Jobs & Obama

[nathanm]

You know someone is peddling bullshit when they compare countries that have decidedly different troubles and claim some deep meaning. Further, you can be absolutely positive someone is peddling bullshit when they compare inflation adjusted numbers (like GDP growth) with non-inflation adjusted numbers (like spending growth) and do it in the precise way that would make their claims look less like bull.

[Gaspar]

Sheesh. . .did you just wake up or something? Both numbers are inflation corrected, because one is offered as a percentage of the other.

Read the article and go back to sleep.

[guido911]

Wondering what took so long...

[Gaspar]

Wondering what took so long...

Funny that you post that. . .Carter has really been redeemed by President Obama's track record.  In fact, he will be making an address at the DNC convention where he will tout President Obama's leadership skills.  Through his re-deployment of Carter economic policies, I think the former president perhaps views President Obama as a protégé.  http://content.usatoday.com/communities/onpolitics/post/2012/08/jimmy-carter-democratic-convention-speaker-barack-obama/1#.UCFbV6mRi5Q

It should prove to fire up the base for him.

[nathanm]

Sheesh. . .did you just wake up or something? Both numbers are inflation corrected, because one is offered as a percentage of the other.

Read the article and go back to sleep.

No, they actually aren't. GDP is not indexed to inflation, nor is it an inflation index. GDP can fall as inflation rises, GDP can rise as inflation rises, GDP can fall as inflation falls, or GDP can fall as inflation rises. There is an inflation adjustment called the GDP deflator, but it does not work the way you seem to think it does.

Column one compares a dollar amount in 2007 to a dollar amount in 2009 in each year's dollars. Column two is indexed for inflation.

Keep on keepin' on. And when you're corrected, keep on attacking the messenger rather than reading a book or checking your numbers in FRED.

Edited to add: Oh, and I just noticed one is a percentage change while the other is a change in rate of growth. Yet more misleading pucky.

[nathanm]

Gaspar, regarding Laffer's chart, I happened across this article in my reading today. (still catching up from being away)

http://uneasymoney.com/2012/08/06/arthur-laffer-anti-enlightenment-economist/

Apparently the numbers can't actually be reproduced by any reasonable calculation. Moreover, there's no real theory behind it. Laffer's usual contention that government spending crowds out private spending isn't applicable in an environment where private actors are willing to lend the government seemingly unlimited sums at essentially zero interest. Instead of crowding out, it's putting the private money to use, which even the rightest of right wing economists believes is economically useful.