Poll Positions

All the headlines on the new CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll note that a majority of Americans now think the Iraq war was a mistake. Interesting yes, but not a big surprise given the recent news on the war coupled with good old American common-sense and bullshit detectors.

To my mind the more shocking news, certainly for President George Bush, is that somehow Sen. John Kerry is widely perceived to be the better man to handle the economy. Some 53 percent of respondents say Kerry is better on the economy compared to only 40 percent for Bush, a rare instance of the numbers clearly favoring one candidate over another. Worse still for Bush, 41 percent of respondents said that dealing with the economy was the most important thing for a president to do.

Evidence of a growing economy must not be visible to large numbers of voters and time is growing short for Bush to make his case that his tax cuts have, in fact, provided an economic boost.

Comments

[Steve]

ed,

That's not what RC was doing. He was blaming the media for giving us all bad news on Iraq and the economy. On Iraq, that's understandable, since much of the news is bad. On the economy, its incomprehensible. The media, except for the specialized business press, has been telling us black is white -- anyone watching the news would conclude we're in a recession, when the plain fact is the economy is kicking ass and has been all year.

[Jason Ligon]

Bush could be in trouble if he can't get the message about the economy across. I think that is the one thing that could propel Not Bush to victory.

The irony, of course, is that every economic proposal that comes from the Kerry camp is objectively harmful to the economy at large. Benedict Arnold corporations, indeed. You go, John. Keep breakin' them windows.

I quibble with Jeff Clothier about productivity. We are looking at technological productivity advances for the most part, and such advances are an unequivocal boon to the economy.

[Mark Fox]

Jeff: Those "short-term paper profits" are real dollars available to anyone with the discipline and intelligence to invest. Even those with only a few dollars have a choice to remain victims or become shareholders.

Corporate profits may be paid as dividends or reinvested by management. Dividends are no better measure of productivity, but part of an entire economic scheme. It matters little in aggregate if shareholders receive serial payments or rising value of their shares. Both ways represent a success of business.

Unless, of course, we measure success as the total number of hours worked, without regard to productive efficiency. If jobs are the goal, let us return to subsistence farming.

[Dan H.]

Productivity gains are a leading indicator in an economic boom. During a recession, employers are reluctant to hire, or lay off workers. Then inventories go down, purchases go up, and the workforce has to do more with less manpower. So productivity rises.

But this is not a permanent situation. As profits increase, employers begin hiring again. And often, they hire in huge amounts, because they have to cover not only the increase in sales, but they have to start relieving the workers who for a long time were working harder. Now that hiring is happening at a good clip, productivity gains will drop. But that's a good thing.

The problem is that the population at large is largely uneducated about how the economy works, and the mass media is not much better. So they rely on talking points they get from very biased people.

You just watch - as the economy heats up, inflation will tick up. As soon as it does, the media will start reporting this as bad news. As employment increases, productivity gains will slow. The media will report this as bad news. Because they are largely fed their information from from liberal think tanks and politicians, and filter the news out with their own biases.

But if John Kerry is elected, and the economy stays exactly the same as it is today, you can expect a big turnaround in coverage. Six months from now, the media will be portraying 4% GDP growth and 5.5% unemployment as the 'Kerry Miracle' or some such rot. History will be spun, and four years from now the conventional wisdom will be that Bush drove the economy into recession with his crazy tax cut and military spending, and John Kerry came along and saved the day.

If Reagan had not been elected to a second term, today he would be viewed as a failure, because the recession would be blamed on him, and the recovery stimulated by his policies would have been credited to the Democrat who followed.

[R C Dean]

ed, I was pointing out that Jeff seems to think the American public are geniuses . . . as long as they agree with him. I didn't refer to the unwashed masses as morons, I referred to them as perfectly ordinary info consumers. Given the info they have been fed, their current preferences are quite predictable. Indeed, given the steady anti-Bush drumbeat in the media, its a miracle Kerry isn't up by 20.

[Xrlq]

I've never understood the political advantage Democrats seem to enjoy on the economy. For a Republican to get in trouble on the economy, all it takes is for SOME people to be out of work. Even if a piece of news is unambiguously good - e.g., minority home ownership rates are up - Reuters will find a creative way to spin it to make that it look bad.

FDR prolonged the Great Depression but took credit for ending it. Clinton rode into power on the lie that the 1992 economy was doing poorly, even after adopting a slogan that reminded voters how "stupid" they had to be to vote on an empty slogan like "it's the economy." Yet he too took credit for the recovery that began long before his election, and for the overheated economy that followed the Gingrich Revolution.

I suspect that what is at work here is the doing something is always better than doing nothing" fallacy. Short of Carterizing the economy outright, Democrats can do just about anything they want, and voters will continue to reward them for "handling" the economy better than those stodgy Republicans who have the good sense to leave well enough alone.

[[e-mail]]

The butom line

PEOPLE ARE IDIOTS!!

[TomTomTommy]

What economic boost, and for whom?

You can talk all you want about the stock market, productivity gains and whatever metrics you want toss out there, but clearly the general public still has a great deal of unease about the economy. While job numbers are improving, they are of a lower quality than the jobs that have been lost. Yes, having a job is better than being unemployed, but when there is a downward adjustment, it affects confidence. Also the rising cost of healthcare is another tug on confidence.

This isn't just because the media loves reporting glum economic news. A few newspaper stories and a short report on the evening news isn't enough. The current state of uneasiness is based, I believe, on the day-to-day struggles of ordinary people who simply aren't reaping the rewards of this "recovery."

The American people may not be geniuses, but they aren't stupid. Something clearly is bothering them, and no amount of feel-good news from the White House is going to convince them.

[ed]

Oh, RC, I?m sorry. I thought you had meant to imply that the majority of Americans blindly respond directly to media reports about our doomed economy. All the while, you, posses the superior brainpower necessary to get passed the biased news and see the actual truth.

But now I?m confused. Are you one of us or not?

[zorel]

ed,

you are a unique idiot. so other people can't be one of 'you'

I know this didn't clarify your confusion - but that was not my goal. so, there.

[joe]

Steve,

There are a million+ fewer jobs in the country than there were before Bush took office. Why single out the past 6 months, and ignore the previous 36?

Anyway, it's always fun to watch a Mutual Admiration Society. Yes, libertarians are so good at predicting the impact of tax and regulatory policy on the economy. Like mandatory seatbelts. Or the Clinton economic plan. At this point, a thinking person might start wondering if his model isn't missing something.

[Jason Ligon]

"Anyway, it's always fun to watch a Mutual Admiration Society. Yes, libertarians are so good at predicting the impact of tax and regulatory policy on the economy. Like mandatory seatbelts. Or the Clinton economic plan. At this point, a thinking person might start wondering if his model isn't missing something."

The background of any discussion of economics is that there are a ton of variables, especially in a fiat money system. Large tax hike have large negative consequences, large increases in the minimum wage have large negative consequences. The success of liberal economic 'thought' is that incremental changes create negative effects that are hidden by the background noise.

I hear you scoffing. Fine. Since liberals care about people, why not make everyone wealthy with a $100/hour minimum wage? If you aren't concerned about negative effects that suddenly become obvious, you should champion such a grand equalizing measure.

And about that Clinton economic plan, we are talking about the one he had to get past Gingrich, or are we talking about the one in which he wanted to nationalize 1/10 of the economy but failed to do so?

[holmiw]

"There are a million+ fewer jobs in the country than there were before Bush took office. Why single out the past 6 months, and ignore the previous 36?"

Can someone please explain why a million jobs lost due to bad business plans is a bad thing? Did you really expect the employees of say PETS.com to stay employed when the entire company is based on bogus market research and a bogus business plan? Most of the jobs lost when Bush came in were doomed from the get go, these jobs were with companies that never ever made a profit. The whole boom was a farce, it employeed millions due to the fact that all these companies went public, got funding, employed millions, and when the funding ran out and there was still no profit to show, well, those jobs go away. This is no one's fault, it's just typical of the hype of a new technology sector. Warren Buffet said at the height of the boom, 95% of these new companies will be gone in 5 years, and it happened. Now all of a sudden this is Bush's fault or Clinton's praise for making it happen? huh?

[Steve]

Joe,

The issue is the direction of the economy. Kerry is telling us that things are going poorly, and will get worse if we follow the Bush administration's course. That's just not true. Almost every economic indicator is up. People do feel like the economy is bad, but the fact is, they're much less likely than they were 2 or 3 years ago to lose their jobs or have other icky things happen.

Anyway, the recession began just as Bush was taking office. You can't blame him for most of the job loss.

I wouldn't blame Clinton, either. Unless a president really fucks the economy up, this stuff is usually out of his hands. We went into a recession, and Bush didn't have much to do with it, and we came out of a recession, and Bush didn't have much to do with it.

I would say that under Reagan's leadership, the Fed really did help stop inflation in the 80s. There are other exceptions, but generally, the president shouldn't get too much blame or credit for the economy, unless they do something unusually brilliant or stupid. Bush's tax cuts don't fall into either category. They seem to have helped a little in the short term, but if the deficit somehow bites us in the ass, they may look stupid.

[Gadfly]

There's a bunch of dads out there who spent their life teaching their kids to manage their debt. If you don't, bad things will happen. For the past 30 years Dems have addressed that very fundamental issue and Republicans haven't. That makes me uneasy with Republicans handling the checkbook.

[Mark Borok]

I get most of my daily fix of news from the CNN web site, hardly a pro-Bush outlet, and all I'm seeing lately is positive economic news. I believe the NYT is the same (apart from the op-ed pages, of course). I don't at all get the sense that media coverage of the economy is negative.

[Shem]

Maybe people don?t trust Bush with the economy because they don?t like his deficit spending. No matter how good the economy looks now, if it goes bankrupt in 10 or 15 years as a result of all this deficit spending then the people who talked about how things weren?t as bad as all that right now sure won?t look too terribly good. Personally, I?d rather trust the economy with the guy who at least pays lip service to fiscal responsibility, even if I don?t believe that there?s any way he?ll do anything about it, if only because I can have a reasonable certainty that he was awake in Econ 101 and understands that cooking the books is not a viable long-term economic strategy.

[Rick Barton]

"Sen. John Kerry is widely perceived to be the better man to handle the economy.

Using his pro-big government senate voting record as an indication; Kerry, left to his own devices, would in fact do more "handling" of the economy and prosperity would be harmed.

As has been pointed out; the best hope might be that the GOP congress, if they endure, will be more restraining of Kerry than they have been with Bush.

[joe]

"Kerry is telling us that things are going poorly"

Actually, Kerry has been saying that the economy is moving in the right direction, but very slowly, at enormous cost (in national debt), after a long period of economic weakness. I haven't heard him suggest that things are currently getting worse.

holimw, steve, think about 1992. The knock on Bush wasn't that he'd caused the recession, but that he didn't respond to it very well.

[Sandy]

Democrats got really good at debt control when they lost control of Congress and Clinton signed welfare reform.

Unless you have a balanced budget that Tip O'Neill produced somewhere, like maybe he just forgot to send it to the conference committee after passing it in the House.

You know, you pass a balanced budget, party with Ted Kennedy, and totally space on submitting it to committee the next day.

[Scott]

Joe

There are a million+ fewer jobs in the country than there were before Bush took office.

Yup! And that's a good thing.

After American businesses got rid of the 2 million or so parastites that were so pathetic that they did nothing other than reduce the productivity of those employees that were assigned to babysit them, the economy has exploded by more than 20%...

I think we need to 'lose' another 4-5 million jobs-that would increase the chances that the pinhead at Wendy's just might understand what "no mayonnaise" means.

[joe]

Some of us value people, others value money, Scott. No accounting for taste.

Sandy, you might not have heard, but there have been some changes in the Democratic Party since Tip O'Neil's day.

[thoreau]

Scott-

You know, you somehow manage to take a perfectly respectable free-market position (good riddance to fly-by-night operations like "no-real-product-but-big-IPO.com") and turn it into a mean-spirited rant against the unemployed.

Some of us are free marketeers because we think that free market solutions will, in the end, produce greater prosperity and opportunity for more people. We keep trying to explain how free markets aren't really as cruel and hostile to opportunity as their critics make them out to be.

And then people like Scott come along and gush that free markets ARE in fact cruel instruments for reinforcing a class system. Scott, if you're searching for an economic system that will reinforce the divide between the haves and the have-nots you might want to try crony capitalism. It's a bit different from real capitalism, but it would probably be more to your liking.

[Russ R]

The only economic benefit that Kerry could conceivably provide would be a little less cooperation between the House and the Hill.

I can almost envision Congress raising some resistance against his health-care or minimum-wage initiatives, instead of just churning out whatever legislation the Bush Administration asks for.

[thoreau]

The Democrats learned the virtues of balanced budgets when the GOP Congress put the brakes on spending. Clinton realized that he wouldn't be able to score points for spending more, so he decided to claim bragging rights for balanced budgets.

A few years later, the Republicans FORGOT the virtues of balanced budgets after gaining unified control of the federal government for the first time in decades.

Given that the GOP has excellent instincts when operating in attack mode, and given that most Democrats seem to be proposing more and more spending, I'm optimistic that the GOP will regain its fiscally conservative instincts if there's a Democrat in the White House.

God help us if I'm wrong.

[Constantine]

Russ, you have just outlined the libertarian case for a John Kerry presidency.

[Jeff Clothier]

The growing economy is invisible to a great many Americans because of the criteria by which we measure its health. Productivity, for example, is a measure of production per man/hour. The reciprocal of that ratio is an indicator of the rising work burden per individual worker, which is never taken into account. To a guy working an assembly line, to a tradesman, or to any blue collar worker, increased productivity only means that he's working harder for less money, and with fewer coworkers to help shoulder the load. He's supposed to be happy about that?

And how about the stock market? It is almost entirely divorced from actual production, as the dot.com boom/bust demonstrated, and yet we look to it as a measure of national economic health. Rather than stock price, rising or falling dividend payments would be a better measure of actual production and profit.

How do we know our national economy is healthy when our metrics are skewed in favor of short-term paper profit, the benefits of which are retained by a minority of the population?

[R C Dean]

What happened to good old American common-sense and bullshit detectors? Odd how disdain for a politician you oppose shows these sterling qualities at work, while support for a politician you oppose somehow doesn't.

I prefer to think the polls show that Americans, like most info processing systems, illustrate the GIGO principle. Fed an unending stream of selectively bad news on Iraq, they oppose our Iraqi policy. Fed a similar unending stream of selectively bad news on the economy, they want a change at the top. Garbage in, garbage out.

[Mark S.]

"...you have just outlined the libertarian case for a John Kerry presidency."

Of course, the only way that it's going to work is if the GOP maintains control of Congress for the next four years. When last I checked, their hold on that was sort of weak.

[Ruthless]

If impeachment of Bush looms before November would Kerry win by default or could the Repubs act fast to nominate McCain?

[s.m. koppelman]

Which is exactly why there aren't any serious moves toward impeachment proceedings.

[steve]

"Worse still for Bush, 41 percent of respondents said that dealing with the economy was the most important thing for a president to do."

Yes, and yet the economy, along with the Constitution, is something over which the President has very little control.

[Second time as farce....]

Tet Part 2

Tet Part 2

Tet Part 2

Tet Part 2

[dumpendebat]

Why do fifty-four percent of those polled hate America so much?

[ed]

Oh I LOVE when public opinion turns against a partisan and that partisan refers to the public as morons. Thanks RC. When it's you against all them i'll side with you everytime.

[Mark Fox]

Jeff: O.K., we're talking about why good news is not apparent to everyone, rather than economic statisitcs or how many hugs joe needs today. That puts it, I think, into deeper psychology not revealed by anyone's preferred set of indicators.

People seem to like bad news, to feel the pressure of the underdog, to struggle against hazy omnipotent conspiracies. There's a built-in excuse for failure, when one can claim that no matter all the work, they'll just get screwed anyway. They want to be the Red Sox.

Under the facts are each person's perceptions. That's why few seem to embrace positive economic (or any, really) news. Perhaps that was part of the cause of the Reagan love-fest. He was the last bigshot who made people-at-large feel like they could actually make their lives better (different from someone else making their lives better).

Maybe Kerry should pick Dr. Phil as V.P.

[Mark Fox]

Scott: What joe meant to say was: he values some people, and other people's money.

[Jeff Clothier]

Mark,

I'm sorry, you have some good points, but I find your remarks both patronizing and disengenuous. There are people - good, honest, intelligent, hardworking people - who nevertheless are struggling. If you wish them to see things from a different point of view, perhaps you need to be willilng to do so yourself. Good news for some - or even most - is not necessarily good news for everyone. This is not perception, it is the way of the world.

As long as that is true, and as long as the rising tide is not in any objective sense floating all boats, don't expect those with less time to blog because they have to work hard to feed their families to be happy about the current situation Are things objectively better than they were a year and a half ago? In general terms, and in the aggregate, yes. But the aggregate is made up of a variety of individual experiences, each different.

[Jeff Clothier]

BTW: Is there some unwritten rule that says demonstrating any sort of empathy at all makes one less of a Libertarian? If so, I didn't get the memo.

[thoreau]

Jeff-

I don't think empathy makes you any less of a libertarian, but I usually find myself arguing with other libertarians on this forum over all sorts of things. So maybe it does make you less of a libertarian, at least if "libertarian" is quantified by how much you resemble the most vocal libertarians.

[Mark Fox]

J & t: Empathy is beautiful, but it cannot be forced. That, I suspect is central to many of the arguments. What one, or even many, feel is a target for compassionate help likely strikes others as another case of laziness or stupid choices. To me there is a categorical difference between personal empathy and policy empathy.

Can you be certain I was never (or am not now) one of those hard-working types struggling to get ahead? Perhaps it is from my own experience that I draw the idea of the loser mindset. Those suffering and complaining will benefit most from finding new perspectives. Unless you want even the happy to find a way to be morose. There seems such a sentiment in the "rising tide" comment: as long as one is poor all must be chained to the seabed.

Putting value on news, "good" or "bad" is an operation of each person's perspective filter. You, they, I, can value an event according to personal feelings, but the event is unchanged. We were writing why people are not happy in spite of good news. Because, I maintain, their perception of events conflicts with an established identity of failure. Until the failure identity is defeated, no amount of "objective" success will bring happy feelings.

Asserting that not all are beneficiaries of some events seems a different discussion.

[Jason Ligon]

Jon H writes:

"Right-wingers *love* to claim that left-leaning economic policies would damage the economy. Raising the minimum wage? Bad idea. Environmental regulations? Bad idea. Can't do that.

But then when a right-wing President's policies aren't quite getting the economy into shape, they start with the opposite argument, that the President has little control over the economy at all, so he can't be blamed when, for example, wage growth is slower than inflation."

There are some connecting parts of the libertarian economic argument that might help you make this connection.

1) The maket is characterized by certain instabilities. Libertarians argue that it is in general much better to let the market self correct than to try to 'fix' it via directed policy. There is nothing wrong with getting out of the way and allowing the market to wander back to equilibrium. This is why the president who acts to reduce interference in market forces isn't 'managing' the economy.

2) On the flip side, policy CAN be marginally to hugely disruptive. Liberal economic policy is designed to intrude on the market, primarily because the liberal doesn't like market outcomes. The minimum wage is a fine example. ANY minimum wage is either useless or harmful to employment. The government is making a law that says that no job worth less than X per hour should exist. The result is that businesses who would otherwise choose to gain from a further division of labor by hiring a someone extra will not make that choice. A company will not pay $7.00 per hour for a job that only provides $5.00 an hour in productivity. As I suggested to joe, if you don't really believe the minimum is harmful, why not make it $100/hour?

The term 'externality' is thrown around as justification for all sorts of interventions, but one can in most cases find that political solutions do not resolve the externality, but displace it onto someone else. Pollution regulations that deter me from making you sick by spewing fumes into the air are not the ones that are griped about. It is the pollution regulation that arises in the absense of any demonstrable harm that has the effect of making things more expensive for no reason. And so on.

[Jeff Clothier]

Mark,

Okay, so you are asserting that there are those who are benefitting from an improved economy, but are not admitting it for some reason? Why would that be exactly?

Occam's Razor, or the principle of Least Hypothesis, would suggest that if there is a significant percentage of people who, when asked, express discontent about the economy, the simplest answer to the question of "why" would be because these people are not seeing any concrete benefits in their own lives. To accuse them all of being stupid, duped or dishonest is quite a reach.

[Phil]

Contra joe, some of us even recognize the fallacy of the excluded middle.

Actually, if it were not for that fallacy, I don't know how joe would ever manage to write anything.

[Jennifer]

The economy's in great shape if you're a wealthy person living off of his investments. For those who must work for a living, things aren't so rosy.

I know different states run different presidential campaign ads, so let me describe an unintentionally hilarious Bush ad that's been running here in Connecticut; last Sunday, while watchng a "Terry Jones' Medieval Lives" marathon on this History Channel, I must have seen it six times:

The theme is that Kerry is a pessimist, while Bush is an optimist. The Prez is saying things like, "I believe in America, because I believe in Americans."

The narrator then describes how well the economy is doing: Consumer confidence is up! (Camera shows happy consumers buying stuff in a mall clothing store.)

Narrator: One-point-something million jobs created! (Camera, in same store, focuses in on a middle-aged white guy down on one knee, holding a sneaker in his hand, obviously trying to sell it to one of the aforementioned confident consumers.)

End commercial with scary-looking photo of Kerry: "Pessimism never created a job."

Shoe salesman! Yes, that's a job worth bragging about. Shame on John Kerry for secretly planting commercial-writing operatives in the Bush campaign. Or was that a legitimate boast on the administration's behalf?

[Jon H]

steve writes: "Yes, and yet the economy, along with the Constitution, is something over which the President has very little control."

I strongly disagree.

There's a limit to what the President can do to improve the economy.

But there's no limit to what the President can do to damage the economy.

The President can enact policies to encourage job creation, but at best they're just a suggestion. You can lead a horse to water, etc.

But if the President enacts policies which cause companies to take self-protective actions, he can damage the economy. For instance, launching a war in Iraq, which increases corporate uncertainty, leading companies to slow or stop hiring and reduce investment.

It's funny.

Right-wingers *love* to claim that left-leaning economic policies would damage the economy. Raising the minimum wage? Bad idea. Environmental regulations? Bad idea. Can't do that.

But then when a right-wing President's policies aren't quite getting the economy into shape, they start with the opposite argument, that the President has little control over the economy at all, so he can't be blamed when, for example, wage growth is slower than inflation.

If the president has little effect on the economy, then what's the argument for voting for Bush in November?

Kerry wouldn't have any effect on the economy either, but there would be a likely improvement on the personal liberties front, thanks to getting rid of Crisco John Ashcroft and the Torture Club at the Pentagon.

[Jeff Clothier]

Jason L. - "I quibble with Jeff Clothier about productivity. We are looking at technological productivity advances for the most part, and such advances are an unequivocal boon to the economy."

Certainly, no argument, but there are those who don't care whether their job is taken by a robot, by an illegal alien or whether it's shipped overseas. As long as those people are reflected in polling data, you're going to have a certain amount of disbelief regarding the health of the economy.

Mark Fox - "Jeff: Those "short-term paper profits" are real dollars available to anyone with the discipline and intelligence to invest. Even those with only a few dollars have a choice to remain victims or become shareholders...."

Easy to say, my friend, and you may be right, but see my comment above. We're talking about why the much-touted economic good news isn't transparent to everyone. Productivity and a rising stock market are both wonderful things, but they aren't heard by everyone as economic good news, and they are not the sole measures by which economic good health is defined. Plus, each is a double edged sword.

Real wages, for example, are another common economic metric. If you're a wage earner, a rise in the average national wage in current real dollars is great news, especially if the trend appears steady over time, and is reflected in your own paycheck. If you're a business owner, a rise in wages represents increased cost.

You can't blame people for expressing themselves in terms of their own perceived best interests. Unless you're going to exclude working people from economic polling, you're going to get a certain amount of mistrust and discontent about a rising stock market and pure productivity numbers.

[M. Simon]

You need to watch out for wishful thinking polls.

The two recent ones by the WaPo and the LAT come to mind.

In the LAT poll Dems were over represented by 14% yet Bush was only behind by 7%.

You also need to remember that Kerry does better when the race is between Bush and Not Bush. When it is between Bush and Kerry, Bush does better. If Kerry can stay out of sight for the next 4 or 5 months he stands a chance.

OTOH I bet Bush is saving his best attack ads for Halloween. Think of Kerry admitting war crimes. In his own words. It could be done as a promo to a Vietnam War History.

I'm still going with Bush in a landslide.

[Mark Fox]

Jeff: Admission implies knowledge held back and leads to the accusations you list. I say it is not a problem of admission, but one of recognition. People find more easily what they look for. Even your language "seeing no concrete benefit" belies the prejudice.

Take your example from the start of this thread: To a guy working an assembly line, to a tradesman, or to any blue collar worker, increased productivity only means that he's working harder for less money, and with fewer coworkers to help shoulder the load. He's supposed to be happy about that? Increased productivity from a worker's perspective can just as easily be interpreted as the ability to command a higher wage, for becoming more skilled, or even just by being put at the controls of a better machine making a better product. His weekly paycheck is bigger. If his company continues adding value, he might even be in line for a promotion. Why isn't he happy about that?

Occam's Razor in my hand reveals a different perspective on the same event: A significant percentage express discontent out of habit. Some are truly hurting, some are enjoying excellence, while the overwhelming majority go to the same sort of job for the same sort of company for the same kind of money as they were last year, and before. I suppose that monotony would cause me to complain, too.

They're not stupid, duped, or dishonest. They're normal and average, worried about their families, and repeating what they hear. Truly, some boats are not lifted, and some are overturned. The tide comes in gradually so most sailors do not notice its rise, but they do hear the cries of those in the water. As they are preoccupied with staying afloat, they don't notice they're struggling at a higher level.

With hindsight one might say that the exuberance of the late 90s economy was ill-founded. If joy can arise in spite of circumstances, is it not also so for gloom?

(Or, perhaps there was no joy in the 90s, as rising productivity only added to the worker's burden.)

[Mark Fox]

To debate the content of news is again a matter of perspective. Some give more attention to financial news, while others dwell on the personal dramas surrounding a shuttered factory. The messages echoing in ordinary people's minds, and around the copy machine are ominous threats to job security and urban legends about evil corporations. It is the loser mindset in action.

Investors like rising consumer confidence. Consumers don't notice much beyond stuff like, "Larry's thinking about buying a new dishwasher." If more consumers became investors, they would have more cause for joy, and also would have a cushion against their own misfortunes. That would require some effort and responsibility, challenging the cultural belief that investing is risky, complicated, and only the province of the "rich". Opportunities exist to share in the success of others; why not avail oneself to them?

I don't expect everyone to be excited about vague statistics. I know someone who is just laid off doesn't give a crap about productivity figures. It would be nice, however if the masses not laid off would give as much notice to increasing output as they do to layoffs. Again, some are suffering while most are not. But most like to feel like they are.

===

In comparing candidates, ask: Does government create value? I suggest no. It only redistributes wealth already in existence. The best hope for a worker in general is to vote for a candidate who wants the state to get out of the way of people who are creating more value. A worker in specific would likely vote for the candidate who promises to hand him the most from somebody else's pocket, or at least the one who is willing to adjust the rules in that worker's favor. The workers in specific pit themselves against each other, trying to win the state's porky treats. It seems a fool's game.

Put as much attention toward making the pie bigger as one does toward getting a bigger slice and everbody wins. Or pick one of the two bigshot candidates and accept that your job security is the result of some other worker's layoff.

[Jeff Clothier]

Mark,

"They're not stupid, duped, or dishonest. They're normal and average, worried about their families, and repeating what they hear."

I appreciate that statement, thank you, except repeating what they hear from where? Most of the national news outlets I read, listen to or watch are cheerleading the growing economy, citing polls which show guarded optimism and increasing consumer confidence, which seems to belie the economic premise of this thread. If there are those who are truly discontent, or feel themselves being screwed over somehow, and are reflecting the "guarded" part of guarded optimism, I suggest it isn't because they are somehow easily led by democratic cheerleaders, but because many are truly on the dirty end of the stick in the current economy, and feel the need to say so.

Suggesting somehow that EVERYONE ought to jump up and down and cheer a rising stock market and pure productivity numbers despite their own personal circumstances, or to support an administration who is famously tone-deaf to the concerns of working people on the basis of other people's success, I believe, is simply unreasonable.

[Jeff Clothier]

Now, as to whether supporting Kerry is a better option for working people - that is an open question for me. He does talk the talk better than Bush, and if it's a contest between two silver-spooners trying to woo working people who actually vote, I think Kerry has a strong edge. Particularly so when Theresa Heinz Kerry campaigns actively. She is a phenominal presence who resonates well with people of all socioeconomic strata. Her charity work gives her a lot of street cred, as well.

[eponymous]

"Truly, some boats are not lifted, and some are overturned. The tide comes in gradually so most sailors do not notice its rise, but they do hear the cries of those in the water. As they are preoccupied with staying afloat, they don't notice they're struggling at a higher level." -Mark Fox

brilliant metaphormanship, did you craft it just for that post?

please Jeff, The Heiress Kerry's street cred? meritocratic libertarians resent inherited wealth more than anyone and the street's cultivation of white guilt is merely strategic

[Jeff Clothier]

Mark -

"Put as much attention toward making the pie bigger as one does toward getting a bigger slice and everbody wins."

But aren't Libs supposed to be disinterested in everyone winning?

Companies making sourcing or labor decisions aren't interested in everybody winning, primarily upper management and shareholders. When they make decisions and take positions based on their self-interest, often using lobbyists and monetary leverage in Washington to smooth the way, they are lauded as exemplars of free market capitalism. But when wage earners do the same and try for what they consider a more equitable share of that supposedly ever-expanding pie, they are accused of all sorts of condenscending crap like "class warfare," laziness, stupidity, etc.

I find that a hideous double-standard.

[joe]

thoreau, I think you people need to drop the word "capitalism," to describe non-intervention in the economy, and here's why:

Two of the many interests that exist in an economic system are Labor and Capital. If I started referring to "labor-ism," you're recognize instantly what I meant - a political orientation designed to look out for the interests of labor. But you want to use "capital-ism" to refer not to a political orientation designed to look out for the interests of capital (which is what that word means), but a political orientation designed not to interfere on behalf of anyone's interests.

In a larger sense, the conflation of the two definitions is the heart and sould of conservative economics and politics. I don't why you people so eagerly go along with righties' expropriation of your discourse.

[Steve]

joe,

I'm not usually one to turn to dictionaries to make a point, but Webster's (it's the only one at hand) says this:

"capitalism: an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods and by prices, production and distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market."

I think that's how most people understand the word. The "Capital vs. Labor" stuff, with guys in tophats, is a bit outdated.