Some Labor Day Questions

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First published in 2015, I’ve updated it for today.  In an ideal world, I’ll be able to update it again next year, with a yet more optimistic tone.

 

The Wall Street Journal asked some questions on Labor Day 2012, and supplied some answers.  Here are some of those questions and answers, which remain as valid this Labor Day.

  • Q: How are America’s workers doing? Not good. Over the past decade, over the ups and downs of the economy, taking inflation into account, the compensation of the typical worker — wages and benefits—basically haven’t risen at all. … The Labor Department recently said that 6.1 million workers in 2009-2011 have lost jobs that they’d had for at least three years. Of those, 45% hadn’t found work as of January 2012. … Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Friday that unemployment is still two percentage points higher than normal….
  • Q: Things ARE getting better, though. The US economy is creating jobs, right? Back in December 2007 when the recession began, there were about two jobless workers for every job opening.  When the economy touched bottom in mid-2009, there were more than six unemployed for every job.  At last count, the BLS says there were 3.4 jobless for every opening.
  • Q: How much of this elevated unemployment is because the unemployed just don’t have the skills that employers are looking for right now?  …the bulk of the evidence is a lot of the unemployment really is the old-fashioned kind: the kind that would go away if the economy was growing at a stronger pace. Mr. Bernanke said as much at the [2012] Jackson Hole conference….

In 2019, the jobs situation was drastically improved.  The overall unemployment rate was at an historic low, and there were more job openings than there were folks to fill them.  The black unemployment rate was at a record low.  The Hispanic unemployment rate was at a near record low.  The women unemployment rate was at a near record low.  Wages, both real and nominal, were growing.

The Wuhan Virus Situation severely damaged that, but by late 2020, our economy was in rapid recovery, GDP was up sharply, folks were getting jobs again, and inflation still was at an historic low despite that heating up economy.

We have today (2026) a new factor, recently and sharply risen, the plethora of Artificial Intelligence packages (eliding here the lack of actual intelligence in the packages; in fact they’re very good at teasing out patterns from very noisy inputs, but only those patterns their human programmers have programmed them to see). These packages have use in supporting research by those researchers with the professionalism and personal discipline to thoroughly check their AIs’ output rather than blindly accepting it, and the packages are very good at simple, rote work—the very entry level work that teenagers and newly graduated college students need in order to get started on their own careers. The actual impact of AI is not yet visible.

We now have a little high, if slowing inflation, and the necessities of life: food, shelter, energy for heating/cooling our shelter, and fuel for getting to work. These remain priced above what they were those nearly six years ago, albeit slowly improving yet, with real wages lower than they were then, even if that gap is slowly closing.

Labor Day is here, and this time around, it represents the traditional beginning of the mid-term election campaign season and of the newly structured Presidential election campaign season. The question before us now is which of the two parties and administrations currently on offer offers the better plan for getting our spending and borrowing under control while rebuilding our defense establishment in the face of growing threats from abroad, and getting our immigration system (finally) right—the one that wants reduced regulation and smaller government or the one that sees government as the answer to our problems and wants to grow it commensurately?

Happy Labor Day.

One More Pitch

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In their editorial about the success of the Republican reform of the Federal Food Stamp program, the WSJ editors had this remark toward the end:

Congress ought to reduce the 90% federal payment match for the ObamaCare expansion population on Medicaid….

That would be a small first step, though useful in its way, and it prompts me to push again for something I’ve touted over the years: make Federal transfers to the States, not just for Medicaid, but all Federal transfers, block grants on a declining basis.

Designate the year of enactment as Year0, and tot up the total of all transfers to each State in that year. In Year1, send that amount to each State as a single, no strings attached, block grant. In each year of the interval Year2-Year11, reduce the size of the block grant by 10% of Year1, so that from Year11 on, there are no more Federal funds—which are the tax remittances of all of us American citizens—being sent to the States.

The citizens of each State should not be required to fund the profligacy of other States; those taxes sent to the Federal government should be for the sole purpose of funding the constitutionally mandated expenditures of the Federal government, those expenditures enumerated in Article I, Section 8. Each State’s governing politicians should be required to justify the tax levels and expenditures they want directly to their own constituents.

Of course, there’s one exception to this end of Federal transfers. In the event of a natural disaster that’s beyond the capacity of a State or a region to handle from its own resources, Federal transfers to the State or region would be justified. To hold down the incidence of manufactured emergencies (for instance, excessive spending leading to a risk of fiscal failure), a significant fraction of the transfer, or all of it, should be in the form of loans due in full within, say, five years of the onset of the claimed disaster.

“Democrats vs. the DSA”

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That’s James Freeman’s headline on his Tuesday Best of the Web column in the WSJ. He’s badly mischaracterizing the matter, and he repeated his error in his lede.

Yes, it’s depressing how few elected Democrats are willing to stand up against the vicious Marxists intent on taking over their party. But rather than curse the darkness, let’s celebrate the brave few who signed their names and their sacred honor this week to an amendment that tells the truth about history’s most murderous ideology.

Freeman chose not to name the “four brave Democrats” who offered that (draft) amendment, and neither did the House Web site that published the amendment.

That’s relatively minor, though. Freeman’s error is his claim that only a few elected Democrats are willing to stand up to the Marxists taking over the Progressive-Democratic Party.

Party, in fact, is enthusiastically embracing those Marxists and their Democratic Socialists of America party. This is not a hostile takeover; it’s an enthusiastic marriage to the point of an elopement. The “only a few” who are opposing the merger are limited to Party’s extreme right fringe of Establishment Democrats.

And that is truly depressing.

Errors, Lies, and State-sanctioned Murder

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As recently as late June 2022, then-State Progressive-Democrat Representative James Talarico (TX) sent this letter to then-President Joe Biden (D).

The errors: one is Talarico’s claim of a constitutional right to abortion. There is not, nor has there ever been, such a right. There was, via Roe v Wade, a Supreme Court ruling that women should be able to obtain abortions up to the third trimester. There is no clause in our Constitution that says so, and while Supreme Court rulings carry the weight of law until modified or rescinded by the Court, or until corrected by legislation, they are not amendments to our Constitution. (This Supreme Court ruling, further, has been rescinded by Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization.)

Another error is his claim that pro-life Americans (whom Talarico disparages as anti-choice) are taking advantage of undemocratic loopholes to press for mechanisms for preventing abortions. There’s nothing undemocratic about following the laws of our land, which include Talarico’s so-called loopholes, which are nothing more than areas within laws that allow some things to be done that otherwise would be illegal.

Another is characterizing efforts to preserve the lives of babies as somehow radical.

The lies: one is the claim that pro-life Americans are a minority. A large majority of Americans oppose abortion in most forms. A larger majority of Americans oppose murdering babies in the womb.

Another lie is one of omission. This is the claim that the pro-life movement is threatening our most basic rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What Talarico has cynically omitted from this claim is that abortion does not just threaten those most basic rights, it prevents unborn babies even from having their own most basic rights to their own lives, liberties, and pursuits of happiness.

The state-sanctioned murder is that of babies in Talarico’s Federally sanctioned and provided abortion facilities.

This is how far the Progressive-Democratic Party has fallen. This is how far the Texas Progressive-Democratic Party has sunk.

If necessary, right click on the image and select Open in New Tab to get a clearer image.

H/t: @ralflongwalker

They Know the Answer to This

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There is a growing recognition around the world of the economic dangers posed by the People’s Republic of China’s export dominance, achieved as it has been through its domestic overproduction and overseas sales at below-cost prices of that overproduction, with the losses to the PRC’s businesses made good by PRC government subsidies.

A Group of 20 statement implicitly criticizing Beijing for its overreliance on exports for growth marks a new stage in international pressure. The statement, issued Tuesday at the G-20 meeting of finance ministers and central-bank chiefs in Asheville, NC, was a striking example of agreement in an otherwise-fractious affair that featured disputes over Russia and President Trump’s policy toward Canada.
Countries across Europe and Asia worry domestic industries in areas such as autos, electronics, and heavy machinery won’t survive China’s push to export its way out of domestic economic troubles.

The US Treasury issued a statement summarizing the matter, although Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent shied away from mentioning the PRC by name.

It said “countries with excessive and persistent external surpluses” should end policies that “result in an overreliance on exports for growth” and cause harmful spillovers around the globe.
Those countries should “eliminate nonmarket policies” and “remove distortions that constrain domestic consumption….”

Of course all of the G-20 players know full well that the PRC won’t do anything of the sort. Those exports are too important an economic weapon for the PRC to lay them down.

Last year, China responded to American tariffs by restricting the export of rare earths to every country, pummeling global manufacturers. Beijing also cut off certain mineral exports to Japan after a spat over Taiwan.

These world “leaders” know this weaponization. They just need to stop importing from the PRC, whether by serious tariffs, or complete refusal to buy PRC products. The doing would correct the economic damage, and from that, greatly reduce the political risk to their national sovereignty (a risk those “leaders” still don’t seem to see). The doing in the longer run also would more than pay for the disruption of shifting their supply chains. They just lack the courage to do it, satisfying themselves, instead, with yapping about it from the safety of their porches, and so they’re failing their people.