productivity

Grueling Work Schedules Necessary To Boost Productivity? Not!

Joseph M. Firestone — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:04:02 -0500

An article in WaPo in the January 28 print edition made the case for decreasing the workload of Americans based on the fourfold increase in the productivity of US workers since the 1950s. I liked the article and didn't disagree with much of it, which is a pretty rare experience for me in the last decade when reading WaPo articles on economic policy. However, there was this little gem appearing in it, that I think is worth at least a small comment, in passing.

”Companies argue that grueling work schedules are necessary to boost productivity.”

Richard Schiffman, the author of the piece didn't defend this view, but used it as a jumping off place for part of his argument that productivity gains have been great enough to justify reduced work weeks for Americans. But in doing this he failed to mention how patently silly the argument is.

The primary measure of productivity used by the OECD today is: the ratio of Gross Domestic Product to hours worked which stands in for the more basic notion output per labor hour input into the production process. Anyway, if people work longer hours and have “grueling schedules,” then output per hour will not increase. As a matter of fact, the opposite will be the case, since much empirical evidence gathered over the years, which I won't bother linking to here, shows that if one controls for the productivity contribution from capital, the productivity contribution from labor decreases as the number of hours worked per week increases beyond 30 hours.

Also, if one looks at the OECD productivity measures for 2007, the most recent comparative figures, one finds that the US is behind, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, Norway, and Luxembourg. Luxembourg has the highest productivity rating, about 37% higher than the US. But when we look at average hours worked per year among those nations we find that every one of them has an average work year in 2007 substantially lower than the US's which was 1798, with the Netherlands at 1388, Norway at 1419, and Luxembourg at 1515.

So, to summarize, longer hours of work and productivity don't go together, whether one looks at this theoretically, or from the viewpoint of data. I think Schiffman should have pointed that out in his very good article.

US Manufacturing -- Losing Out?

Clyde Prestowitz — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 14:01:01 -0500

Clyde Prestowitz is founder and President of the Economic Strategy Institute. It is posted as part of our series, Is Manufacturing Making It?

Since manufacturing is about 11 percent of U.S. GDP, anyone who has been saying it’s dead has obviously been engaging in hyperbole. But few if any serious observers have been saying this. Rather, what they have been saying is that U.S. manufacturing has been declining unnecessarily and at an unnatural rate that is harmful to the American standard of living. Production index statistics that show rising output do not disprove this.

A large portion of U.S. manufacturing output is of non-tradable or not easily tradable goods, things like toilet tissue, ply-wood, soap, catalogues, and the like. This is the core of our manufacturing base and it will always be with us. It’s not dead and it’s not going to die. Indeed, as the overall economy grows, this production of non-tradable or not easily tradable goods will grow along with it. If we did not produce any tradable goods at all, our manufacturing output would still show an increase when the economy grew.

For most of its history, America has also been a major producer of tradable goods – things like steel, airplanes, semiconductors, machinery, appliances, and so forth. Indeed, we still produce some of these things, but far fewer than we used to. As a result, manufacturing as a percent of GDP has been in steady decline from about 25 percent in the early 1980s to today’s roughly 11 percent. This decline has been particularly precipitate in the past decade during which there has been about a 6 percentage point plunge.

To some extent, this decline is natural and inevitable. Manufacturing as a percent of GDP tends naturally to decline in all economies as they develop and mature. This is even happening to China’s economy now despite its having become the workshop of the world. But the decline in the manufacturing share of the U.S. economy has been far more dramatic than in any other industrialized economy. Even in the UK which has long emphasized services as the core of its economy, manufacturing is nearly 13 percent of GDP. For Germany, Japan, France, Italy, and most other OECD countries the shares range from 15 to 25 percent. Since America has roughly the same or better manufacturing oriented resource endowments as these countries, one would expect its manufacturing share of output to be as high or higher.

That it is not, is a major concern because manufacturing contributes disproportionately to support of R&D, product innovation, and to gains in overall economic productivity. In other words, if America is doing less manufacturing than it could competitively be doing, then it is underperforming in research, innovation, and productivity. This is the major issue.

One way to think about this is to think of a company that produces widgets in an economy that has a rapidly growing widget market. The company’s sales, production, and profits grow rapidly, and its management issues glowing reports to shareholders and stock analysts. But it is actually not growing as fast as the market or as its competitors. In other words, it is losing market share even as its absolute production grows. For a while all seems wonderful, but eventually its share of the market is too small. Distributors refuse to carry its product and it can’t afford to spend to develop new products and eventually goes out of business.

As for employment, because manufacturing pays better wages than services on average, it is desirable that the United States have all the manufacturing employment that it can have on a competitive basis. The manufacturing employment numbers presented here , like the output numbers, are focused on absolute numbers rather than the important percentages. If the absolute number of manufacturing workers was stable during a period of substantial expansion of the work force, then manufacturing employment has fallen as a percent of total employment and the high wages associated with manufacturing are being paid to a smaller and smaller portion of workers so that overall national income is falling or at best stagnating. Which is in fact, exactly what has been happening.

This is not at all a pretty or reassuring picture. And it is clearly the result of mercantilist international trade reducing what under normal market conditions would be the expected level of U.S. tradable goods output and of U.S. manufacturing employment.

The Myth of the manufacturing recovery

Robert E. Scott — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 18:12:36 -0500

This post originally appeared at The Huffington Post, Robert Scott is Senior International Economist and Director of International Programs, Economic Policy Institute. It is posted as part of our series, Is Manufacturing Making It?

Some bloggers have suggested that manufacturing is doing well, just because output has grown for the past few months. One sets up a straw man in a piece title "No, Virginia, U.S. Manufacturing isn't dead," but no serious economist claims that manufacturing is dead. Manufacturing employed 11.5 million workers in January, 2010, 8.9% of U.S. non-farm employment. However, nearly 6 million manufacturing jobs have disappeared since 1998, and manufacturing's share of GDP has fallen by a similar share in that time. The Bonddag blog and many others claim that productivity growth is responsible for manufacturing job loss, but they've got it wrong. Growing manufacturing trade deficits from 1998 to 2006, and the worst recession since the 1930s are responsible for the vast majority of all manufacturing job loss. We can reclaim a large share of these jobs by shrinking the trade deficit and putting this recession behind us.

I explained the relationship between manufacturing output, productivity growth, trade deficits and job loss in my Snapshot on Manufacturing Job Loss: Productivity is not the culprit. It shows that productivity has always grown rapidly in manufacturing--there was no big upsurge in the past decade. The recent uptick in productivity occurred in other sectors of the economy, which does help explain why job growth economy-wide was so terrible in the Bush era, but that's another story. With manufacturing, the story is simple.

In the past, we had high growth in real output and high output growth in manufacturing leading to stable employment. Then, after 2000, productivity growth continued but output growth flat-lined and manufacturing employment collapsed. The reason: a soaring trade deficit in manufacturing products. People kept buying more manufactured goods; they just bought them from China and other exporters, not from U.S. manufacturers. Josh Bivens reviewed this history in his earlier Snapshot on Trade Deficits and Manufacturing Employment.

In the past, employment and the trade deficit in manufacturing were roughly stable for 30 years from the late 60s through the late 90s.* Then the Asian financial crisis hit in 1998. The value of the dollar soared along with the manufacturing trade deficit. Manufacturing employment fell like a rock, with a lag of about 2 years, as shown in the graph below. The manufacturing trade balance did start to improve in 2007, but the big drop in the deficit came in 2008 and 2009, and was caused by the recession. The recession was also responsible for the loss of about 2 million of the 5.7 million manufacturing jobs lost since 1998.

Bonddad is misguided, and his analysis is confused. His first mistake is to plot a chart of the U.S. Industrial Production Index since 1960 with a trend line (it's clearly not a fitted trend, but something done with a ruler or graphing software). He says that the increase in manufacturing output is "continual", suggesting that growth has been steady, but that's flat out wrong. One problem is that you can't calculate or "eyeball" growth rates from a linear plot of output. Every introductory, undergraduate finance student learns that you have to plot stock prices on a logarithmic graph to spot changes in growth rates. This is simply because growth compounds--remember, your grandmother taught you that bit of wisdom about the advantage of putting your money in a savings account.

In fact, growth in U.S. manufacturing output dropped sharply after 2000, as shown in my snapshot above. If we use the FRB industrial production index and the business cycle peaks shown on Bonddad's graph, and calculate simple compound average growth rates, the index grew 4.1% per year between July 1990 and March 2001 (the Clinton Business cycle). However, growth in the index fell to only 1.8% between March of 2001 and December 2007. The BLS output numbers show even slower growth in the Bush era, as indicated in my snapshot above.

Bonddad makes a number of mistakes in analyzing the relationship between trade and employment. First, he cites a chart from SilverOz that supposedly compared imports of total goods and services with manufacturing employment. However, exports matter too, and for manufacturing, what is most relevant is the manufacturing trade balance, the difference between imports and exports of manufactured goods. The graph reportedly includes imports of both services and non-manufactured commodities, which are clearly un-related to manufacturing. Furthermore, exports sales can support domestic employment, and imports displace employment. You have to look at changes in the manufacturing trade balance to get an accurate picture of the impact of trade on the demand for manufacturing output and labor.

But there are more problems with Bonddad's trade and employment graph. It has a blue line which purports to measure imports of goods and services (measured with a negative sign, which is appropriate). But this series never exceeds $700 billion in imports. However, U.S. imports exceeded $2.5 trillion in 2008. Something is wrong here. It's not the trade deficit either, because that was $-760 billion in 2006. Finally, the story is about manufacturing employment. The graph reports employment in "goods producing industries," which include a number of domestic, non-manufacturing industries. The graph should compare manufacturing employment with the trade balance in manufactured goods, as I do in the chart above.

To close the trade gap and rebuild manufacturing will required a coherent trade and industrial strategy. We must end currency manipulation by China and other Asian countries, aggressively attack unfair trade practices and rebuild manufacturing. We also need to create at least 4 to 5 million jobs in the rest of the economy to help end the recession, and rebuild demand for manufactured products. These are topics for another day. That discussion should start by acknowledging that productivity growth is a key source of strength and competitiveness in manufacturing, and is not responsible for manufacturing job loss.

*The exception was the period from 1979-1989, when the trade deficit also soared and manufacturing employment also dropped. This was also caused by an over-valued currency, which was corrected by the 1985 Plaza Accord. Subsequently, the trade deficit declined and manufacturing employment stabilized.

For more information, please visit EPI.org.

Green Shoots. For Whom?

Eric Lotke — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:43:58 -0500

Today’s “Productivity and Costs” data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics contain what looks like good news. Productivity increased at a 9.5 percent annual rate during the third quarter of 2009, the largest gain since 2003.

The Associated Press called it “sizzling.” The New York Times said we “surged.”

It’s good news and I’m happy about it. I especially like the 4.0 percent increase in outputs, led by a 12.4 percent increase in the manufacturing of durable goods. It almost starts to look like green shoots in a gray economy.

But keep the cork in the bottles. The hours worked last quarter dropped by fully 5.0 percent. The productivity gain came from doing more work in fewer hours. In the durable goods sector, the hours worked dropped a full 7.2 percent. The increase in productivity is fundamentally about people working harder.

And people aren’t getting paid for their hard work. Real hourly compensation rose only 0.2 percent last quarter. So if somebody is pocketing the gains from 9.5 percent increase in productivity, it isn’t the people working on the lines. Yes, they’re happy to have jobs. Yes, it’s nice to see any gain at all after a decade of decline in wages and income. But no, we don’t want to recreate the bubble that popped. We need to make sure these gains are widely shared and that the people doing the work reap their fair share of the benefit.

Source: BLS

Balance of Trade and Share of Global Manufacturing

Natasha Chart — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:10:53 -0400

Last time, we looked at manufacturing output per capita in the world's largest 20 economies. Taking at a smaller set of countries this time, I wanted to see how their ratio of exports to imports measured up against their share of global trade and the percentage of national GDP generated by their manufacturing industries over the last 30 years in five year intervals stepping back from 2008.

Included are China and the US, and five other countries with roughly US-equivalent standards of living: Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom.

The chart below puts the relative size of a country's manufacturing sector next to its export strength and share of world GDP. Looking at the balance of trade figures, only Canada, China and Germany are doing better at selling more than they buy than they were 30 years ago. Yet the three listed countries with a positive balance of trade, China, Germany and Japan, all have manufacturing sectors in excess of 20 percent of GDP. Of those, it's encouraging to see Germany having steadily improved their balance of trade while setting themselves up to meet their Kyoto emissions targets early.

There are countries that are in the business of "cashing out their intellectual assets" through outsourcing, and those who aren't. Productivity gains that decrease the manufacturing job pool aren't the only problem with keeping productive industries up and running.

Next time we'll take a look at how some of these measures compare with the number of manufucturing jobs.

By The Numbers

All figures, such as GDP and manufacturing GDP are from United Nations statistics. The world GDP and world manufacturing figures used to calculate the first row in the table were arrived at by adding entries for GDP and manufacturing output for all countries respectively, then using that number to calculate the percentage of global output generated by manufacturing activity. These figures have then also been used to calculate figures throughout the chart as described below.

(I have issues with the term 'world GDP', but it seems to get the point across.)

For each country, there's an export/import ratio, calculated by using UN reported figures for total exports and imports. Numbers greater than one indicate a positive balance of trade, numbers less than one indicate that a country is buying more than they're selling.

The following three rows for each country allow you to compare the percentage of national GDP generated by manufacturing, the percentage of global manufacturing output their national industry represents, and then their GDP as a percentage of world GDP.

Regarding China, as noted in this article about the largest manufacturing countries from 1990-2008, China's UN-reported data doesn't separate out manufacturing from mining and utilities. Figures for China's manufacturing sector are therefore inflated, as are the ratios calculated from them. The Curious Cat entry suggests that through 2005-2007, the manufacturing share of this figure should have been 78%, so we can guess that their recent numbers, at least, are off by a little over 20%.

Country	Indicator	1978	1983	1988	1993	1998	2003	2008
World	Mfg/GDP Ratio	25%	23%	23%	20%	19%	17%	17%
Canada	Ex/Im Ratio	1.02	1.15	1.03	1	1.05	1.11	1.05
	Mfg/GDP Ratio	17.5%	15.8%	17.5%	14.7%	16.9%	15.4%	13.0%
	% World Mfg.	1.6%	1.9%	2.0%	1.7%	1.9%	2.1%	1.9%
	% World GDP	2.3%	2.7%	2.5%	2.2%	2.1%	2.3%	2.5%
China	Ex/Im Ratio	0.93	1.1	0.92	0.92	1.27	1.08	1.14
	M-Mfg-U/GDP	44.6%	38.2%	38.0%	38.8%	39.3%	40.3%	41.5%
	% World Mfg.	4.1%	4.3%	3.5%	5.0%	7.4%	10.6%	17.3%
	% World GDP	2.3%	2.6%	2.1%	2.5%	3.5%	4.5%	7.2%
France	Ex/Im Ratio	1.03	0.95	0.95	1.05	1.11	1.04	0.91
	Mfg/GDP Ratio	21.0%	18.6%	16.6%	14.7%	14.6%	12.7%	10.7%
	% World Mfg.	4.5%	3.6%	3.7%	3.8%	3.9%	3.6%	3.0%
	% World GDP	5.4%	4.5%	5.1%	5.1%	4.9%	4.9%	4.7%
Germany	Ex/Im Ratio	0.91	0.88	0.99	1	1.05	1.13	1.15
	Mfg/GDP Ratio	28.5%	26.5%	26.5%	21.3%	20.6%	20.2%	21.0%
	% World Mfg.	8.8%	7.0%	8.1%	8.6%	8.1%	7.8%	7.4%
	% World GDP	7.8%	6.1%	6.9%	8.0%	7.3%	6.6%	6.0%
Japan	Ex/Im Ratio	1.18	1.14	1.28	1.32	1.21	1.16	1.01
	Mfg/GDP Ratio	28.8%	28.1%	27.0%	24.3%	22.5%	21.0%	21.3%
	% World Mfg.	12.0%	11.8%	17.8%	21.2%	15.6%	14.1%	10.1%
	% World GDP	10.5%	9.6%	14.9%	17.2%	12.9%	11.4%	8.1%
UK	Ex/Im Ratio	1.06	1.04	0.87	0.97	0.97	0.92	0.9
	Mfg/GDP Ratio	24.6%	22.2%	21.0%	18.4%	17.2%	12.5%	12.1%
	% World Mfg.	3.5%	3.7%	4.0%	3.6%	4.5%	3.7%	3.1%
	% World GDP	3.5%	3.8%	4.3%	3.9%	4.9%	5.0%	4.4%
US	Ex/Im Ratio	0.88	0.84	0.8	0.91	0.86	0.68	0.72
	Mfg/GDP Ratio	22.7%	19.6%	19.4%	17.1%	16.6%	13.6%	13.0%
	% World Mfg.	22.2%	24.5%	22.0%	22.8%	25.9%	23.6%	17.7%
	% World GDP	24.7%	28.5%	25.8%	26.2%	29.1%	29.5%	23.3%

Productivity Rose, Workers Didn’t

Eric Lotke — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 10:53:26 -0400

Today’s “Productivity and Costs” data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics contain what looks like good news. “Labor productivity increased at a 6.6 percent annual rate during the second quarter of 2009.”

The Associated Press adds context to the data: “Worker productivity, the single biggest factor determining living standards, grew at the fastest pace in nearly six years in the spring while labor costs fell by the most in nine years.” That sounds like good news. “Increases in productivity can help boost living standards because companies can increase wages financed by rising output.”

So why aren't workers celebrating?

First, what the AP and the BLS call “labor costs,” most of us call a paycheck. The biggest decline in nine years isn’t good news. Real hourly compensation dropped 1.0 percent last quarter.

Then, we have the irony of productivity. Read the definition with care: “Labor productivity, or output per hour, is calculated by dividing an index of real output by an index of hours.” In other words, if you make more stuff in less time, you’ve increased your productivity. That’s intuitive.

But watch how it works in real life. In the manufacturing sector, productivity grew 4.9 percent. But that growth came because output fell 9.8 percent and hours worked decreased by an even bigger 14.0 percent. So if you do the math, it’s a 4.9 percent increase in productivity.

But if you work the line, it means your output is down and your hours dropped even lower. Yes, you’re more productive — making less stuff in even fewer hours.

Source: BLS

But that’s not the sound of a happy workplace. That’s the sound of an economy grinding to a halt. Who's listening?

Working Harder for Less Mocks the American Dream

Tula Connell — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 16:25:55 -0400

Worsening unemployment. Millions of home foreclosures. Two-income households unable to support families. America's workers are facing economic disasters so severe, even the national media is paying attention.

But the current crisis has long roots. America's working families have been suffering through what is now a generation-long stagnation of wages and rising economic insecurity.

Steps must be taken immediately to shore up our flagging economy and provide much-needed assistance to working families. The AFL-CIO union movement supports an immediate moratorium on home foreclosures and the passage of a second fiscal stimulus package, including extension of unemployment insurance and federal aid to states and cities to prevent further cutbacks of vital public services.

Yet short-term measures will not be enough.

We must restore the balance between workers and their employers to ensure that workers can bargain fairly for an equitable share of our nation's prosperity. Working families have been left behind over the past three decades, as virtually all income gains have gone to the wealthiest Americans.

Between the mid-1940s and mid-1970s, inflation-adjusted wages doubled for most U.S. workers, but between 1979 and 2007, they grew only 7 percent. Since 1979, productivity, or output per hour, has grown 70 percent—10 times as fast as real wages.

As a result, income and wealth are more unequally distributed in the United States than in any other developed country and are more unequal today than at any time since the 1920s. Even more alarming, American intergenerational economic mobility is falling and is already lower than in many European countries.

In a House subcommittee hearing on the economy last week, Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) summed it up this way:

In short, many Americans are working harder for less. Less income, less job security, less health and pension coverage, less time at home, and less opportunity. Left unchecked, this trend will strike at the very core of the American dream.

Economic Policy Institute (EPI) economist Jared Bernstein describes it this way:

The difficulties facing American workers predated the recession. There may be no more telling statistic…than the fact that the real wage for the median male was lower in 2007 than in 1973.

For the last few decades, [workers] have been losing employer-provided health coverage, or paying more out-of-pocket for premiums, health services, or medications. Their pensions are less secure, and have flipped from majority guaranteed benefit to guaranteed contribution, shifting the risk of an adequate retirement benefit from their employer to themselves and their family.

Correcting this long-term imbalance will require multiple strategies. We need policies that ensure a just global economy. We need a government that provides quality services, adequate public investment and fair taxes. And we need to ensure that when workers seek to join together to improve their wages and access to health care and retirement security, they can do so without employer harassment and intimidation.

In 2007, full-time union workers were paid $863 in median weekly income, compared with $663 for their nonunion counterparts. In March 2007, 78 percent of union workers in the private sector had jobs with employer-provided health insurance, compared with only 49 percent of nonunion workers. Union workers also are more likely to have retirement and short-term disability benefits.

America's workers know union membership helped build the nation's middle class. Some 60 million workers say they would join a union if they could. But the nation's labor laws are broken, letting greedy employers harass and intimidate employees who seek to form a union. In the post-World War II years, our nation's middle class mushroomed because workers from the factory lines to the office steno pool could join together and form unions, enabling them to negotiate for better wages, affordable health care and retirement security. Their purchasing power helped strengthen communities, and their solidarity pushed through such vital policies as job safety standards and Medicare that benefited all working Americans.

But some 92 percent of private-sector employers, when faced with employees who want to join together in a union, force employees to attend closed-door meetings to hear anti-union propaganda, and 75 percent hire outside consultants to run anti-union campaigns. When America's workers are unable to win a voice at work, the American Dream becomes harder and harder to reach.

That's why passage of the Employee Free Choice Act is a top priority for the union movement. The Employee Free Choice Act is a crucial step in moving our nation toward a just economy. It would level the workplace playing field by enabling employees to sign up for a union through a majority verification (card-check) process or labor board election, whichever they choose. It also would provide for mediation and arbitration if management and the union can't work out a contract in 90 days. Because even after workers successfully form a union, in one-third of the instances, employers refuse to negotiate a contract.

Chris Williams, who teaches introductory physics at Pace University in the New York City area, has experienced this firsthand. As an "adjunct faculty" member, Williams couldn't survive on his wages from Pace, where the average pay for teaching a 15-week, three-credit course is just $2,500. So while a tenured professor might earn $100,000 annually, an adjunct in the next classroom with the same qualifications would earn only $15,000 for the equivalent of a full-time workload.

Williams and other adjuncts joined the New York State United Teachers/AFT (NYSUT/AFT) in December 2003. But, once at the bargaining table, Pace dragged its heels, and today, the adjuncts still have no contract. Williams, a strong supporter of the Employee Free Choice Act, puts it this way:

Anything that can speed that process has to be good for workers. It's clear that people need someone to represent them collectively. At the moment, the balance of power is almost completely with the employers. It's long overdue that workers shift the power a little bit in our favor.

The health of the U.S. economy will turn on whether we let corporations get away with paying poverty wages to those responsible for teaching those who, ultimately, will lead our country. And so will the future of our nation.

(Show your support for the Employee Free Choice Act by signing a petition for its passage here. We plan to present 1 million signatures supporting the Employee Free Choice Act to the next Congress and president.)

Myopic Selfishness of the Wealthy Leads to Constricting Economy

Gordon Johnson — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:06:21 -0400

The economic stance in favor today is to give breaks to the wealthy under the expectation that if they have more money, they are more likely to be in a position to invest to make our means of production bigger and better. What the stance is missing is that corporations do lots of marketing studies to figure out how much of what to produce. Guess what the marketing studies look at? *How much the rest of us have to spend!!*

Well if the wealthy have all the money, what is the level of production the corporations will gear up for? Instead of a cornucopia of great goods and services for many, it leads to production of extravagances and luxury goods no regular person would or could waste their money on. In essence, it is economic slavery as the rest of us scurry to try and cover our life costs with ever-shrinking wages.

How much profit does that leave the corporations? They myopically think they make as much profit on the big ticket items for the few as they would have on medium ticket items for us all.

Put (or leave) the money in the average person's pocket and something quite different unfolds. We, having more money, can afford more and better things so we all in fact have a better standard of living. Our spending would confirm (realigned) corporate choices to invest in improved production and to hire more people for more medium ticket items, and as more people are hired there is even more money flowing through the system, leading to even more and better goods and services.

The ironic thing is that an increasingly larger flow of medium ticket goods and services will actually end up producing much larger profits for the corporations, and a more stable economy and society to boot: we would have lower unemployment and poverty, higher tax revenue so lower deficit or even a return to surplus (given away by our short-sighted, selfish Republican "friends"), fewer foreclosed houses, maybe even longer lasting marriages. And if our economy is blossoming instead of shriveling, what does that do to the stature of the US in the eyes of the rest of the world? Perhaps even the terrorists would have to acquiesce that the US is good to its people in ways they claim we have not been.

The last 16 years confirm this. What happened to the economy under Clinton? Under Bush?

QED