"An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people."~ Attributed to Thomas Jefferson.
Ignoring the path to recovery
It is said that the problem with the
younger generation — any younger generation — is that it has not read
the minutes of the last meeting. Barack Obama, forever young, has
convenient memory loss: It serves his ideology. His amnesia concerning
the policies that produced the robust recovery from the more severe
recession of 1981-82 has produced policies that have resulted in 0.1
percent economic growth in 2014's first quarter.
June begins the sixth year of the anemic
recovery from an 18-month recession. Even if what Obama's administration
calls “historically severe” weather — aka, winter — reduced GDP growth
by up to 1.4 percentage points, growth of 1.5 percent would still be
grotesque.
The reason unemployment fell by
four-tenths of a point (to 6.3 percent) in April while growth stalled is
that 806,000 people left the labor force. There are about 14.5 million
more Americans than before the recession but nearly 300,000 fewer jobs,
and household income remains below the pre-recession peak.
Paul Volcker, whose nomination to be
chairman of the Federal Reserve Board was Jimmy Carter's best
presidential decision, raised interest rates to put the nation through a
recession to extinguish the inflation that, combined with stagnant
growth, ruined Carter's presidency. Then came the 1983-88 expansion,
when growth averaged 4.6 percent, including five quarters over 7
percent.
Ronald Reagan lightened the weight of
government as measured by taxation and regulation. Obama has done the
opposite. According to Clyde Wayne Crews Jr. of the Competitive
Enterprise Institute, four of the five largest yearly totals of pages in
the Federal Register — the record of regulations — have occurred during
the Obama administration. The CEI's “unconstitutionality index,”
measuring Congress' delegation of its lawmaking policy, was 51 in 2013.
This means Congress passed 72 laws but unelected bureaucrats issued
3,659 regulations.
The more than $1.1 trillion of student
loan debt is restraining consumption, as is the retirement of baby
boomers. More than 40 percent of recent college graduates are either
unemployed or in jobs that do not require a college degree. This is
understandable, given that 44 percent of the job growth since the
recession ended has been in food services, retail clerking or other
low-wage jobs.
In April, the number of persons under 25
in the workforce declined by 484,000. Unsurprisingly, almost one in
three (31 percent) persons 18 to 34 are living with their parents,
including 25 percent who have jobs.
So, the rate of household formation has,
Neil Irwin reports in The New York Times, slowed from a yearly average
of 1.35 million in 2001-06 to 569,000 in 2007-13. However, a Wall Street
Journal headline announces that Washington has a plan: “U.S. Backs Off
Tight Mortgage Rules.” It really is true: Life is not one damn thing
after another; it is the same damn thing over and over.
There is, however, something new under the
sun. The Pew Research Center reports that Americans 25 to 32 —
“millennials” — constitute the first age cohort since World War II with
higher unemployment or a greater portion living in poverty than their
parents at this age. But today's millennials have the consolation of
having the president they wanted.
Read more: http://triblive.com/opinion/georgewill/6188362-74/percent-growth-recession#ixzz34jJHooiA
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