[Vision2020] Snow Job On Jobs

[Art Deco]

On Fri, Oct 19, 2012 at 12:21 PM, Art Deco <art.deco.studios at gmail.com>wrote:

>  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>
>
>
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> ------------------------------
> October 18, 2012
> Snow Job on Jobs By PAUL KRUGMAN<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/paulkrugman/index.html>
>
> Mitt Romney talks a lot about jobs. But does he have a plan to create any?
>
> You can defend President Obama’s jobs record — recovery from a severe
> financial crisis is always difficult, and especially so when the opposition
> party does its best to block every policy initiative you propose. And
> things have definitely improved over the past year. Still, unemployment
> remains high after all these years, and a candidate with a real plan to
> make things better could make a strong case for his election.
>
> But Mr. Romney, it turns out, doesn’t have a plan; he’s just faking it. In
> saying that, I don’t mean that I disagree with his economic philosophy; I
> do, but that’s a separate point. I mean, instead, that Mr. Romney’s
> campaign is telling lies: claiming that its numbers add up when they don’t,
> claiming that independent studies support its position when those studies
> do no such thing.
>
> Before I get there, however, let me take a minute to talk about Mr.
> Romney’s claim that he knows how to fix the economy because he’s been a
> successful businessman. That would be a dubious claim even if he were
> honestly representing his business career, because the skills needed to run
> a business and those needed to manage economic policy are very different.
> In any case, however, his portrait of his own experience is so misleading
> that it takes your breath away.
>
> For Mr. Romney, who started as a business consultant and then moved into
> the heady world of private equity, insists on portraying himself as a
> plucky small businessman.
>
> I am not making this up. In Tuesday’s debate, he declared, “I came through
> small business. I understand how hard it is to start a small business.” In
> his speech at the Republican convention, he declared, “When I was 37, I
> helped start a small company.”
>
> Ahem. It’s true that when Bain Capital started, it had only a handful of
> employees. But it had $37 million in funds, raised from sources that
> included wealthy Europeans investing through Panamanian shell companies and
> Central American oligarchs living in Miami while death squads associated
> with their families ravaged their home nations. Hey, doesn’t every plucky
> little start-up have access to that kind of financing?
>
> But back to the Romney jobs plan. As many people have noted, the plan has
> five points but contains no specifics. Loosely speaking, however, it calls
> for a return to Bushonomics: tax cuts for the wealthy plus weaker
> environmental protection. And Mr. Romney says that the plan would create 12
> million jobs over the next four years.
>
> Where does that number come from? When pressed, the campaign cited three
> studies that it claimed supported its assertions. In fact, however, those
> studies did no such thing.
>
> Just for the record, one study concluded that America might gain two
> million jobs if China stopped infringing on U.S. patents and other
> intellectual property; this would be nice, but Mr. Romney hasn’t proposed
> anything that would bring about that outcome. Another study suggested that
> growth in the energy sector might add three million jobs in the next few
> years — but these were predicted gains under current policy, that is, they
> would happen no matter who wins the election, not as a consequence of the
> Romney plan.
>
> Finally, a third study examined the effects of the Romney tax plan and
> argued (implausibly, but that’s another issue) that it would lead to a
> large increase in the number of Americans who want to work. But how does
> that help cure a situation in which there are already millions more
> Americans seeking work than there are jobs available? It’s irrelevant to
> Mr. Romney’s claims.
>
> So when the campaign says that these three studies support its claims
> about jobs, it is, to use the technical term, lying — just as it is when it
> says that six independent studies support its claims about taxes (they
> don’t).
>
> What do Mr. Romney’s economic advisers actually believe? As best as I can
> tell, they’re placing their faith in the confidence fairy, in the belief
> that their candidate’s victory would inspire an employment boom without the
> need for any real change in policy. In fact, in his infamous Boca Raton “47
> percent” remarks, Mr. Romney himself asserted that he would give a big
> boost to the economy simply by being elected, “without actually doing
> anything.” And what about the overwhelming evidence that our weak economy
> isn’t about confidence, it’s about the hangover from a terrible financial
> crisis? Never mind.
>
> To summarize, then, the true Romney plan is to create an economic boom
> through the sheer power of Mr. Romney’s personal awesomeness. But the
> campaign doesn’t dare say that, for fear that voters would (rightly)
> consider it ridiculous. So what we’re getting instead is an attempt to
> brazen it out with nakedly false claims. There’s no jobs plan; just a plan
> for a snow job on the American people.
>
>
> --
> Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
> art.deco.studios at gmail.com
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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