What to say when the
doomsday scenario doesn’t pan out: UPDATE "This
is not what a real recovery looks like," Romney said.
Like a flip-flopping, fast
talking used car salesman, Mitt Romney may have outscored Barack Obama in verbiage in the recent debate.
But his doomsday scenario about the economy is becoming unraveled. For the
longest, his campaign tagline has been: Unemployment has been above 8% since
President Obama took office. The economy is getting worse, not better.
However, today’s report shows
that the economy added 114,000 jobs in September, sending the unemployment rate
down to 7.8%. What will Mitt Romney say now? Will he continue to say the
economy is failing, when “the
economy has now added jobs for 24 straight months”?
What will the prophets of
doom, like Rush Limbaugh, say? As we all recall, from the time Limbaugh
professed that he “hopes Obama fails”, there has been of chorus of audio
suggestions of the president’s failing. Like sorcery and witchcraft that
repeatedly suggest to a healthy man that he is sick, some people were convinced
that our economy is dying. What now? A new false prophecy?
The usual recourse to the
evident improvement has been this “sour grapes” assertion: But fewer people are looking for
jobs because millions are dropping out of the job market. So the employment
numbers do not tell the whole story. People are hurting.
This is what we can expect to
hear from the partisan naysayers who prefer to paint a dismal economic picture,
in order to recapture the White House. Bad news is good news to them, because
it enhances their cry for change. But if it ain’t broke, why fix it?
That the economy is
improving, despite every attempt by Republicans to make Obama a one-term
president, they conveniently forget from whence we come, though Romney himself
acknowledges the bad situation the president inherited. But, according to him, “things
have gotten no better”. Proof: Above 8% unemployment.
By now, we all know that a
falling economy does not reverse course just because of a new presidency.
Economic laws dictate that an economy must bottom out first. And, by the time
Obama took office, the economy was still in free fall.
Maybe with a little more
cooperation from the Republicans in Congress, the bleeding might have been
abated before unemployment soared above 10%. Enough said: This administration
helped break the fall by implementing a stimulus program that included a
government bailout of the auto industry and Wall Street. Workers went back to
work. The world financial markets were stabilized.
For the sake of peace between
parties, the administration forewent taking punitive criminal action against
those who caused the crisis. And, Wall Street took a reprieve to resume doing
business as usual, using government money to pay high salaries and bonuses.
This, no doubt, will cease, if Obama is given a second term.
On the other hand, the GOP
wants to go back to business as usual, back to old policies and strategies that
caused the previous collapse, mainly by giving tax breaks to the rich, in the
hopes to induce more investment in the private sector and create new jobs.
This prescription was once
called “Trickle
Down Economics”. The misdiagnosis comes in when Finance Capital seeks
profit wherever it may be found in the global market. It does not necessarily
go out create jobs for a patriotic reason. The slogan Made in America was created to boost domestic productivity, and
hence induce Capital to stay inside the United States.
The Obama administration
removed the financial incentives for shipping jobs overseas by raising taxes on
those who export jobs. This goes contrary to Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital approach. If
Bain were patriotic to the U.S. in job creation motive, it would not have
offices in London,
Luxembourg, Munich, Mumbai, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Tokyo.
Keeping jobs at home has been
a priority of the Obama administration. And, through federal support for education,
the administration is trying to enhance the domestic jobs market with more
skilled workers, in higher payer fields, rather than having to recruit from
overseas. And, through innovations, it has opened up new markets and new
employment opportunities.
Now that the unemployment
rate has dipped below Romney’s baseline benchmark, the only thing the prophets
of doom can say is: “Sour grapes”.
