In my last post I wrote about the April jobs report. I noted that the sector of the economy reporting the largest job growth (57,000) was retail. I went on to point out that McDonald’s last month said it was hiring 50,000 workers, and that this accounted for most of April’s retail job increases. I sent out a variant of this post to a number of leading columnists. One was kind enough to check out what I sent him. He found that since the McDonald’s hiring was on the 19th of last month,...

The April employment numbers from the government came out today, and Wall Street is rejoicing. According to government figures, 244,000 new jobs were added to employment rolls last month. Sound good? Maybe not. The largest number of these new jobs (57,000) were in the retail sector, traditionally low-paid, few benefits employment. And then there’s the McDonald’s factor. Last month there was national news about McDonald’s hiring 50,000 new workers in one fell swoop. Watching the...

I don’t understand how the U.S. economy can possibly avoid a very sharp contraction in coming months (and perhaps years), and how this contraction will not be reflected in diminished standards of living for most Americans. About 70 percent of our gross domestic product (GDP) comes from consumer spending. The sources of this spending are either earnings, savings. personal asset appreciation, government benefits that subsidize other spending, or borrowing. Unless these sources collectively generate...

Let me start by noting a few things about myself. I’m not the ugliest guy on the planet. Not the dumbest, Not the most indigent. I’m not the most devoid of any characteristic usually thought of as desirable. Does that make me a world class kind of guy? Alas, no. Now let’s see how this personal evaluation formula stacks up against an evaluation of the present U.S. economy. We don’t have the largest national debt compared to GDP among major economies. Japan’s ratio is...

In 1992 a political nobody, a businessman named Ross Perot, appeared on a cable TV Show, “Larry Kings Live” that relatively few people watched and most Americans didn’t even know existed, and announced he was running for President of the United States. Perot the candidate had a snippy personality. He was also an unappealing public speaker who used a school marm pointer to illustrate his major ideas. Nonetheless, he briefly led in the presidential polls, was on the stage with the...

There seems to be bipartisan agreement about one budgetary matter these days. Republicans and Democrats agree that we have to lower corporate tax rates to be more competitive, and that to offset any revenue losses to the Treasury from doing so, we have to close business tax loopholes. The bipartisanship on this issue got me wondering. Are legislators in both parties just sucking up to corporate givers for campaign contributions? Or are they simply utterly ignorant of the Tax Code they seem determined...

I was confused by last Friday’s March inflation report from the government, and the stock market’s response to that report. I know. I know. Government numbers are warped and repackaged these days to golly up us proles and convince us that things are better than we know they really are. And the stock market is pretty much just a measure of how much money big banks and hedge funds want to make on any given day with their computer-generated trading. Even so, I found this most recent inflation...

Maybe you just started having a drink or two to help you sleep after a hard day. Then a drink or two to mellow out when you got home after a hard day. Then a drink or two at lunch to get through a hard day. Then a drink or two before you actually left for work so you could get through a hard day. Well, for some pols — like our president — it’s the same slippery slope syndrome when it comes to compromising. Mr. Obama’s first big series of compromises came during the debate over health...

How accommodating and forgiving most Democratic commentators have become. The President’s speech on the budget, deficits and future federal spending was mostly greeted by these people with praise for the leadership it supposedly demonstrated, for the clear alternative to Republican proposals it supposedly presented, and for the way it supposedly asked the rich at long last to share the sacrifices necessitated by our deep and ongoing recession. What nonsense is such praise. What utter, utter...

We have huge federal budget deficits in this country. They have to be addressed. The natural, the sensible, the obvious way to do this is with a combination of spending cuts and increased tax revenues. The national debate should revolve around where and how much to cut, and where and how much to tax. Except that’s not how the national debate over deficits is being carried out. Instead, the revenue end of the equation, the tax end, has somehow disappeared from discussions, leaving the debaters...

Many Americans, including myself I admit in the name of full disclosure. misunderstood the man we helped elect to the presidency in 2008. We thought we were electing a fighter who would change the way the government and the economy operated. Silly, silly us. It’s now clear that the man we sent to the White house doesn’t see his role that way at all. He seems to think he was elected to be a kind of king in a constitutional monarchy. That his primary function (other than the purely ceremonial)...

Reforming this country’s election system could give a giant boost to the American economy. I’m not suggesting, of course, that we elect better qualified candidates. That’s a hopeless quest. I’m suggesting that if we just have more elections, more often, for more public posts, it would generate badly needed spending and create a slew of new jobs. Buying public offices has become much more expensive. Presidential and congressional campaigns spent an estimated $5.3 billion in...

If you want to understand where the U.S. job market is headed these days, and by extension, the direction of the entire U.S. economy, you need only look at the two top headlines on today’s New York Times website. The first reads “U.S. Economy Added 216,000 jobs in March: Rate at 8.8%”; the second reads “Many Low-Wage Jobs Seen as Failing to Meet Basic Needs. There it is. The new economy, the two-tier economy of our once overwhelmingly middle class national lifestyle is fast...

Money, money is what talks, No one in the Beltway walks; Nothing tops the mighty power Of this endless dollar shower. Need a special taxing break? Legislators soothe the ache. Having trouble with a reg? Heavy hitters need not beg. Money, money, is what talks, No one in the Beltway walks. Year by year the anger grows ‘Bout these tawdry money flows. Pols beat breasts and wring their hands, When they’re done the old way stands. Money, money, is what talks, No one in the Beltway walks. All imbibe...

I had a dream the other night, It really gave me quite a fright; The IMF came ‘round to call, To say my spending had to fall. “You’re daft,” I cried, “I’m Mr. Big,” It’s me for whom the rules are rigged; No one can tell me what to do, It’s me who calls the shots for you.” “Dear Sam,” they said, “you’ve drained the well; You’ve bought much more than what you sell; You’ve lost your way, you’ve gone astray, And now’s the day you gotta...

Because of the way that Washington does its numbers, Social Security recipients haven’t had a cost-of-living-adjustment (COLA) increase since fiscal 2009. And according to new projections, they probably won’t get one next fiscal year either. The reason? Experts now predict a very modest yearly CPI increase of 1.2 percent for fiscal 2011, on which the following year’s COLA is based. And even this modest increase will be wiped out by an expected increase in monthly Medicare premiums...

One of the great lines in a Dickens novel was uttered by Mr. Bumble in Oliver Twist. Confronted with a transgression by his wife, he was accused of being more culpable than her under then prevailing statutes because husbands were legally supposed to be totally in charge of their wives’ behaviors. A notion so obviously removed from real world experience, that Bumble opined that “the law is an ass.” Looking at the behavior of many stock markets around the world today, including our...

While the world has been focused on the start of yet another U.S.military adventure, this one in Libya (so many tyrants, so few missile firing submarines), and on an earthquake that moved Japan’s largest island 17 feet, a lot of other news was being reported that didn’t get the attention it deserved. Here’s a quick catch up in case the following headlines passed under your radar — along with some of my own personal observations. “Squirrel attacking residents of Vt. neighborhood.”...

On Friday the big banks that received government bailout money (and are still receiving huge amounts indirectly through the Fed’s low interest rate policies) were granted the right to pay out $22 billion of their profits to investors in the form of dividends and stock buybacks. The main beneficiaries will be hedge funds that have gambled big on big bank stock. Top managers of the banks will also make millions personally, having received a large chunk of their annual compensation in the form...

In the world occupied by Ben Bernanke, things in the economy are moving along nicely. The economy is now “on firmer footing,” he told Congress yesterday. The job market is “improving,” the Fed Chairman also noted. An improvement that still features an unemployment rate of almost 9 percent, where a hefty percentage the new jobs being created are temporary or part-time, and where new full-time positions generally pay less with fewer benefits than similar jobs past. But jobs...

It doesn’t bother me that Republicans in Washington and around the country seek to meet the challenges of badly strained government budgets only with spending cuts while taking tax increases off the table. That’s the Republican philosophy of government after all. What astounds me is that Democrats are letting them get away with this in so many places. Democrats seem totally incapable of making clear certain facts that are so obvious: That not every tax affects every taxpayer; that some...

Across the Middle East people are rebelling. When these rebels are interviewed by foreign journalists one word comes up again and again. It’s not wages. Not benefits. Not even freedom. It’s dignity, an intangible something that goes beyond purely economic and political considerations, something that touches on one’s sense of personal worth. Something akin to this is occurring with respect to teachers in this country. They have somehow become the primary targets of budget cutters....

Here’s a simple proposal to meet the federal budget crisis: Revisit the debate on the Bush-era tax cuts, and take back the extension of lower income tax rates given to well-to-do earners. This won’t completely do away with the need to cut programs for the poor and middle class, of course, and the need to reduce the federal workforce that administers these programs. But it would go a long way toward lessening the pain of these cuts, and do what every poll says most Americans want — to...

Republicans are funny folks, They practice what they preach; They don’t win then convince themselves Their goals are out of reach. No matter how unpopular The measures they enact, They’ve made a true bond with their own, And honor this true pact. Democrats don’t act like this, They’re of another order; They, too, make lots of promises, But honor them? Well, sorta. They’d rather try bipartisan, Seek always compromise, And when the other side don’t play, Think: “Gosh,...

Obama is an historic figure. The first African-American president. He’s not a very good president, however. Whether historians judge him our third second-rate leader in a row, or our second third-rater in a row, now seems to depend on how charitable they wish to be. One of the few really positive contributions he’s making to our governance these days is his role – an unintended role – reigniting progressive politics. While conservatives on the right have furiously and successfully...