plumbing.

Many economists argue that the official poverty rate grossly understates the impact of government programs. The headline poverty rate counts only cash income, not the value of in-kind benefits like food stamps. A fuller accounting suggests the poverty rate has dropped to 16 percent today, from 26 percent in the late 1960s, economists say.

But high rates of poverty — measured by both the official government yardstick and the alternatives that many economists prefer — have remained a remarkably persistent feature of American society. About four in 10 black children live in poverty; for Hispanic children, that figure is about three in 10. According to one recent study, as of mid-2011, in any given month, 1.7 million households were living on cash income of less than $2 a person a day, with the prevalence of the kind of deep poverty commonly associated with developing nations increasing since the mid-1990s.

To be honest, seeing people in poverty makes me sad. But the solution is more economic growth and opportunity, and especially expanding the culture of work, marriage, and thrift. The current Democrat agenda is simply creating a deeper dependency society, seen, for example, in New York's able-bodied black men standing around outside welfare offices waiting for their federal public assistance checks, enthusiastically referred to as "Obama bucks."

Can't Get Tenure? Then Get a Real Job

Here's Megan McArdle, at Bloomberg, in a great piece:

The last few days have seen the eruption, among academic bloggers, of a tense discussion over tenure. These discussions have been going on for a while, of course, as the situation for newly minted PhDs keeps getting more dire, and the reaction of people with tenure is to tut-tut about how awful it is and say that someone should do something...

Continue reading.

The job market for new Ph.D.s in political science has sucked for a long time. I'm fortunate to have a full-time tenured job. Shoot, I'm living the life. I don't go back to school until February 3rd. It's basically a six-week paid vacation, since I'm paid over 12 months. I stay up until all hours of the morning watching movies, sleep in all day, watch football or whatever, all with no worries about publishing some hot-shot research paper or planning for some overrated academic conference. I haven't been to the APSA annual meeting in years, but considering the clusterf-k controversy over the New Orleans meeting a couple of years back, I might as well be going to a communist gathering at the MLA. (And God's wrath came down on the APSA anyway, with the meeting cancelled by Hurricane Isaac.)

(I should confess, for all the blather about the leftist and communists, I'll probably go back to APSA one of these times, when the correlation of circumstances works in my favor, including institutional conference funding and stuff like that. It's nice to get out of town, meet other teachers, etc., even if I have to avoid idiot Marxists most of the time.)