An economist tells it like it is   
      
    4/15/2014   
    *BY KEITH C. BURRIS   
    COLUMNIST FOR THE BLADE*   
      
    http://tinyurl.com/q843u4h   
      
    I had a chance to chat with Kate Warne, an economist with broad   
    experience - including working for the Council of Economic   
    Advisers under President Ronald Reagan and being part of the   
    team that deregulated the airline industry.   
      
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    So, she has already confessed her time spent serving the forces   
    of evil.   
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    ...   
      
    de-regulation also has resulted in all the things that drive   
    people crazy about airline travel today: long lines, planes   
    packed like sardine cans, and flying to Sheboygan, Wis., to get   
    to Chicago.   
      
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    Yes, you got cheaper air fairs, and less reason to want to fly,   
    and she admits it's her fault, well the team she was on.   
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    The good news, she says, is that the economy is looking much   
    better - not that it is booming, by any means, but a tentative   
    calm, and even confidence, has begun to descend.   
      
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    Now, ain't that something. One of Saint Ronnie's people admits   
    things are going much better than is widely admitted, though she   
    works hard to avoid admitting Obama did good.   
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    Second, Washington, while not exactly inspiring in its   
    rationality and spirit of cooperation, is at least not   
    spectacularly and theatrically dysfunctional. We are no longer   
    talking about fiscal cliffs and default. There are even rumors   
    of bipartisanship.   
      
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    What she is saying, without actually using the words is, the   
    extreme right wing focus on bringing down Obama by crashing the   
    economy has been a disaster, and the republican party is the   
    heart of it. Which leads to the inevitable conclusion, working   
    with Obama instead of against him would have been much better   
    for this country.   
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    Further, Obamacare seems to be here to stay.   
      
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    A servant of Saint Ronnie admits that? Wow, it's about time   
    someone on the right did.   
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    ...   
      
    But why has job growth been so slow to rebound?   
    ...   
    The recession was not just a recession, but coincident with a   
    banking crisis, which triggered a worldwide financial crisis.   
    ...   
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    Funny, this is what Paul Krugman has been saying for years. This   
    is what many economists have been saying, but the right won't   
    admit it's not all Obama's fault, and Obama is struggling to   
    contain a meltdown that threatened the entire economy with   
    collapse.   
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    Here are two amazing under-reported facts:   
      
     We have regained all the jobs lost in the recession. We are   
    still looking for new ones, but we got the old ones back.   
      
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    Krugman, and other economists, and those of us who actually read   
    competent economic reports, have been saying this also.   
      
    Though she still doesn't admit free trade is the big culprit   
    here.   
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    Under pressure of recession and job loss, American workers have   
    reached their highest level of productivity in a generation.   
      
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    I reported, very long ago, that a look at the Organization of   
    Economic Cooperation and Development reports on international   
    competitiveness ranked developed countries on levels of   
    efficiency, measured in productivity. The scale was 1 to 100,   
    with 100 set at the US level of productivity. The US was clearly   
    the top. Back then Japan was known as the world leader in   
    productivity, but when you looked at the real numbers Japan was   
    ranked as 73% of US productivity.   
      
    Japan's fame was focused mostly on the automotive sector, the   
    only sector where Japan was more productive than the US.   
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    ...   
      
    The big thing we know about new jobs, future jobs, is that they   
    will be technical jobs.   
      
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    On this I'm not sure if this is the columnist's thought, or if   
    he is quoting the economist. Either way, it's misleading. Truly   
    new jobs will be relatively few, what we will have is old jobs   
    applied to new products. Real leaps forward in industrial   
    technology are actually few, and fairly slow. Computer control   
    of machines really is just a slow process of upgrades, more   
    efficient and less expensive ways of doing the same thing. This   
    has been going on for half a century or more.   
      
    Hell, I had a piece of it for nearly 40 years. In that time   
    frame I worked with equipment that was even then badly obsolete,   
    but only in ease and speed of operation, the actual controls did   
    much the same thing, but slower. Speeding it up makes it more   
    efficient, but not really that much different in working   
    principle.   
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    If we hope to fill them with U.S. citizens - our children - we   
    need to produce more college graduates, ones who know how to do   
    and make things.   
      
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    Actually, no. First because we don't need to HOPE to fill them   
    with US Citizens, we need to do it. It ain't that hard, but it   
    will require the will to do it here instead of outsourcing.   
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    /Keith C. Burris is a columnist for The Blade./   
      
      
      
   BOB KLAHN bob.klahn@sev.org   http://home.toltbbs.com/bobklahn   
      
   ... Every city consists of two, one for the poor, the other for the rich. Plato   
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