Sunday, August 12, 2012

Government Employment- Welcome to the Conservative Recovery

Interesting piece here from Ezra Klein:
Government employment is at historic lows, largely due to draconian budget cuts at the state and local levels throughout the recession. The sector has now lost more jobs than any other major industry over the past three years

Now maybe this is a good thing- government is getting smaller at all levels.  If you're unhappy with the Recovery you should certainly blame Democrats and the President to a great degree.  But we should also look carefully at the actual policies that are being used- in this case there was a significant stimulus (though smaller than liberal economists wanted) at the start of the crisis, and since then there's been a pivot to cutting spending.  Democrats pivoted too- this isn't just a Republican thing.  In Europe there was an even more pronounced shift to austerity.

And the results are in- it's not working.  The graphs above show what's happened in terms of employment by the governments in the US- this is what conservatives have been calling for, and they've got it.  So what will a more Republican congress and president do that's different from this?  Seems to me that they'll double down, and it will be a disaster.

...And the Democrats don't get off the hook either.  They've somehow managed to respond to the economic crisis with conservative policies, which don't work, all while being seen by Americans as left wing nutcases.  It's political malpractice.  How did these guys ever win a high school student council election?

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