Washington's Economic Ignorance - Making Nothing Out Of A Lot

Step 38 from our book, “Love My Country, Loathe My Government” would require every politician elected to Congress or the White House to take and pass a course on economic theory, strategy, and realities before they could vote on any legislation that is even remotely connected to the economy. Why? Because the current Washington political class has shown to be totally inept when putting together tax and economic policies that result in a robustly growing economy.

Instead, they have saddled us with:

• Over 45 million Americans receiving Federal food assistance every month, years and years after the recession ended.
• Persistent long term unemployment levels.
• Annual GDP growth that is no where close to the long term average.
• A recession recovery that is the weakest in at least the past century.
• A whopping and dangerous $18 TRILLION national debt that grows worse every day.
• An economic stimulus plan that cost over $800 billion and stimulated nothing.

That is why we need more sophisticated and just plain smarter people in Washington when it comes to economics. And things are not getting any better, despite what the Obama administration might say when it comes to our economic condition, based on the latest government data from the Labor Department and Bureau of Labor Statistics:

• A whopping 93 million adult Americans are not working, either due to retirement, laziness, or the inability to find employment.
• The overall labor participation rate is at a 36 year low.
• There are now 750,000 fewer full-time jobs in the economy today than there were before the last recession as part time job rates are still at very high levels.
• A record 12.2 million African-Americans are not working in the labor force.
• The unemployment rate for African-Americans is 10.1%, almost double what the overall unemployment rate is.
• A record 56.1 million women are not working in the labor force.
• The Federal Reserve Board is now predicting minimal economic growth for the remainder of the year.
• Based on the latest jobs reports, the Associated Press reported that a weakening of the U.S. economy “spilled into the job market in March as employers added just 126,000 jobs.”
• The expectation from a survey of economists was for 245,000 new jobs in the March monthly jobs report.
• The 126,000 jobs created was the fewest since December, 2013 and broke a 12 month streak of monthly job gains over 200,000.
• 200,000 jobs created each month is not a rate that is big enough to even keep up with the growth in the population.
• Not only was the latest jobs report much less than expected, the government reduced previous months’ job creation estimates for January and February by 69,000.
• There has been no average wage growth except for the very top earners in the country.
• The average pre-tax income for the average American household dropped  .9% from the same period last year.
• The government also reported that construction spending dropped and the ISM Manufacturing Index came in below expectations in the latest analysis.

Now to be honest, the administration could point to the following two positive economic trends:

• The traditional unemployment rate is down to 5.5%.
• The economy has shown positive job growth for 61 consecutive months.

But there is some legitimate cold water to throw on these two statistics:

1. 5.5% has occurred not because job creation is outstripping population growth but because so many Americans have stopped looking for a job out of frustration that the dropping unemployment rate is because of the math used to calculate it, not the creation of more jobs.
2. The positive job growth has been dominated by part time and lower paying jobs so that while the number of jobs has been growing slowly the quality of the jobs has not been anything close to robust.

And the sad thing about Washington's mismanagement of the economy over the past five or six years is that:

1. They spent over $800 billion in an economic stimulus plan and got nothing in return.
2. The Federal Reserve pumped TRILLIONS of dollars worth of paper money into the economy with little effect except to make the banks wealthier.
3. Interest rates have been at record low levels for a record length of time.
4. An energy revolution has created thousands of good paying jobs and reduced some energy costs.

Despite these tail winds and the boost they should have given the economy, Washington politicians somehow managed to take these advantages and somehow either negate them or mute them.

Step 38, that this is the key to hopefully getting some economic sanity out of Washington.  Because right now, based on their track record over the past five years, all we are getting now is economic insanity.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w