Bickering Over Economics
Terry H. Schwadron
Nov. 8, 2021
Last month, the jobless numbers report was lousy, and Republicans lowered their verbal howitzers on Joe Biden’s leadership or lack of it. This week, the monthly report was good, “stunning,” even, according to news outlet Axios. The resulting Republican silence is deafening.
The main driver for both reports, of course, was not Biden, but covid. Biden, like other presidents, doesn’t drive the economy; the market responds to too many complicated and simultaneous other things.
As covid recedes a bit, whether through voluntary vaccines or mandates, the conditions for stability increase and employers and workers are both more willing to resume jobs and hiring.
So, the economy added 531,000 jobs — more than selected economists had rosily predicted (once again raising the question why we need a prediction that almost always proves wrong), dropped the unemployment rate to 4.6%, lowest since the start of pandemic, and, revised those lousy numbers from August and September to add another 366,000 more jobs than had been reported previously.
Axios concluded that “America’s job market recovery has been on track all along.” The country has now recovered 80% of the jobs lost at the depth of the recession in 2020.
Any Republicans paying attention? Or maverick Sen. Joe Manchin, D-WA, who thinks he singlehandedly is saving the country from ruin.
Washington Post economics columnist Catherine Rampell asks with detail, “The economy is doing pretty well. So why doesn’t it feel that way? And why isn’t the Biden administration selling it that way?”
The question comes up because The Narrative following bad-for-Democrats elections this week keep repeating the worn chorus that big spending Democrats are killing the economy and recklessly proposing big government spending that surely will add to deficits and inflation.
Continuing additions to employment — and now adoption of the infrastructure bill, creating millions of new jobs — show the opposite to be true.
Fact and Narrative
It is so annoying when the facts ruin the story.
The bad economic news is that gas and food prices are suddenly higher, that jobs are slow to return, that wages are lagging price increases, and that a whole range of reasons from weather to pandemic effects are driving worker and goods shortages and supply chain ills. The good news is that it is all getting better, and that the United States is way off better than the rest of the world.
That doesn’t work at the neighborhood cash register, however, and the campaigns talked smack about Joe Biden socialism and Donald Trump authoritarianism.
The singular truth about American capitalism is that things improve when businesses find it to their advantage to add jobs or raise wages, to invest in growth and to invest in workers. The entry ticket is stability in the country — and these days, that translates directly into control of the covid pandemic.
Republican leaders instead want to beat away at government mandates taking effect this week for business with more than 100 employees to vaccinate workers, to harangue against government overreach and to encourage disinformation about contagion. Let’s give them credit — — that worked in last week’s elections in Virginia and nearly so in New Jersey.
The problem now is that both Democrats who are for big spending to improve health, education and childcare and Republicans dead set against big spending because it is not aimed at helping corporations are drawing their conclusions anew from these election results. I’ll believe them when they refuse to take whatever does get passed for their own states.
Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., a moderate, tried to split that ideological baby by telling The New York Times Biden must not forget that, for many voters, his mandate was quite limited: to remove former President Donald J. Trump from their television screens and to make American life ordinary again. “Nobody elected him to be F.D.R., they elected him to be normal and stop the chaos,” she said, alluding to the sweeping agenda the president is seeking to enact with the thinnest of legislative majorities.
The election results are too much a measure of history in five-minute satisfaction increments than they are about strategic direction setting.
The messaging in the elections, like the reaction to news itself, is in the ear of the listener. The votes didn’t say much beyond frustration with a government unable to make them feel on top of things.
Learning from Jobs
Maybe we should read the jobs report to learn what is working and what isn’t.
Restaurants, leisure, and hospitality added 164,000 jobs that were widespread across industry sectors, but they depend on stability from covid spread. The Economic Policy Institute notes that spread of the Delta variant this summer and its wane more recently slowed the pace of what had been a very rapid jobs recovery
Government jobs, notably including for schools, continue to shed jobs. Hmm. Some socialism there.
Jobs increased more for Whites than for Blacks and other non-White groups — while these election campaigns were overflowing with sloganeering about how we teach in school about whether race continues to be a significant factor in our current society. Jobs improved more for men than women. The number of people opting out of work is about the same, month to month.
Wages are rising by cents per hour, while prices for goods and food are rising much faster. The percentage of people working from home rather than a workplace dropped by a couple of percentage points.
If we’re truly seeing voter frustration over the price of milk and the perceived need for the government to stabilize over covid mandates, it surely would be good to hear Republican leaders engage on the facts.
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