Manchin plan to gut Biden agenda would support 2 million fewer jobs per year

[pecksniff]

Article.

Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin's proposal to lop $2 trillion off his own party's social spending and climate agenda would support nearly two million fewer jobs per year than the full $3.5 trillion reconciliation plan backed by President Joe Biden, progressive lawmakers, and a majority of the U.S. public.

According to new research published Thursday by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), every single congressional district across all 50 U.S. states and Washington, D.C. "would see fewer jobs supported" under the $1.5 trillion top-line figure Manchin has offered than under the $3.5 trillion proposal known as the Build Back Better Act.

A previous EPI analysis estimated that the reconciliation package combined with the Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure bill—the two central components of Biden's domestic policy agenda—would support more than four million jobs each year, on average, over a decade.

"The Build Back Better agenda would make critical investments to deliver relief to financially strained households, raise productivity, and dampen inflation pressures to enhance America's long-term economic growth prospects," said Adam Hersh, a visiting economist at EPI and the author of the new analysis. "Further reducing the scale and scope of the budget reconciliation package unequivocally means the legislation will support far fewer jobs and deliver fewer benefits to lift up working families and boost the economy as a whole."

Hersh pointed specifically to the impact that Manchin's proposed cuts would have on the senator's home state of West Virginia, which would see 9,880 fewer jobs each year—"equivalent to 1.33% of the state's overall employment"—under the $1.5 trillion alternative, hampering the state's recovery from the most unequal recession in modern U.S. history.

 

[Dribble]

Think small...be small. The new Republican mantra for the year.

 

[Bud_Spencer]

Welfare == jobs?

On what planet?

 

[bellisarius]

Welfare == jobs?

On what planet?

Seriously.

Just another opinion from an activist. SFB's abound.

 

[bellisarius]

Oh, and there will be fewer jobs.........................fewer government drone jobs. How many new IRS examiners to the fucking "progressives" want to hire? May they remain forever unemployed.

 

[Bud_Spencer]

Oh, and there will be fewer jobs.........................fewer government drone jobs. How many new IRS examiners to the fucking "progressives" want to hire? May they remain forever unemployed.

My favorite grievance in the Declaration is just that:

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

George III was a demented nutcase, just like Joe.

 

[pecksniff]

Welfare == jobs?

On what planet?

It's called Keynesian stimulus. It's a real thing, and it works.

 

[Bud_Spencer]

It's called Keynesian stimulus. It's a real thing, and it works.

That depends on the definition of "work." If you mean elevation from economic malaise, it's never worked. If you mean to advance the cause of centralization of political power, it's the bee's knees.

 

[pecksniff]

That depends on the definition of "work." If you mean elevation from economic malaise, it's never worked.

It has never not worked.

 

[Bud_Spencer]

It has never not worked.

FDR deepened and extended the Great Depression for at least seven years with his insane policies.

 

[pecksniff]

FDR deepened and extended the Great Depression for at least seven years with his insane policies.

That is some long-debunked bullshit. It's called New Deal Denialism.

"New Deal denialism" is a term coined by historian Eric Rauchway in response to the start of the "New Deal made the Depression worse!" myth by revisionist journalist Amity Shlaes.[1] Naturally, this was parroted by George Will and sufficiently distorted by Faux Noise as the "consensus" among "historians."[2] Just in time to squawk about the stimulus package! In reality, however, three-quarters of historians don't believe that the New Deal prolonged and deepened the Great Depression. There is no consensus among economists as to whether the New Deal worked or not, however.[3]

Of course, Republicans have to re-write the history of the New Deal or all their laissez-faire bloviating falls flat. If the biggest Keynesian experiment in American history succeeded, it undercuts all their arguments that government can never do anything right (we mean, just look at the DMV).[notes 5] Here are the most oft-repeated denialist talking points and why they're wrong (most of which Rauchway goes into great depth about in the linked paper):

1. "The often overlooked Depression of 1920 only took one year to resolve itself with no government intervention." (See the Depression of 1920 page.)
2. Cherry-picked statistics a la Shlaes. (Shlaes and co. like to cite unemployment statistics that exclude government jobs for no other reason than that they weren't "real" jobs. Rauchway goes into detail about how Shlaes uses unreliable and non-standard stats that no honest historians or economists use to "prove" her case. The ironic thing is, even using the least flattering statistics, it still shows that economic conditions improved under FDR.)
3. "The NRA was communism!" (The favourite target of anti-New Dealers. The National Recovery Administration was a disaster, and even FDR recognized that. It became a hotbed of crony capitalism through legalized cartels that were allowed to fix prices, etc. It's true that the economy might have recovered faster without the NRA, but it was scrapped by 1935 and by 1936, GDP was back to pre-crash levels anyway. The NRA was only a major policy for two years.)
4. "It was World War II that got us out of the Great Depression, not the New Deal/all that government spending!" (Partially true. By 1936, GDP had recovered to where it was in 1929, though unemployment was still lagging behind it. Technically, we were no longer in a "depression" or "recession" at that point. As noted above, Republicans, as well as some in Roosevelt's cabinet, called for austerity measures. FDR complied and attempted to balance the budget, raise taxes, and allowed the Fed to run a contractionary policy. In 1937, the Roosevelt Recession rolled around and the economy dipped, but never back to the depths it had before. In fact, we were exiting the Depression by the time the Japanese hit Pearl Harbor. And for those that make the latter argument above, well, it's just damned stupid and incoherent. What do you call all the spending we did during WWII?![notes 6]

And the "FDR turned a recession into a depression" line is so removed from reality as to not even be worth responding to.

 

[Bud_Spencer]

That is some long-debunked bullshit.

https://www.ff.org/fdrs-policies-prolonged-depression-by-7-years-ucla-economists-calculate/

People were starving, and that lunatic was killing and burying pigs and dumping milk down the drain.

 

[pecksniff]

https://www.ff.org/fdrs-policies-prolonged-depression-by-7-years-ucla-economists-calculate/

People were starving, and that lunatic was killing and burying pigs and dumping milk down the drain.

Yes, yes, we've all read Grapes of Wrath.

 

[Bud_Spencer]

Yes, yes, we've all read Grapes of Wrath.

You know it's true. FDR saw prices falling and was determined to create scarcity to keep them up rather than let them fall so the market could find their true value again. The result: The Great Depression dragged on and on and on...

but it was a huge political success.

 

[YDB95]

but it was a huge political success.

It wasn't even really that. The Dems got slammed in the mid-term election of 1938...after FDR made the mistake of listening to the advocates for financial austerity.

 

[pecksniff]

It wasn't even really that. The Dems got slammed in the mid-term election of 1938...after FDR made the mistake of listening to the advocates for financial austerity.

And that is what caused the "Roosevelet Recession." If FDR had stayed his original course, the Depression would have been over and done with before WWII broke out.

 

[pecksniff]

The projected job figures, by the way, come from this study and this one by the Economic Policy Institute. They are not talking about government jobs nor welfare.

By the numbers
4.0 million jobs would be supported annually by the Build Back Better agenda, including:

1.1 million caregiving jobs
763,000 green jobs
556,000 manufacturing jobs
312,000 construction jobs