Public Opinion & US Economy

One blog that I really like and admire is Back Talk written by an anonymous person who describes himself (or herself) as "a professor at a research university, a registered Democrat, a liberal by some measures, but a radical conservative relative to the large majority of my colleagues." The author is an economist of talent given the analysis and manner of thinking exhibited in Back Talk.

The following is an introduction to a couple of excellent posts about the actual state of the US economy as opposed to public perceptions that I recalled from early June of this year that serves as an excellent introduction to an article from today's Wall Street Journal that I will get to shortly. Here from Back Talk, "What Americans Think About Their Economy":

Americans are not happy with the state of their economy, which either means that they are insane or that the media is so negative that Americans do not realize how good they have it. It's definitely the latter.

The health of an economy is measured by such things as GDP growth, GDP per capita, unemployment, inflation, budget deficit and cumulative debt. Additional issues include income inequality (we aren't doing that well if only the rich are getting better off), the trade deficit, and the exchange rate for the dollar.

People need some perspective before forming an opinion about the economy, but they never get that from the news media. There are two kinds of perspective that are needed: perspective over time and perspective over place. That is, on all of these measures, how do the current numbers compare to prior years in which we were much happier with the state of economy? In addition, on each of these measures, how does the American economy stack up against the other major industrialized nations of the world (i.e., the G7)?

After the professor goes through all the data he concludes:

...Americans fail to appreciate the strength of their fabulous economy. Our economy is not only as good as it has ever been (unless you count the bubble economy years), it is better than any large economy on the planet (as I'll show again tomorrow). Perhaps that's not good enough for you, but, if not, you should consider having your head examined, because that's where the problem lies.

Now let's turn to the WSJ piece today, "Fair But Unbalanced: How the Media Promote False Pessimism about the Economy":

...[T]he most recent Wall Street Journal economic forecasting survey, from July, shows that 49 out of 60 forecasters expect real GDP to grow at an average annual rate of 2%, or faster, in 2007. Of the remaining 11 forecasters, only two expect growth of less than 1%, and only one expects a recession. For 2008, the forecasters are even more optimistic, with none expecting recession.

There are at least a half-dozen other institutions publishing surveys, and all of them report very similar results among the 100 or so active professional forecasters. Except for two well-known economists (Nouriel Roubini at New York University, and Gary Shilling of A. Gary Shilling & Co.), who are not in many surveys, a super-duper majority of professional forecasting economists believe the economy will continue to expand during the next year and have believed so for the past four or five years.

Despite this, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll taken in late July found that 68% of Americans thought that the economy either was in recession already, or would experience a recession sometime during the next 12 months. Interestingly, this is not much of a change from the past. This same survey question has been polled at least five times since September 2002. Each time a robust majority of between 65% and 85% of respondents thought a recession either was under way or would occur within the year. Americans have been bearish on the economy for quite some time.

In short, over the past five years, forecasting economists from academia, consulting shops, financial services and industry have a perfect 5-0 record against a random sample of American citizens. It's important to understand that economists are not always right. Some even say that economists were put on earth to make weathermen look good.

In fact, some suggest that the experts don't know what they are talking about. They say that economists make the mistake of looking at aggregate data, for GDP or overall income, which hides serious dislocations for the middle class and those with lower incomes. Those who argue this point believe that unfair foreign competition and unfair distribution of income are leaving many Americans behind.

But this is hard to believe. The economy moderated last year, but the unemployment rate is still just 4.6%, almost a full percentage point below its 20-year average of 5.5%. Since the jobless rate first fell below 5% in December 2005, average hourly earnings have expanded at a 4.1% annualized rate--as good as any year during the late 1990s. And recent research shows that incomes for the bottom fifth of wage earners have risen faster in the past few decades than incomes at the top, hard work is being rewarded more by performance pay, and income volatility is no worse today than it was in the 1980s and 1990s.

Stranger still is a July poll by the American Research Group (ARG) in which 68% of respondents rated their own personal financial situation as "good, very good or excellent." This is a huge improvement from March 2003, when another ARG poll found only 46% of Americans were either "hopeful or happy" about their personal financial situation, while 46% were "worried or angry."

This begs the question: If the actual economic data, the views of professional economists and the self-proclaimed personal financial situation of a majority of Americans have improved this much, why are people so worried about the economy? Why do people assume they are the exception rather than the rule?

One answer is that people gather knowledge about the rest of the economy, the part they cannot see, from watching news. As a result, it could be that the format behind most business journalism skews perceptions and creates pessimism. To be very clear, I am not arguing that business news is purposefully biased. But what seems clear is that in the name of producing an entertaining product, and in an attempt to provide contrasting views, the true consensus of experts is rarely reported.

...The global economy may never have been as strong as it is today. The pace of technological achievement has boosted living standards for billions of people, and promises to do even more in the years to come. It's sad, really, that so many people can't enjoy it because they fret so much about the future.

Let me suggest fully reading the two posts in Back Talk that provide an exceptional review of where the US economy does stand now compared to the past and compared to other world economies. These posts are from June 5 and 6: What Americans Think About Their Economy, which provides a perspective of the US economy over time, and then read Perspective Over Place.

I also highly recommend the blog for insightful analysis on current topics with a bent toward what I call the economic way of thinking.

I further suggest that anytime you read or hear references to the economy in newspaper articles, news magazines, blogs, blog comments and, most especially editorials, letters to the editor, and campaign speeches and promises you turn a keen ear and eye to the assumptions made and the facts involved as most often than not both will be wrong.

I get particularly incensed when I read letters and comments about the terrible spending deficits in the US right now - typically quoting the amount and never in the context of a percentage of GDP or in any historical context of past numbers, or the growth of the economy overall compared to actual deficit trends. The same is true in almost all negative descriptions of the economy because right now the negatives are very hard to find and be honest at the same time.

I have no doubt when the occupant of the White House changes then suddenly the economy will turn excellent in every way in the eyes of the mainstream media. No doubt at all.

Income Equality v. Opportunity

In a fascinating piece by Arthur C. Brooks in the Summer 2007 issue of City Journal the issue of income inequality is explored in terms of what people really want and a review of some numbers and polls on the issue. The article is "What Really Buys Happiness? - Not Income Equality but Mobility and Opportunity":

The United States is a rich nation getting richer....

Reason to celebrate? Not according to those who worry about rising income inequality—the fact that the rich are getting richer faster than the poor are getting richer....

Rising inequality makes for good political fodder...liberal politicians, policymakers, and social activists who want to reduce economic inequality through greater taxation and redistribution of wealth. And their plan draws inspiration from a particular academic theory: that inequality is socially destructive because it makes people miserable. As a scholar working in the field of public policy, I have long witnessed hand-wringing about the alleged connection between inequality and unhappiness. What first made me doubt this prevailing view was not some new scholarly study but rather that when I questioned actual human beings about it, few expressed any shock and outrage at the enormous wealth of software moguls and CEOs. On the contrary, they tended to hope that their kids might become the next Bill Gates.

Were these people somehow unrepresentative of America? Or was the academic consensus wrong? I set out to discover which it was. What I found was that economic inequality doesn’t frustrate Americans at all. It is, rather, the perceived lack of economic opportunity that makes us unhappy. To focus our policies on inequality, instead of opportunity, is to make a grave error—one that will worsen the very problem we seek to solve and make us generally unhappier to boot....

...the arguments linking economic inequality to unhappiness are mistaken. If the egalitarians are right, then average happiness levels should be falling. But they aren’t. The GSS shows that in 1972, 30 percent of the population said that they were “very happy” with their lives; in 1982, 31 percent; in 1993, 32 percent; in 2004, 31 percent. In other words, no significant change in reported happiness occurred—even as income inequality increased...

Believing in mobility helps make people happy, then. But does mobility actually exist in the United States? The Left doesn’t think so. Liberals, including rich liberals, are far less likely than conservatives to see a better future for people who work hard. Just 26 percent of liberals with incomes above the national average believe that there’s a lot of upward income mobility in America, versus 48 percent of conservatives with below-average incomes. And 90 percent of the poorer conservatives said that hard work and perseverance could overcome disadvantage, versus 65 percent of the richer liberals. If a liberal and a conservative are exactly identical in income, education, sex, family situation, and race, the liberal will still be 20 percentage points less likely than the conservative to say that hard work leads to success for the disadvantaged.

It is small wonder, then, that conservatives tend to be happier than liberals today. The 2004 GSS showed that 44 percent of people who identified themselves as “conservative” or “extremely conservative” were “very happy” about their lives; only 25 percent of self-identified liberals or extreme liberals gave that response. Conservatives believe that they live in a more promising country than liberals do, and that makes them happier.

And those left behind, it’s important to note, will almost certainly not become happier if we redistribute more income. Indeed, they will probably become less happy. Policies designed to lower economic inequality tend to change the incentives of both the haves and the have-nots in a way that particularly harms the have-nots. Reductions in the incentives to prosper mean fewer jobs created, less economic growth, less in tax revenues, and less charitable giving—all to the detriment of those left behind. And redistribution can, as the American welfare system has shown, turn beneficiaries into demoralized long-term dependents. As Irving Kristol put it three years before the federal welfare reform of 1996, “The problem with our current welfare programs is not that they are costly—which they are—but that they have such perverse consequences for people they are supposed to benefit.”

Further, policies to redress economic inequality hardly affect true inequality at all. Policymakers and economists rarely denounce the scandal of inequality in work effort, creativity, talent, or enthusiasm. We almost never hear about the outrage that is America’s inequality in leisure time, love, faith, or fun—even though these are things that most of us value more than money. To believe that we can redress inequality in our society by moving cash around is to have a materialistic, mechanistic, and totally unrealistic understanding of the resources that we truly care about.

Finally, arguments against inequality legitimize envy. Americans may indeed have strong concerns about their relative incomes and may seek status as reflected in their economic circumstances. But to base our policies on the anxieties of those at the back of the status race is to bow before Invidia. A deadly sin is not, in my view, a smart blueprint for policymaking.

A more accurate vision of America sees a land of both inequality and opportunity, in which hard work and perseverance are the keys to jumping from the ranks of the have-nots to those of the haves. If we can solve problems of absolute deprivation, such as hunger and homelessness, then rewarding hard work will continue to serve as a positive stimulant to achievement.

Redistribution and taxation, beyond what’s necessary to pay for key services, weaken America’s willingness and ability to thrive.

This vision promotes policies focused not on wiping out economic inequality, but rather on enhancing economic mobility. They include improving educational opportunities, aggressively addressing cultural impediments to success, enhancing the fluidity of labor markets, searching for ways to include all citizens in America’s investing revolution, and protecting the climate of American entrepreneurship.

Placidity about income inequality, and opposition to income redistribution, are evidence of a light heart, not a hard one. If happiness is our goal, those who promote opportunity over economic equality have no apologies to make.

Globalization, Free Trade and Income Inequality

So many misconceptions abound as to globalization, free trade and inequality of incomes, even among so many "educated" and well informed people. The facts are very different from the perceptions and we see that so often today in our populist politicians clamoring to spread the notion that free trade/globalization is bad and that, I suppose, government welfare and high taxes are good.

I tend to think of Edwards who seems to be running his campaign on this notion and of course supported by any politician seeking union contributions. Other politicians, such as Obama, tend toward the same use of politically popular and incorrect statements on economics but since Edwards is from North Carolina I find him especially interesting to watch. [An aside, I am glad he is playing on the national stage and not a Senator wanna-be in NC right now.] The reality is that union workers are more middle class than poor and see free trade as a threat to their jobs - which in some sense is true especially for the UAW stuck with the misguided leadership of Detroit compared to the innovation of the Far East (Toyota, Honda, Kia) and the poor leadership of the textile and furniture industries of the United States.

I will expand on these thoughts later and present from facts at hand and especially refer to serious economic analysis for you to wade through but for now how about some summary from a recent IBD editorial, "The Backlash Against Globalization":

A Financial Times-Harris poll of more than a thousand people found that those in the U.S., Britain and France were three times more likely to think globalization hurts their country than helps it.

And "in response to fears of globalization and rising inequality," wrote Financial Times reporter Chris Giles, "the public in all the rich countries surveyed . . . want their governments to increase taxation on those with the highest incomes."

...Those who see the world "worse off" because of globalization must explain why, as global trade has surged over the last 30 years or so, the rate of poverty around the world has plunged.

As Surjit Bhalla, an economist affiliated with the Institute for International Economics, recently wrote: "World poverty fell from 44% of the global population in 1980 to 13% in 2000, its fastest decline in history. Global income inequality has dropped over this period and is at its lowest level since 1910."

But what about workers in rich countries like the U.S. who worry about inequality? Will higher taxes correct their so-called inequities? Not at all. U.S. economic inequality has virtually nothing to do with globalization or free trade, per se. It has everything to do with education and skills.

A recent study for the National Bureau of Economic Research found that those with a bachelor's degree can expect to earn $51,000 or so a year. Those with just a high school diploma earn $28,000.So the "income gap" is really an education and skills gap. And it's quantifiable: $23,000 a year, or nearly $1 million over a career spanning 40 years. Taking more money from people who did the right thing — went to school or pursued more high-level training — isn't the way to run an economy. That is, unless you want to run it into the ground.

Even so, globalization is a boon to all Americans. From 1980 to 2006, our total trade in goods and services soared 543%, from a mere $575 billion, or 20.6% of GDP, to $3.69 trillion, or 28%of GDP.

Has that huge swing decimated our economy? Hardly. We've created 46 million new jobs over that time. And personal disposable income after inflation has surged 64% to $27,770 from $16,938.

In a study released just last month, economists Matthew Slaughter, Grant Aldonas and Robert Lawrence found that American families gain as much as $15,000 a year due to globalization — that is, freer trade. The benefits are not illusory. They're real.

By the way, countries that raise taxes to punish the rich end up punishing only themselves. At least that's the growing economic consensus. The largest recent study, by economists at the 26-nation Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, found "tax rates negatively correlated with economic growth." A large number of earlier studies bolster their findings.

In other words, higher taxes mean lower growth. And vice versa. Higher taxes aren't a solution to inequality. Nor is protectionism.

Globalization isn't without its problems, of course, but overall it has made all of us a lot better off. We should be talking about how to improve it — not how to kill it off by erecting trade barriers and raising taxes.

I will follow up on this constantly to try to erase the myths about free trade, freedom from regulation, and the power of free markets to find the right solutions to problems, and may I dare say, usually the most moral solutions to problems rather than a government or societal solution.

Two reflections on free trade theory or the theory of comparative advantage:

First, I strongly believe that the government does have a role and duty to step in and help financially and re-train those individuals and families who suffered from the consequences of rapid changes in their workplaces and industry environments due to the lack of foresight or the greediness of managers and owners who were unwilling to adjust in time to the realities of new market places.

Second, I believe that the theory of comparative advantage as postulated by David Ricardo, a contemporary of Adam Smith in the late 1700s-early 1800s, which explains why free trade is always the best solution is irrefutable. In lay terms, when two parties specializing in what they do best and then trade then they are both better off even if one side is better at all tasks. I will devote a full post to this one day as it is absolutely true without question. Look it up if you have doubts in the meantime.

And question all you hear and read about economics and business with a keen ear.