VDH: The Left Has Perpetually Met The Enemy, And The Enemy Is "Them"

Really good essay by VDH. It doesn't really say anything you didn't know, but sums up the socialist disease of both Greece and California well.

Despite socialists having a free hand in both places to work their utopian confiscate-and-reallocate magic, both places are in financial ruin, and still the socialists blame "Them" for this state of affairs. "Them" varies by place, but the exact identity of "Them" hardly matters -- the only important thing is that "Them" not be "Us."

Speaking of neverending disasters, Paul Krugman's written a new column. No, but seriously, I wouldn't take his advice on fixing our disease (he continues to advocate more and more Keynesian "stimulus") but his prognosis is probably right -- we're in dire, death-spiral sort of shape.

First of all, we have to grow around 2.5 percent a year just to keep up with rising productivity and population, and hence keep unemployment from rising. That’s why the past year and a half was technically a recovery but felt like a recession: G.D.P. was growing, but not fast enough to bring unemployment down.

Growth at a rate above 2.5 percent will bring unemployment down over time. But the gains aren’t one for one: for a variety of reasons, it has historically taken about two extra points of growth over the course of a year to shave one point off the unemployment rate.

Now do the math. Suppose that the U.S. economy were to grow at 4 percent a year, starting now and continuing for the next several years. Most people would regard this as excellent performance, even as an economic boom; it’s certainly higher than almost all the forecasts I’ve seen.

Yet the math says that even with that kind of growth the unemployment rate would be close to 9 percent at the end of this year, and still above 8 percent at the end of 2012. We wouldn’t get to anything resembling full employment until late in Sarah Palin’s first presidential term.

Seriously, what we’re looking at over the next few years, even with pretty good growth, are unemployment rates that not long ago would have been considered catastrophic — because they are. Behind those dry statistics lies a vast landscape of suffering and broken dreams. And the arithmetic says that the suffering will continue as far as the eye can see.

uote

posted by Ace at 02:15 PM

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