Obama Radio/YouTube
Here’s the latest missive from our allegedly “center-right” president-elect:
I have already directed my economic team to come up with an Economic Recovery Plan that will mean 2.5 million more jobs by January of 2011 – a plan big enough to meet the challenges we face that I intend to sign soon after taking office. We’ll be working out the details in the weeks ahead, but it will be a two-year, nationwide effort to jumpstart job creation in America and lay the foundation for a strong and growing economy. We’ll put people back to work rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, modernizing schools that are failing our children, and building wind farms and solar panels; fuel-efficient cars and the alternative energy technologies that can free us from our dependence on foreign oil and keep our economy competitive in the years ahead.
Of course it would be nice to hear a dollar figure. I’ve heard economists with experience in the government say that “2.5 million more jobs by January of 2011″ probably means $300 billion each in 2009 and 2010.
56 Responses to “Obama Radio/YouTube”
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November 22nd, 2008 at 12:19 pm
where are the civil liberties in that plan?
November 22nd, 2008 at 12:38 pm
I think that defying easy labels set forth by the Punditburo such as “center-right” or other such grand generalizations is going to be one of the hallmarks of Obama’s administration.
November 22nd, 2008 at 12:41 pm
The man is already governing. The notion of one president at a time is great, if the incumbent actually does his job. W. will spend the next two months as the proverbial deer in the headlights, and Wall Street will take its cues from the PE.
By the way, anybody catch Bush’s radio address this week? I didn’t think so.
November 22nd, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Yeah, our center-right president is presenting a glorious Two Year Plan. If this works you can stick a fork in supply-side. They go back into the hole they were in before the 70’s, crazy people who have to go hang out with the goldbugs and such.
November 22nd, 2008 at 12:46 pm
what’s good for the Wall St. Fat Cat’s is good for the Middle Class?
This is the kind of news the financial markets need to keep from collapsing. With the promise of jobs, comes the promise of customers with both earned income and credit. It’s the promise of new industries, innovation, creativity.
It’s hope.
Looks like the shrub’s being uprooted, even if there’s only one president at a time.
November 22nd, 2008 at 1:01 pm
That’s 2.5 million more registered Democratic voters (and their families) for November 2010.
November 22nd, 2008 at 1:07 pm
“…building wind farms and solar panels; fuel-efficient cars and the alternative energy technologies that can free us from our dependence on foreign oil and keep our economy competitive in the years ahead.”
I’m OK with rebuilding infrastructure and schools, but not the above. Suppose we spend a lot of money on fuel efficient cars only to find out a few years down the road that somebody has developed an ultracapacitor that finally makes electric cars feasible. Won’t that make us look foolish? I would prefer a stiff carbon tax, and then let millions of people figure out what the best solutions are. Gov’t shouldn’t pick winners & losers. If they do, they might wind up wasting $$$ and looking stupid.
November 22nd, 2008 at 1:30 pm
$300 bil/year? To create 2.5 million jobs?
So. In order to create 2.5 million jobs, one needs to spend half as much as the original bailout plan per year? For two years, still less than the bailout plan?
For some inconceivable reason, my gut reaction is intense anger. Nobody brought this up before? Why are we going to have to wait until January for this? Why are we talking about bailing out the car industry if we can create so many jobs?
Is it seriously so easy to create 2.5 million jobs? Either this is political grandstanding, or the inability of our government to use the tools at their disposal is deeply infuriating.
November 22nd, 2008 at 1:36 pm
I don’t think the contention is that Obama is center-right. It’s that Obama needs to realize that we are a center-right nation, and thus shouldn’t get any ideas into his head about actually carrying out Democratic policies, because they’re bound to be unpopular with our center-right populace.
November 22nd, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Ahh, government created jobs. It worked so well in the 1930’s, it’s time to try again.
November 22nd, 2008 at 2:19 pm
It’s dismaying to see the PE speak of our dependency on “foreign oil” instead of our dependency on OIL. There is no way to separate the two.
November 22nd, 2008 at 2:52 pm
$600 billion is approaching the numbers Krugman said were needed a few weeks ago, but the situation has probably gotten worse by now. It’s also interesting to note that the the FDR and the WPA created about 8 million jobs over 8 years, and Obama is looking at 2.5 million jobs over about 2.5 years. Is this some sort of ceiling for government job creation, or is he just reading the Roosevelt playbook step by step?
November 22nd, 2008 at 3:16 pm
James at 10
James I’m assuming your comment is sardonic and that you are also buying into the ever popular meme that somehow the new deal had zero effect and it was really all WWII?
If so can you please provide an argument for that point, I’ve heard talking heads utter that point ad infinitum over the last 2 weeks, but none (seriously not one) have offered anything even resembling an argument behind it.
Please make sure any argument you make against the WPA takes into account the mutual benefit we derived from better roads and bridges.
Also please explain to me how the government paying a living wage (and training) to mass amounts of people who would otherwise be unemployed (and likely collecting the money anyway in some form [welfare, unemployment, wic, foodstamps, et al]) until the economy and industry expands to natural levels vis-a-vis the populace is a BAD THING.
If you agree that “something needs to be done” which most of us do, and that 7, 8 or 9% unemployment is unacceptable conservative or liberal than why is it not better that the government subsidize it’s own people in the form of jobs (and pride and confidence) than in the form of the other subsidies I mentioned above?
Obama is a smart dude, and he knows that eventually industry will have to come back online, but can we really suffer through X years of incredible pain while we wait for somebody to develop a new widget or for existing industry to get back on its feet (less likely), or worse depend on WWIII?
I don’t paint people with broadbrushes and I won’t start now. I will say that you seem to harbor the same conservative sentiments that I’ve heard over the last few weeks and I can’t help but think you derive some nominal benefit from the working/middle class being subsidized with welfare (shame and depression) rather than jobs (pride and confidence and hope for the future) …just a thought.
k1
November 22nd, 2008 at 4:29 pm
As someone who’s writing a dissertation on the history of direct job creation policy from 1933-1979, you don’t need $300 billion a year to create 2.5 million jobs…if you do it through direct job creation (also known as public employment, work relief, or public works). At say, $24k a year, 2.5 million jobs = $60 billion a year. Even assuming 30% overhead (historically, WPA overhead was 20%), you’re looking at $78 billion yearly all told.
For $300 billion a year, you could actually create nearly 10 million jobs. Which would cut unemployment from a hypothetical high of 8.5% down to 3.5%.
Guy:
The reason we haven’t done this so far is because we stopped doing it after WWII for these reasons: Dixiecrats hated the WPA because it gave non-cotton-picking jobs to black people at equal wages; business conservatives hated the WPA because they didn’t want to compete in the labor market any more than necessary; anti-communist conservatives hated the WPA because they thought that government intervention into the economy was communist; and Republicans generally hated it because WPA jobs created Democratic voters. However, the story wouldn’t be complete without understanding the role of liberals – at the time, liberals divided between social Keynesians, who thought that Keynesian stimulus had to take the effect of government infrastructure investment and new forms of social spending, and fiscal Keynesians, who thought that all you had to do was use interest rates and aggregate government spending to do the job.
As a result, from 1946 (when the social Keynesian Full Employment Bill failed in Congress) to 1960, conservatives were able to block public employment. When liberals retook power in 1960/1964, they didn’t think it was needed – hence the Great Society deliberately chose education and job training over job creation (read Judith Russell’s Economics, Bureaucracy, and Race). When we finally got around to the Humphrey-Hawkins Act and CETA, the movement behind it was dead, and we didn’t know how to do it right anymore. Then Reagan…and ever since, it’s been beyond the bounds of possibility.
2008 was the first presidential election where direct job creation was proposed in a loooong time.
James:
The New Deal dropped unemployment from 25% to 9% in five years. I think the record speaks for itself.
November 22nd, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Will Obama be suspending all the environmental regulations that keep these kind of infrastructure projects bottled up in hearings for a decade in California? Or will all his money go to Texas, where they just let things rip?
November 22nd, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Also, will employment on these public works projects be restricted to American citizens or will we just suck in millions of construction workers from south of the border, as the Housing Bubble did?
November 22nd, 2008 at 4:46 pm
If it will be so easy to create 2.5 million jobs, why not 5 million? Why not 10 million? Direct job creation is based in fantasy, but giving people jobs feels good. What must precede job creation is need for jobs.
The idea that jobs can be materialized without demand stems from the fundamental misunderstanding of Says Law of Markets – that supply creates it’s own demand. This phrase cannot be taken out of context – you cannot simply create 8 tracks today and assume because someone produced it, someone will buy it. What Say’s Law really means is that nothing can be demanded without the appropriate supply.
Putting this in the context of job creation – we could certainly create millions of new, and possibly unnecessary or misappropriated jobs. In Poland, they had a similar plan. There were leaf rakers in the public parks who took one shift a day. Then a second shift came in to mess the leaves up again. Third shift? You guessed it, put them back in piles.
Building sub-par roads, make-work programs that benefit politicians for their next campaign, and putting human capital to otherwise unproductive use (meaning, there would already be demand for it if needed) is a waste of our money, and our lives.
November 22nd, 2008 at 5:03 pm
I’ve heard economists with experience in the government say that “2.5 million more jobs by January of 2011″ probably means $300 billion each in 2009 and 2010
If you double that figure and include things like expanded unemployment benefits and health care expansion then we’re talking about a real stimulus package that will whip this country back into shape. Can we start now instead of two months from now?
November 22nd, 2008 at 6:20 pm
In Poland, they had a similar plan. There were leaf rakers in the public parks who took one shift a day. Then a second shift came in to mess the leaves up again. Third shift? You guessed it, put them back in piles.
That’s a really shopworn tale that goes around telephone style. Poland is a new one. The origin is the original WPA and it’s a metastasizing of the original complaint that WPA park crews took too long raking leaves. Then it turned into your version, I’ve always heard it in a domestic form before.
I’ll be interested to see what comes out. We have put off bridges, roads, etc.. so long that it’s not makework, it was just always a budgetary item that got passed along.
November 22nd, 2008 at 6:36 pm
Let’s be frank. This isn’t December 8, 1941 anymore. American progressives have spent decades making it hard to start projects up in the kind of timeframe Obama is claiming is necessary.
Most of the stuff that could be done quickly — most notably, resurfacing freeway lanes — will drive Matt crazy because it just makes driving more attractive.
November 22nd, 2008 at 7:02 pm
Go back to trying to figure out how Mexican’s are going to screw up Obama’s economic plan, Steve. You know that’s where your heart is at anyway. If you are stuck on that, I’m positive that whatever he does is going to find his way into some black hands. I’m sure there is something there for you.
November 22nd, 2008 at 7:14 pm
a plan big enough to meet the challenges we face today..
If Bush can blow $600 billion on a pointless war in Iraq, why can’t the stimulus to save our economy be at least that big?
November 22nd, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Milen:a
Say’s Law? Really? That’s what you’re going to go with? Criminy, why not go with the iron law of wages and the importance of keeing gold bullion in the royal treasury while you’re at it? Say’s Law is a fantasy, and Keynes proved it.
Second, not all needs are effectively addressed by the price system – especially in the realm of public goods, like infrastructure, social services, and quality of life. How does the public turn that demand into something that the market recognizes? You can’t order a bridge at Wal-Mart, after all. You need public action. James Kenneth Galbraith’s work on this is especially instructive.
Your leaf-raking example is a right-wing myth first invented to mock CWA workers in New York City who were working on the rehabilitation of a Central Park that had been used for years as a giant Hooverville. As a matter of fact, they did sterling work fixing the park, and gave us the modern Central Park Zoo to boot.
As for sub-par roads, let me ask: how sub-par is the Golden Gate Bridge? The Lincoln Tunnel? The Triborough Bridge? New York’s parkway system? How bout the National Highway System put into place by President Eisenhower, an example of Republicans supporting public works?
November 22nd, 2008 at 9:12 pm
So, are you in favor of suspending the Endangered Species Act and all the rest of the environmental impediments to construction projects for the first term of the Obama Administration? Or are you not serious?
November 22nd, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Milena at 18 your strawman is VERY IMPRESSIVE, very impressive! Seriously!
1. Where have you seen this characterized as “easy” by anyone including many conservatives who are coming around to this PoV as the economy worsens and reality sinks in? Where, please provide a link to anyone even remotely connected to Obama who has said this is easy….
2. Direct Job Creation? Leaf raking? Seriously? After our bridge collapse last year, MnDot undertook an in-depth analysis into all MN bridges. What did they find? That close to half were in dire need of repair and upgrades and they even shut down one for an extended period, while the governor and state legislatrue allocated funds (politically motivated for sure, but the right thing to do) to get it fixed. What’s my point? Your strawman intimatess that the demand is ersatz…it’s not. It’s just not as palpable or expressed as demand for hamburgers. Like someone cleverly pointed out above we can’t purchase bridges at Wal-Mart.
So if your counter-argument hinges on this somehow being trumped up demand, it’s absurd on its face. I’ve seen it debunked or at least addressed a couple of times, but I wish opponents of this plan would stop using that “leaf raking” example that is laughable when presented as evidence…seriously!
Also as a country we are in trouble, a few of my conservative buddies in finance have finally woke up and realized this and guess what? Their free market, no/low govt intervention markers have gone right out the window…at 26 and 28 respectively I suppose it has something to do with their new found non strat consulting/i-banking lot in life, but I digress.
If your arguing the application of the stimulus at this point, I’m with you that’s a healthy debate. If you’re arguing the need for it or even the proposed gargantuan size then you’re only showing your ignorance as an idealogue. The worse things get the less contra-pontification you will hear from the conservative business and political community…but only after the pain becomes real for them…I editorialize now, but as a country it is really a shame that we have been divided so starkly that you only advocate for something when it’s in your best interest…others pain or lot be damned (I guess this is the problem with academic wonky types reading Keynes, Say, Smith, Mill, Galbraith, et al too literally, and debating it with ZERO understanding of random variation (capex should theoretically chase demand but it won’t all the time, especially in this environ) or even compassion (every person that is unemployed isn’t lazy and sometimes people, even our next door neighbors believe it or not NEED HELP, however extended, which…surprise…necessitates higher taxes)
Oh yeah, if no stimulus then what’s your solution? It’s obvious that sitting on our collective hands is unacceptable, at least to me. So what’s your proposal? Let me guess, lower taxes on everyone (especially the guy with $30M in cash assets and a safe, at least for now, 750k annual income) so that his largesse and his newly developed appetite for 10 new lear jets, 55 new homes, 250 new servants, 26 MCD franshises, and 542 US produced cars (and a personal bridge) can be satisfied, benefitting everyone in the process. Keeping in mind that his appetite, even at marginally higher tax rates, did not produce a correlative consumption rate, that would indicate that this trickle down theory is even mildly probable.
k1
November 22nd, 2008 at 10:11 pm
Steve, that’s a ridiculous strawman. There is plenty of infrastructure work that can be done to make things better from an environmental perspective, rather than worse. Last I heard, there are no endangered species living in any downtown area in any city in the US.
November 23rd, 2008 at 2:21 am
Omni:
One good example for you of an environmentally-friendly infrastructure work: California’s High Speed Rail system, passed via Prop 1A just this year. There you go. Now why not build another one from Boston to Atlanta? Or Baltimore to Chicago?
November 23rd, 2008 at 3:49 am
Anybody want to make a bet on whether Barack Obama will still be President when major construction begins on the California Super Train?
November 23rd, 2008 at 8:07 am
And yet, no one could explain why we don’t just make 5 million jobs, if it is such a great idea. The quality of and the demand for the jobs matter, that is my point.
@ Steven
1. Is Say’s Law a fantasy? Did Keynes prove that? Don’t think so. Call it what you’d like, but there is no fantasy about the concept that in order for something to be demanded, supply must be available.
2. The leaf-raking was an extreme example, but none-the-less true, I’m not sure about your central park example. I’m not proposing Obama will enact such jobs, but everyone here is so serious, for god’s sake, lighten up!
Going with more realistic examples – I’ll run with my “sub-par roads” contention. Is the golden gate bridge sub-par, no, obviously not. But you are bringing up your own straw man – I didn’t say every possible expenditure of public funds was useless and wasted. In Detroit, where I live, there has not been a single year, of my entire life, where some major portion of our infrastructure, highways, local roads have not been in some state of disastrous disrepair. This is not an exaggeration. The state gives money to the lowest bidder, ensuring low costs, and poor quality, and best of all: job creation. The worse the roads, the more frequency they need reparing, hence, the more workers they’ll employ to repair them.
@Kforce – calm down.
Why is it people on the internet are totally incapable of calm, rational, discourse? I’m surprised you decided to lecture me about compassion when you spent some lengthy paragraphs deriding me.
Okay, if Obama finds a collapsed bridge and gets government workers to repair it, you’ve got me! We needed that bridge. But that is not what I’m talking about. Obama has plans to mandate unnecessary production on a far greater scale than basic public works that are already being provided. He plans to dramatically increase the scope of government intervention, not just in a short term crisis (like everyone’s buddy Keynes prescribed) but long term, and wholesale – which I oppose.
For example, his plans to create green jobs are going to do nothing more than create a government-sponsored and subsidized oligopoly that will benefit companies like GE who’ve been lobbying hard to get their product specs into legislation, edging out competition – similar to the ethanol debacle. His policies will actually do more damage to innovation and the things he is aiming to improve.
Furthermore, you can ridicule me for thinking cutting taxes would be an appropriate solution, but again, I can only point to my state of Michigan, where the single business tax was hiked to an effective 33% in 2008. You can pretend that doesn’t mattter, but we’re talking basic concepts: high taxes will absolutely discourage investment of those who “hoard” the capital. They will hoard when their productive endeavors are increasingly punished. Additionally, our state’s idea of “job creation” has been a 42% subsidy to film-makers. The film industry is not exactly the most profitable or stable, and we have a paltry net gain for our “investment.” And I don’t even get free movie tickets! It’s been rumored Obama has proposed putting my governor on his staff – if he likes her ideas, I cannot imagine what kinds of things he will be proposing nationally.
November 23rd, 2008 at 8:35 am
In todays NYTimes written by Jackie Calms and Jeff Zeleny:
Gee, growing criticism? Really? From who? I’d love to know. Because this growing criticism is coming from members of his own party, or perhaps from powerful Republican lawmakers, this would be notable. If, on the other hand, this growing criticism is coming from the wingnut rightwing hateosphere, well then, the growing criticism is not so notable at all.
Mark this one down in the annals of faux objective reporting, or something.
November 23rd, 2008 at 8:37 am
I just have to laugh. After the comments in this post, I decided to head to Obama’s site to learn more about his job creation plans. I’m guessing the rest of the state will start to look more like Michigan! From his site:
“Invest in our Next Generation Innovators and Job Creators: Obama and Biden will create an Advanced Manufacturing Fund to identify and invest in the most compelling advanced manufacturing strategies. The Fund will have a peer-review selection and award process based on the Michigan 21st Century Jobs Fund, a state-level initiative that has awarded over $125 million to Michigan businesses with the most innovative proposals to create new products and new jobs in the state.”
Classic.
November 23rd, 2008 at 8:39 am
Whoops, above, should have read: “rest of the country will start to look like Michigan”
November 23rd, 2008 at 9:25 am
If someone other than a liberal Democrats proposed borrwoing 100’s of billions form the Chinese to hire illegal Hispanic immigrants to build things so that they can either send the money back to Mexico or purchase consumer goodes made in China, then progressives would feel comfortable attacking the idea as idiotic.
I guess that since the Democrats are back in charge, the progressive will stop asking hard question or demanding answers.
President-elect Obama’s plan it nothing more than full employment act for government grant writers, social organizers, and lawyers.
New Deal spending in a country with open borders and little to any consumer good manufacturing is insanity.
November 23rd, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Milena I apparently came off as excited and condescending, I’M SORRY FOR THAT, seriously, this was not my intent.
However, I did address your point, one since he hasn’t said creating jobs will be “easy” as you continue to intone, you can’t just continue to strawman. Your argument essentially says Obama’s position is that baking 10 cookies for hungry children is EASY and then you argue why not just bake 500 and end world hunger. See that strawman? You continue to make your point based on ease of creation, which is nowhere in Obama’s plan. Obama says lets muster our resources to pull together dough, chips, a bowl, a mixer and oven and see if we can make some cookies to lessen the impact of the coming hunger wave. (In fairness to you they may spin it differently but we both know the intent of any govt stimulus is to subsidize the populace with jobs until a private industry can come online).
I would also surmise that O’ knows that since these are subsidies (whether it meets your criteria for demand [bridges] or not [faux green]) that a cost is attached to each gig. So just arbitrarily picking a large number (5M or 10M) w/o factoring in the associated costs would seem irresponsible and just plain stupid, which is not a mark of this guy…so far. So this probably has something to do with why the number is 2.5 instead of 5 or 10. Satisfied???
I editorialize now: During times of extended chronic unemployment GOOD people survive by:
1. Savings: These are usually exhausted pretty quickly even for those who have nest egged 6 months worth of expenses for themselves and/or their families.
2. Family: Unfortunately everyone doesn’t have this luxury especially during chronic unemployment, when family may be in the same boat.
3. Govt/Private Subsidy: Traditionally these are things like WIC, welfare, unemployment, food stamps and private soup kitchens and shelters (these are thrown in because of their efforts but hardly make a dent and run dry fairly quickly during chronic extended unemployment)
4. Illegal Activity: Robbing people, prostitution, drug dealing, et al. Unfortunately this should never be an option but it is.
I have no problem with the academic debates that go on here, it’s pretty clear that most of the posters and Igloo himself are pretty well read and VERY WELL INFORMED. But Keynes or Say or Smith or Mill or Bastiat or Hazlitt have never seen the confluence of factors that led us to this crisis, so simply quoting Say, applying Bastiat or demonstrating some complex and detailed understanding of economics doesn’t make you right and doesn’t mean it applies. I love all of those guys and no doubt they give us a baseline, but it would be foolish to think that they’re theorems and laws can’t be disproven by this crisis, especially given the enormity and exposure to random variation (greater participants, greater %)
k1
November 23rd, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Oh yeah, I meant to say that number 3 is the most powerful and sustainable of the 4 options and if you’re going to allocate say 25k for an individual it makes sense to give it to him in the form of a job instead of the form of a welfare check, but that’s just my opinion!
k1
November 23rd, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Milena.
1. Actually, Say’s Law argues that supply creates its own demand, therefore there cannot be deficient demand, and involuntary unemployment doesn’t exist. That’s what Keynes disproved. What you’re arguing is slightly different is that without a supply, there can be no demand. To me, this runs in the face of the demonstrated concept of market failures – there can be things that people want which the market isn’t providing.
A good example of that would be the demand in the rural South for electricity in the 1930s. The private sector didn’t believe demand existed because no one in the South was buying electricity, and because they had no appliances or lights to run off electricity (laying aside the problem of why anyone would buy appliances without power to operate them, or how you buy electricity when no one’s willing to sell it to you). FDR went down to the South with the TVA and the REA and lo and behold they found out that rural folk really really wanted to buy a lot of electricity so they could get some appliances and not have to do everything by hand.
I’m arguing that infrastructure is a good example of that: people may want good roads, more parks, bigger and better schools, and so forth. But that potential demand can’t be expressed in the market in the same way that the desire for shoes or burgers is – by buying more of it. The only way those demands can be expressed is in the marketplace of democracy, and it’s there that you find the demand for the kinds of things that we’re proposing to build to put people to work. Green energy is one of them – there may very well be huge amounts of untapped demand for green energy, but because there isn’t the product out there (lack of a grid, not enough powering stations for electric cars to be viable, etc), the demand isn’t being met as much as it could be. By building the necessary infrastructure, like how building the highway system really opened up markets, you allow the demand to flow and the market will jump on the opportunity.
2. Exactly my point: private contractors provide poor results, because of the nature of the contracting process. Indeed, the job creation effects are actually lower for public works than for public employment, as demonstrated by the comparison of the PWA (Public Works Administration) which operated through traditional private contracting and the WPA (Works Progress Administration) which operated through “force account” (direct hiring of people by the government to build stuff). The PWA produced less job creation per dollar than the WPA because private contractors use fewer workers and more machines (more efficient), and because their workers are already employed. Direct hiring on the other hand produces much more jobs per dollar.
Indeed, Keynes spoke to this in his famous metaphor of hiring people to dig holes – that it was still more efficient than letting their labor power go wasted and their potential purchasing power likewise. For the longer term picture of productivity and economic growth, you obviously want the end result to be worthwhile, but the key here is to get the unemployment rate down and people spending money again.
November 24th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
@kforce – thanks for the clarifications. I’m guessing we can be friends after all. : )
@Steven – I’m well aware of what Say’s Law originally states, but it is one of the most widely misunderstood concepts in economic theory, which is why my restatement “demand cannot exist without adequate supply” is more appropriate. That’s all I was getting at.
@whoever – re: my strawman about Obama just creating 5 million jobs. It’s mostly rhetorical. I’m trying to demonstrate that the argument for creating anywhere from 1 to 500 million government jobs must be the same and hold the same logic. Logic cannot change randomly based on the number of jobs created, which is why I ask, “why not 5 million.” He would have the capacity to do so (mixing bowl, cookie ingredients, etc.) To be extreme – he could just nationalize everything and dole out tasks. My main point is consistency in economic policy is paramount, otherwise people cannot plan their lives. If he begins at 2.5 million, where is he going to stop, and why is it logical?
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