Thursday, June 23, 2011

It's Still the Economy, Stupid

Bill Clinton has a great article in Newsweek, 14 Ways to Put America Back to Work "Next week in Chicago, the Clinton Global Initiative will focus on America for the first time, inviting business and political leaders to make specific commitments in support of the former president’s jobs blueprint, which he details below."

They all sound like great ideas. Even the Economist likes them, Bill Clintons' Job Ideas. "Obviously it's pretty hard to legitimately disentangle what different factors lead to job creation during the tenure of any head of government, but if we're going to use the rough-and-ready approach of crediting presidents with being good on this metric if there was unusually high job growth during their tenure in office, then one William Jefferson Clinton has unimpeachable street cred. The United States' economy created 23m jobs during the Clinton presidency. Total payroll employment grew 21.1%, far outstripping population growth of 8.9%. (For comparison, under Ronald Reagan, payroll employment grew 17.7%, with 7% population growth; under George W. Bush it grew a miserable 2.3%, well behind population growth of 7.7%.)"

Obama are you listening? You have to combat the Republican tactic, GOP Mind Games, Job-Killing Edition. "It's an article of faith among congressional Republicans that, if you repeat a talking point often enough, no matter how inaccurate it is, it will eventually take root in the minds of Americans. Case in point: A new Bloomberg poll finds that 55 percent of Americans believe spending and tax cuts are the best way to lift the US labor market and lower unemployment, now at 9.1 percent, as opposed to more government spending." It goes on to point to this article in The Wall Street Journal by economist Alan Blinder, former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, The GOP Myth of 'Job-Killing' Spending which is great.

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