Subj : A Reagan Economist admits... the truth. To : ALL From : BOB KLAHN Date : Thu Apr 17 2014 02:49:54 An economist tells it like it is 4/15/2014 *BY KEITH C. BURRIS COLUMNIST FOR THE BLADE* http://tinyurl.com/q843u4h I had a chance to chat with Kate Warne, an economist with broad experience - including working for the Council of Economic Advisers under President Ronald Reagan and being part of the team that deregulated the airline industry. ---------------------------------------------------------------- So, she has already confessed her time spent serving the forces of evil. ---------------------------------------------------------------- ... de-regulation also has resulted in all the things that drive people crazy about airline travel today: long lines, planes packed like sardine cans, and flying to Sheboygan, Wis., to get to Chicago. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Yes, you got cheaper air fairs, and less reason to want to fly, and she admits it's her fault, well the team she was on. ---------------------------------------------------------------- The good news, she says, is that the economy is looking much better - not that it is booming, by any means, but a tentative calm, and even confidence, has begun to descend. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Now, ain't that something. One of Saint Ronnie's people admits things are going much better than is widely admitted, though she works hard to avoid admitting Obama did good. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Second, Washington, while not exactly inspiring in its rationality and spirit of cooperation, is at least not spectacularly and theatrically dysfunctional. We are no longer talking about fiscal cliffs and default. There are even rumors of bipartisanship. ---------------------------------------------------------------- What she is saying, without actually using the words is, the extreme right wing focus on bringing down Obama by crashing the economy has been a disaster, and the republican party is the heart of it. Which leads to the inevitable conclusion, working with Obama instead of against him would have been much better for this country. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Further, Obamacare seems to be here to stay. ---------------------------------------------------------------- A servant of Saint Ronnie admits that? Wow, it's about time someone on the right did. ---------------------------------------------------------------- ... But why has job growth been so slow to rebound? ... The recession was not just a recession, but coincident with a banking crisis, which triggered a worldwide financial crisis. ... ---------------------------------------------------------------- Funny, this is what Paul Krugman has been saying for years. This is what many economists have been saying, but the right won't admit it's not all Obama's fault, and Obama is struggling to contain a meltdown that threatened the entire economy with collapse. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Here are two amazing under-reported facts: We have regained all the jobs lost in the recession. We are still looking for new ones, but we got the old ones back. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Krugman, and other economists, and those of us who actually read competent economic reports, have been saying this also. Though she still doesn't admit free trade is the big culprit here. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Under pressure of recession and job loss, American workers have reached their highest level of productivity in a generation. ---------------------------------------------------------------- I reported, very long ago, that a look at the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development reports on international competitiveness ranked developed countries on levels of efficiency, measured in productivity. The scale was 1 to 100, with 100 set at the US level of productivity. The US was clearly the top. Back then Japan was known as the world leader in productivity, but when you looked at the real numbers Japan was ranked as 73% of US productivity. Japan's fame was focused mostly on the automotive sector, the only sector where Japan was more productive than the US. ---------------------------------------------------------------- ... The big thing we know about new jobs, future jobs, is that they will be technical jobs. ---------------------------------------------------------------- On this I'm not sure if this is the columnist's thought, or if he is quoting the economist. Either way, it's misleading. Truly new jobs will be relatively few, what we will have is old jobs applied to new products. Real leaps forward in industrial technology are actually few, and fairly slow. Computer control of machines really is just a slow process of upgrades, more efficient and less expensive ways of doing the same thing. This has been going on for half a century or more. Hell, I had a piece of it for nearly 40 years. In that time frame I worked with equipment that was even then badly obsolete, but only in ease and speed of operation, the actual controls did much the same thing, but slower. Speeding it up makes it more efficient, but not really that much different in working principle. ---------------------------------------------------------------- If we hope to fill them with U.S. citizens - our children - we need to produce more college graduates, ones who know how to do and make things. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Actually, no. First because we don't need to HOPE to fill them with US Citizens, we need to do it. It ain't that hard, but it will require the will to do it here instead of outsourcing. ---------------------------------------------------------------- /Keith C. Burris is a columnist for The Blade./ BOB KLAHN bob.klahn@sev.org http://home.toltbbs.com/bobklahn .... Every city consists of two, one for the poor, the other for the rich. Plato --- Via Silver Xpress V4.5/P [Reg] * Origin: Fidonet Since 1991 Join Us: www.DocsPlace.org (1:123/140) .