Does Obama Get It? (Bob Herbert column on unemployment)

[XemaSab]

The big question on the domestic front right now is whether President Obama understands the gravity of the employment crisis facing the country. Does he get it? The signals coming out of the White House have not been encouraging.

The Beltway crowd and the Einsteins of high finance who never saw this economic collapse coming are now telling us with their usual breezy arrogance that the Great Recession is probably over. Their focus, of course, is on data, abstractions like the gross domestic product, not the continued suffering of living, breathing human beings struggling with the nightmare of joblessness.

Even Mr. Obama, in an interview with The Times, gave short shrift to the idea of an additional economic stimulus package, telling John Harwood a few weeks ago that the economy had likely turned a corner. “As you know,” the president said, “jobs tend to be a lagging indicator; they come last.”

The view of most American families is somewhat less blasé. Faced with the relentless monthly costs of housing, transportation, food, clothing, education and so forth, they have precious little time to wait for this lagging indicator to come creeping across the finish line.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/opinion/06herbert.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

[Skittles]

1. no, he does not

[katandmoon]

2. No. He's a typical cushioned politician.

[MadMaddie]

3. So what is he supposed to do? Force employers to hire

workers in a this economy.

What majical answer is there? Jobs are always the last thing to come back.

[tonysam]

5. Job creation by the fed government, that's what

Obama and Democrats could do it, but they of course were more concerned about bailing out Wall Street or fiddling around with health care reform that would never pass than helping main street.

[MadMaddie]

8. You are right but he has to get the health care passes first.

If he were to take this on and start massive government hiring he would be fighting two huge fights and it would possibly lead to the defeat of both.

I agree that they should have let most of the banks fail they made bad business decisions and they should have paid the price. As of yet Geitner has allowed them continue business as usual.

[Loge23]

9. That's what we expected from the stimulus.

The stimulus argument was one of the first signs of capitulation from the WH.
The stimulus. we were sold, was supposed to provide thousands of jobs for infrastructure repair, high-speed rail projects, and green industry. So far, none of these things have materialized. Worse, the WH let the lunatics from the right scream these vital projects down.
Meanwhile, we have a real unemployment rate over 10% along with a deteriorating infrastructure and no emphasis on mass transit.
...and we're arguing about Afghanistan.

Well, TSA's probably hiring. Everytime I go through their "security" checks at the airport, there's at least two or three of them standing around doing absolutely nothing. Wish my business had that luxury.

[harkadog]

23. Was that FDR's attitude? Oh me, what can I do?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

4. No, he doesn't get it.

Despite talking about it for well over a year now and providing billions of dollars in recovery, he's got no idea about unemployment.

And I'm the Queen of the Sugarplum Fairies.

[Prism]

6. Proof that he doesn't understand

“As you know,” the president said, “jobs tend to be a lagging indicator; they come last.”

In a recession/depression of this nature, jobs are actually the primary indicator. Rather than the economy slowing and then shedding jobs, the jobs were shed and then the economy slowed. The "lagging indicator" meme is lazy shorthand based on previous trends (particularly the 2001 recession). However, this isn't a traditional recession - this is something else entirely. Furthermore, the "lagging indicator" meme took hold because of how unemployment is counted. Unemployment is lowered when people simply stop looking for jobs. Even when an economy recovers, more people begin looking again, so that number ticks upward temporarily even as we're recovering. If they used underemployment numbers to calculate the true state of the labor market, they would never have this lagging indicator nonsense to begin with.

That is why the economic approach of the administration is so potentially devastating. They don't understand that the traditional patterns in this situation simply have not held. They're paying too much attention to unemployment and not enough to underemployment. New thinking, new approaches, new types of stimulus are required. We're a consumer culture, and a consumer-driven economy cannot be sustained or spurred to vigorous growth if nearly one in five workers are unemployed or underemployed. Employment needs to rise before consumer and service based industries can even begin to recover.

This is simple, basic, easily understood stuff, but the President continues clinging to the old political economic soundbytes and terminology in the middle of the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression.

That is discouraging. I don't think he gets it, and I think hiring the architects of this mess as his economic advisors proves that the administration will continue not understanding it until more damage is done. They've been preoccupied with the banks when the banks are just fine and have always been guaranteed a nice outcome for themselves.

Meanwhile, the people are still completely hosed and getting soggier by the day.

[AllentownJake]

10. Small correction

Once you stop looking for a job or filing for unemployment you no longer are counted as unemployed in government statistics.

[Prism]

13. You're correct. I was inarticulate

I tried to condense the reasons why the lagging indicator meme took hold, and I think the phrasing got muddled as a result.

What I meant to say is that, in a recession, employment numbers lag because people no longer counted as unemployed begin looking for jobs again and so are suddenly counted anew in the unemployment rate. So even though there are more jobs and a recovery is under way, the official number remains stagnant or even ticks upward as formerly discouraged workers join the ranks of job-seekers.

Which is why the only useful measures of the labor market are the underemployed percentages, wages, and hours worked.

It isn't true that employment itself lags. Only the artificially rigged number the government puts out lags because of how it counts or doesn't count workers.

[AllentownJake]

15. We are a service based economy

Unemployment begets more unemployment till we hit a bottom of sorts where they key people and industries are the only ones working in an economy, improvement perks up and a recovery starts. Whether we have hit that bottom yet, is debatable.

[Prism]

20. With a heavily eroded manufacturing base . . .

. . . and economic pressures at unseen levels since its disappearance, I'm really wondering where bottom will be. Our economic "core" certainly isn't what it used to be, and so much of it now exists on easily shredded paper.

Currently, I'm very worried about the stock market. Many prominent economists are warning that this is down to inflationary pressure and artificial propping due to current monetary policy. When it comes back to reality, will that be the detonation that throws us further into darker, uncharted economic waters?

I wish I had faith the administration understood how hazardous this all is, but they repeatedly show themselves to be concerned mainly about the health of the financial sector. But, when all is said and done, the financial sector is going to be the true lagging indicator. Only when the working and middle classes collapse to the point they can no longer hold it up will we begin seeing the massive bank failures.

I feel like the administration's current policies are exactly backwards.

[TexasObserver]

21. Proof that you don't understand.

You wrote "Rather than the economy slowing and then shedding jobs, the jobs were shed and then the economy slowed."

That's absolutely false.

First, the credit markets started to tighten.

Then, the banks began to fail.

Then, the stock market began to crash.

THEN, the big decline in JOBS followed.


You can keep saying this time is different, but you have no basis for that other than rank supposition. JOBS are at their worst a year into it, as now. And they'll be better a year from now.

We didn't get here in one year and we won't get out of this hole in one year.

[Prism]

26. You need to look at the numbers

When they went back and made revisions in order to pinpoint exactly when and how the recession began, they found that the slide in employment, rather than lagging behind the broader economy, began before most analysts even realized we were in a recession. Study the numbers for October 2007 - February 2008 and read them against the economic predictions at the time. First, economists were blown away by the anemic job growth and subsequent slide into losses. They were not expecting that of employment in the slightest - they were expecting healthy gains! Usually they can tell when unemployment is going to kick in based on what the broader economy is doing. This time, they did not. They were caught off-guard by it because it didn't fit the traditional model.

Yes, there are a boatload of reasons for our current recession, but employment numbers haven't behaved in the same way they did in previous recessions. Furthermore, high unemployment numbers in a consumer, service-based economy have a greater pressuring effect the higher they go.

So, no, this isn't like previous recessions. There's a big difference between when something started going wrong and when people started actually noticing it was going wrong. There's more underlying all of this, a deeper rot, a more pervasive problem. It requires original thinking and new strategies.

[Kansas Wyatt]

7. NO! Bailing out Wall Street and telling Main Street to 'hope' is not the answer.

That just feeds the cannibalism that got us into this mess in the first place.

[inna]

11. i'm cynical enough at this point to wonder if that's The Master Plan,

and if he knows perfectly well what is taking place - massive and unprecedented transfer of wealth from the middle class to the financial elites, the Shock Doctrine style.

[flyarm]

25. DING DING DING..YOU WIN THE BIG PRIZE!!!!!! EOM

[OHdem10]

12. I hope someone whispers into Obama's ear. --he is beginning to

appear to be too much Wall Street and not enough Main Street.

[AllentownJake]

14. I don't think he grasped the depths of the crisis 6 months ago

I'm hoping he is starting to.

[ThomCat]

16. “As you know,” the president said, “jobs tend to be a lagging indicator; they come last.”

:wtf:

What a really heartless thing to say. How about just coming out and saying, "as long as the recovery is helping rich people, we don't mind if poor people are still out it cold suffering and destitute." That IS what his statement boils down to. :grr:

He is basically saying that the people who were hurt the least by the bad economy are doing okay now. The people who were hurt he worst won't be helped for quite some time yet, but that's okay with him. He's only really concerned about those people who weren't really hurt much anyway.

Until desperately poor, unemployed and under-employed people have jobs again, stable jobs with living wages, this "recovery" isn't real for the people who were hurt the most, and who need to feel the recovery the most. It would be really nice if we had a "Democratic President" who realized this and cared.

[AllentownJake]

17. He does have a tendancy to say exactly what is on his mind at times

Bitter bible and gun clingers and share the wealth and what not.

[Jakes Progress]

18. Too easy to say when you have a job.

When everyone around your and all your relatives and friends are working, it is easy to be blase about the number of people out of work.

I get irritated that they don't seem to even care about the huge number of people who are underemployed. They work only part time or at jobs way below their ability and salary needs. It can be more demoralizing and soul sapping than not having a job at all. Sure you get some money, but you soul just dies in your chest.

I want the war over. i want health care. I want the environment valued. I want the bush criminals punished. But all of it is just air if we don't get the jobs situation handled. This is the economy and the desperation that begets revolutions and riots. Politicians who don't get it.....will get it.

[XemaSab]

19. As the article says

There are more people out of work than live in the 46 smallest states. x(

[chimpymustgo]

22. K & R. Thanks for posting. Great reader comments, as well.

7.
Alec J.
Brooklyn, NY
October 6th, 2009
6:25 am
Everyone knows what we need if we really want to create jobs -- we need a huge investment in infrastructure, including a focus on green jobs that can take us into the 21st century (nevermind that we are 10 years late). We need our own interstate highway project -- maybe that's a huge investment in wind or (gasp!) nuclear; maybe it's a high speed rail network. But how do we get there when Obama wastes news cycle after news cycle on the sidelines, collecting information and testing the waters before plunging ahead with a ... speech promising more contemplation? Ugh.

We need our own decider. Obama can't afford to be the same detached, contemplative guy he was during his Senate tenure. Every time he speaks to the nation it seems like he understands that he is in charge but his actions suggest otherwise. He is perfectly content allowing Max Baucus to be the public face of the health care legislation, for instance. It's appalling! For all Bush's faults, he was the public face of the USA PATRIOT Act, the JOBS Act, No Child Left Behind, and every other major piece of legislation that came out during his 8 years.

Obama needs to use the 60 senators we gave him and shove the legislation that our nation desperately needs down the Republicans' throats. Full speed ahead! Be our decider!!
Recommended Recommended by 863 Readers

-edit-

http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/opinion/06herbert.html?sort=recommended

[XemaSab]

27. I am deeply cynical about green jobs

How many people combined work at all the energy plants in the country, and how many people work in heat and AC?

Seems to me like that's how many jobs we would add.

[flyarm]

24. Hey you in the back..is there room under the bus for one more???????

its getting damn crowded under here..I can't hear you in the back ..IS THERE ANY ROOM LEFT UNDER THIS BUS FOR ONE MORE???????????

[truedelphi]

28. I'm not sure if he gets it - but the Powers that Be who arranged everything

So that he was our choice for President knew that the steps he'd take (Geithner/Bernanke appointments) would guarantee that Wall Street would get theirs, and that in the long run, is all that is cared about.

If you are part of the 17% unemployed statistic - then you should just make up your mind to be RICH! The Power of Positive thinking and all that.

[Shireling]

30. Positive Thinking, alone, doesn't heal.

Compassion must be present, as well.

O8)

[truedelphi]

31. Yes, it is true that

A decent life style may well require both compassion and positive thought.

But how come other nations recognize that additionally, the citizenry needs Health Care?

Positive thinking, even with compassion, is not always enough to heal you when you are sick.

And people need jobs as well.

[Hawkowl]

29. Monumental fool

Obama is living in a fantasy world. He will still be wondering what happened to him after he eclipses Bush I as the last clueless one term president.