I find it sad that you have come in here and you have contributed about as much substance as I would assume Zooey Deschanel would. Mind you, at least she'd be good to look at. You're sticking on a point no one gives a s**t about. Trust me, it's a losing strategy. EVERYBODY. I didn't link to a quote, because it referred to a WSJ article that was easily searchable. I hope y'all can forgive me. I know it's the very worstest of things. Now, Casey, stop avoiding the point. Do you have anything of substance to contribute? If not, there are other threads.
I assumed it was easily searchable because you found it. (okay, seriously, you make it too easy sometimes. I'm only a dick when people give me opportunities.) Show me your thoughts on the topic, and I'll link it, if only because I think it is useful for people sincerely searching for answers to difficult economic questions, a pursuit I whole-heartily support. Otherwise, as I keep on emphasizing, there are threads where you are probably more knowledgeable.
I don't much care. To be honest, it allows me an opportunity to be a dick myself. Care to join along?
FV Santiago, your posts are so full of macro-economic nonsense, I don't even know where to start. By all means...show me the data supporting each one of your arguments. You think the national debt is important? In order to do run a surplus, the government would have to remove financial assets from the private sector. You think doing that while households are still deleveraging is a good idea? Countries in the Eurozone are forced to balance their budget because they lack monetary sovereignty. Those countries have 20% unemployment. QE1, QE2, and Operation Twist have been non-events. They're little more than swaps between banks and the Fed in an effort to hold down the interest rate (QE=Reserves for Bonds, Twist=Short-term Bonds for Long-term Bonds). Moreover, the "electronic printing press" argument is utterly bunk. The Fed can "print" up an infinite amount of dollars and hand them all to banks. They'll just sit in bank's reserve account collecting dust. Very few of those extra dollars are actually making it into the economy via loans to purchase goods/services. Where's the inflation? The CPI has barely gone anywhere the past four years. How has the dollar devalued? The dollar index is practically unchanged from when Obama took office. This idea that America can't service its debt load is ridiculous as well. Primary dealers are required to make an offer on every single Treasury sold at auction. Where are all those bond vigilantes? Even in today's uncertain environment, primary dealers have oversubscribed the auctions by 2X the past four years.
It doesn't actually mcb - because you really havent provided any proportionality. According to your theory of "college major skills mismatch " sometime around 2K4 there was a drastic shift between the proportion of engineers and those who were all to wary of Banquo's Issue. I'm goint to have to declare ipse dixit lollerderbyskates on such an assertion. Insofar as it is both unsupported and inherently rijokeulous.
http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/mgi/research/labor_markets/future_of_work_in_advanced_economies You didn't address the point of skills mismatches between high school graduates who didn't go onto college, and college graduates, as well as the divulging unemployment rates for the two groups. That is an easier way to tangify differences in educational attainment and structural unemployment then "within-college" groups. I guess the easiest way to show this would be to show how even in times of massive unemployment, a large number of companies looking for people to hire can't find them, which McKinsey happily did.
Also, taking it to the general economy (this has been a great battle between the more Keynesian regional Feds and the more crazy ones, and you've put me in the unfortunate shoes of having to side with the crazy ones for a bit)--- http://macroblog.typepad.com/macrob...construction-workers-really-doing-better.html
I didn't because I was busy at Birnam Wood. And also because you haven't really cited any evidence - once again - to suggest that this is even remotely a factor. Unemployment is up across the board Harold. From Canadian models who bang pr0n stars to Canadian PhDs. The proportional increases arent that different though of course the poor souls at the bottom tend to get the swiftest kick in the ass.
Read again, please. http://lifeinc.today.msnbc.msn.com/_...al-divide?lite Quote: If you want to get a job in this economy, it's becoming increasingly clear that you better also be thinking about getting an education beyond just a high school degree. The government reported Friday that the unemployment rate for college graduates fell slightly in May, to 3.9 percent from 4 percent a month earlier. For people with just a high school degree, the unemployment rate increased to 8.1 percent, from 7.9 percent a month earlier.
These first three sentences in particular demonstrate that you need to learn more about how the economy works. How do you get from Sentence #1 to Sentence #2 without explaining the mechanics of how budget deficits negatively affect the economy? When the government spends, the money doesn't just disappear off the face of the earth. It ends up in the private sector somewhere. Some government contractor/employee gets to take home a paycheck. We're in the midst of a recession caused by excessive household debt. Why you'd advocate removing money from the private sector right now is utterly beyond me. Sentence #3 is another misconception as well. Other countries can't just waltz into a Treasury auction and buy U.S. debt. You can only buy U.S. debt if you have USD$ to begin with. How do other countries get USD to begin with? You gave it to them. We all did. When we bought our cell phones manufactured in China or that German luxury car...we bought them with USD. Foreign companies gladly accept the USD as payment because the USD can be exchanged for some of the $15trillion worth of goods/services we produce each year. But what else can they buy with the USD? Maybe they'll buy some oil or other commodities...or maybe they'll turn right around and send some of those USD back to the Treasury and buy bonds. We do NOT depend on foreign kindness to fund our government spending. We send our money to foreign countries in exchange for goods/services. Instead of letting that money collect dust, they shove that money into Treasury bonds to earn interest instead. If you don't want foreign countries to continue buying our debt, stop buying foreign goods so our USDs don't go overseas. What's truly unsustainable here? Our national debt (which is meaningless because we have primary dealers) or our ability to buy foreign goods/services with our own currency? Don't get so worked up about the budget deficit that you forget about the deficit that's actually unsustainable: our trade deficit.
Also, McKinsey's evidence is about as close as you can come to tangify skills mismatch. It does not include people being underpaid, and people who are unemployed because of their lack of skills. Looking at it from the firm's perspective, there seems to be a problem with skills mismatch. It is curious why Krugman failed to look at the whole picture, but then again he got his Nobel for new economic geography, and not necessarily the best (or should be it said objective) blog posts.
I'm actually funnily enough to the left of Krugman on this one. I think skills mismatch is a reason for a more active government intervention in the labour market---with active labour market policy and more subsidized training. It's more than just an excuse for the Fed to sit back and say monetary policy won't do anything more---it's a call to action for other branches of government (because, to be honest, the markets have been flooded with Fed liquidity and it has worked well, but it's still not enough.) Be that as it may, I don't really see the point of belaboring this point much too longer. Suffice it to say I'm on Bernanke's boat on this one---cyclical unemployment is a major consideration, but structural unemployment should be too. It's obvious this recession is a whole new beast.
The aforementioned link Casey stopped badgering me about, for s**ts and giggles. http://mediamatters.org/research/2012/06/08/the-main-problem-with-jobs-growth-is-lack-of-de/185857
