For some reason when ever there are any decent job numbers he gets a fit of the Rush Limbaughs and gloats See, I Told You So!
http://www.amazon.com/See-I-Told-You-So/dp/067187120X/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1376953932&sr=1-4&keywords=rush+limbaugh
"So let’s review the past year:
1. Keynesians warned us that it would be a huge mistake to adopt fiscal austerity in America. It would cut growth sharply. Mark Sadowski has the details.
2. The “Laffer wing” of the Keynesian movement predicts the damage to growth will be so great that the deficit might not even decline.
3. Then we find Congress does the austerity, despite the advice of the Keynesians.
4. Job growth continues in 2013 at almost exactly the same pace as in 2012. The tax revenues pour in.
5. The budget deficit gets much smaller.
"And how do the Keynesians react to all this? They say “I told you so.” There was never any reason to worry about the big bad deficit. It’s coming down very fast “on its own.” Yes, if by “on its own” you mean that the evil GOP forced eurozone-style austerity on the US, and the Fed offset the effects on NGDP (unlike the ECB.)"
http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=23017
Well Scott, it's great to know that the spectre of all these government workers losing their jobs and all those Americans losing services makes you feel so smug.
"Because much of the Head Start harm caused by sequestration lies in what won't happen (a child who could have been enrolled, money spent on day care that could have been spent elsewhere, etc.), assessing the overall damage is a difficult task. But one place to start is by observing local news coverage, which provides a daily drip of depressing developments. In a two-week period this June, it was announced that Head Start was eliminating staff positions and student spots in Cincinnati, Hannibal, Mo., Hennepin County, Minn., Cullman County, Ala., Cicero, N.Y., and elsewhere."
http://www.amazon.com/See-I-Told-You-So/dp/067187120X/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1376953932&sr=1-4&keywords=rush+limbaugh
"So let’s review the past year:
1. Keynesians warned us that it would be a huge mistake to adopt fiscal austerity in America. It would cut growth sharply. Mark Sadowski has the details.
2. The “Laffer wing” of the Keynesian movement predicts the damage to growth will be so great that the deficit might not even decline.
3. Then we find Congress does the austerity, despite the advice of the Keynesians.
4. Job growth continues in 2013 at almost exactly the same pace as in 2012. The tax revenues pour in.
5. The budget deficit gets much smaller.
"And how do the Keynesians react to all this? They say “I told you so.” There was never any reason to worry about the big bad deficit. It’s coming down very fast “on its own.” Yes, if by “on its own” you mean that the evil GOP forced eurozone-style austerity on the US, and the Fed offset the effects on NGDP (unlike the ECB.)"
http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=23017
Well Scott, it's great to know that the spectre of all these government workers losing their jobs and all those Americans losing services makes you feel so smug.
"Because much of the Head Start harm caused by sequestration lies in what won't happen (a child who could have been enrolled, money spent on day care that could have been spent elsewhere, etc.), assessing the overall damage is a difficult task. But one place to start is by observing local news coverage, which provides a daily drip of depressing developments. In a two-week period this June, it was announced that Head Start was eliminating staff positions and student spots in Cincinnati, Hannibal, Mo., Hennepin County, Minn., Cullman County, Ala., Cicero, N.Y., and elsewhere."
"Yasmina Vinci, executive director of the National Head Start Association, said that her group anticipates 65,000 fewer slots for children and 11,500 Head Start jobs being lost nationally. The impact on the Head Start community, she said, has been demoralizing, so much so that the association has begun running a mental health webinar to help with depression among Head Start staff."
So the Dems lost their bet that the GOP wouldn't let these deep cuts to the Pentagon go into effect just to harm people like these Head Start families.
"Sequestration was meant to hurt people just like Reynolds and Bella, Misty and April. The policy's designers made a bet in the summer of 2011 that a deficit-reduction cleaver that decimated defense and harmed the most vulnerable would be abhorrent to Republicans and Democrats alike. They lost the bet. Sequestration went into effect on March 1, 2013, after lawmakers failed to agree on a replacement."
"In Washington, the conventional wisdom has sometimes held that sequestration's harms were oversold. Dire warnings of massive job loss never came true, while government programs used budget gimmickry to keep operating."
"Outside the Beltway, the perception of sequestration is sharply, viscerally different. Budget cuts have resulted in fewer meals for seniors, less financial aid for scientific research, poorer natural disaster preparedness and more expensive treatments for cancer patients."
What really matters though is Sumner gets to feel he somehow won some bet against the Keynesians. That's what really counts. I'm kind of a moderate on the question of whether GDP should have more factors than merely growth numbers-quality of life, happiness, etc. I think GDP is useful as it but that social factors should be factored in. Surely these losses here should be factored in some way.
On the larger macroeconomic point why does Sumner feel he's won a bet? Unless he can prove that the reason we have if anything more jobs this year-though not more GDP-is due to the sequester, there's no reason he nor his Republican friends in Washington should be gloating.
Greg Sargent does have a piece today that argues that the Dems may be able to force the GOP back to the negotiating table on the sequester thanks to an increase of $20 billion in military cuts for next year-these came about because this year the military was actually spared $20 billion in cuts that domestic programs were't.
P.S. My guess that if Sumner tried to respond to me here at all-and he wouldn't-it would be to argue that while it's too bad that for instance 12,500 people lost their jobs at Head Start, this is really not a very big number in Macro terms. Of course, these are not the only losses by any strecth. The total losses are expected to number more like 750,000. However, I do thnk that if are economic guage simply ignoreds 57,000 kids now not getting adequate meals per day that surely this should factor somewhere-and they're not the only 57,000 kids in the country in this position.
It goes back to what Morgan Warstler, my favorite conservative said recently-that economics can't be about a social agenda. It can't? Did he not hear that economics is a social science? So economics should consider social factors and absolutely is-always-about a social agenda.
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