<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Oct 19, 2012 at 12:21 PM, Art Deco <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com" target="_blank">art.deco.studios@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
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<div>October 18, 2012</div>
<h1>Snow Job on Jobs</h1>
<h6>By
<span>
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/paulkrugman/index.html" rel="author" title="More Articles by PAUL KRUGMAN" target="_blank"><span>PAUL KRUGMAN</span></a></span></h6>
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<p>
Mitt Romney talks a lot about jobs. But does he have a plan to create any? </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
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.” </p>
<p>
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?
</p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
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). </p>
<p>
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. </p>
<p>
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. </p><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">
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<br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)<br><a href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com" target="_blank">art.deco.studios@gmail.com</a><br><br><img src=""><br><br>
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=======================================================<br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)<br><a href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com" target="_blank">art.deco.studios@gmail.com</a><br>
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