Why is recovery taking so long—and who’s to blame?

[yallerdawg]

Blame austerity, not Obama, for slow economic recovery! HuffPo

Source: Economic Policy Institute, by Josh Bivens

Introduction and key findings

This fall’s presidential campaign will offer conflicting narratives about how the U.S. economy is faring and how well incumbent policymakers have managed the recovery from the Great Recession. But we already know the story. We are enduring one of the slowest economic recoveries in recent history, and the pace can be entirely explained by the fiscal austerity, particularly with regard to spending, imposed by Republican policymakers, members of Congress primarily but also legislators and governors at the state level. Key findings of this brief are:

- Since the recovery’s trough in June 2009, employment took longer (51 months) to reach its pre-recession peak than in any other of the previous three recoveries. Much of this too-slow march back to the pre-recession employment peak can be attributed to the length and severity of the Great Recession itself—the economy had a much larger hole to dig out of. But the pace of job growth in the recovery phase following the recession was also slow relative to previous recoveries—slower than any on record except the recovery in the early 2000s. At the trough of the Great Recession the economy was more damaged than at the trough of any postwar business cycle; only the 1982 trough was comparable.

- The ability of conventional monetary policy to spur recovery following the Great Recession was more limited than in any other postwar recovery.

- Given the degree of damage inflicted by the Great Recession and the restricted ability of monetary policy to aid recovery, historically expansionary fiscal policy was required to return the U.S. economy to full health. But this government spending not only failed to rise fast enough to spur a rapid recovery, it outright contracted, and this policy choice fully explains why the economy is only partially recovered from the Great Recession a full seven years after its official end.

Read it all at: http://www.epi.org/publication/why-is-recovery-taking-so-long-and-who-is-to-blame/

[shraby]

1. Proper amounts of money geared to the infrastructure would be a great help, but the republicans

can't seem to make it happen.
Meanwhile, our streets, highways and bridges are still in very sad shape and getting worse by the day.
They don't care, they fly everyplace.

[yallerdawg]

2. They would rather hurt us...

than 'jeopardize' their next election with even reasonable, justifiable spending and taxes - or give Obama one damn thing!

They put "poison pills" in Zika-funding legislation, and then headed out for two month recess and campaigning.

[Cal33]

4. The big problem is How to get this information out to the Republican masses, who are

totally ignorant of what you have written. Many of them read only what the
Corporate media people are printing -- and nothing else.

[socialist_n_TN]

3. Keynesian explanation here...........

And of course Keynesian explanations we the ones that led to the stagflation of the 70s. Which led to the Reagan revolution and the neo-liberal era.

The answer is that the rate of profit has NOT been restored under capitalism which ties the hands of investors under capitalism, which leads to underinvestment in the real productive economy that provides jobs and encourages an accumulation of capital and a "capital strike". This fall in the rate of profit is now also affecting the mass of profits world-wide.

In short, if a capitalist has a choice in investment in his widget factory that pays 2% per year or a junk bond hedge fund that pays 4% per year, he's going with the hedge fund. EVERY. FUCKING. TIME. Especially if there is no consequences for the failure of a risky investment. If he's gets bailed out if things go catastrophically wrong, why worry about the risk? Go where the highest return is.

This is the internal logic of capitalism.

[yallerdawg]

5. Democrats simply hope to mitigate the excesses of capitalism.

Republicans couldn't care less.

One party wants to elevate the people, the other party wants to swindle the people.

[socialist_n_TN]

9. I think the key word in your title line is "hope".......

because history surely hasn't shown it's been more than that. At least over the long term. The MOST that social democratic programs give is a few decades and we're right back to where we were before the programs were instituted. Capitalism and it's excesses cannot be reformed away over the long term. The only permanent solution is socialist revolution.

[yallerdawg]

10. We have had "socialist revolution."

All have returned to various forms of capitalism, free enterprise, entrepreneurship, capital investment, stock markets, etc.

We "hope" we can find the political will through the people for economic and social justice.

Successful "political revolution" just came with Trump attached. Our more "progressive" version failed.

[socialist_n_TN]

14. Like Lenin and Trotsky failed in 1905?.........

What I'm talking about is not the product of one election cycle or for that matter elections in general.

[raven mad]

6. Started with RayGuns...........

and has gone downhill with GWB and Shrub, and recovery is not possible from their thefts.

[Orsino]

7. We get the kind of recovery we elect.

Most of the benefit going to the one percent is by design.

[ghostsinthemachine]

8. Housing. New construction specifically

Now, they cannot "stimulate" housing by illegal methods, as they have in the past, so that aspect is not recovering to the early 2000's level.

[apnu]

11. Here's what I've observed in this recovery.

Companies who could absorb the fallout did so, and took the opportunity to cut payroll and streamline. They lived,workers got fired, and those jobs will never come back. Companies who couldn't absorb the fallout were either bought by companies who could, and then "streamlined" or they died. Either way, the job losses will never return.

Yes unemployment is down since 2008, but those "new" jobs suck. They pay less and aren't real careers that can keep a person or family in the middle class.

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

13. You write: "Yes unemployment is down since 2008, but those "new" jobs suck."

Response: No. That's not true. Some of those jobs are in the Service industry and don't pay a lot but those industry jobs are still in high demand for low-skilled workers who are looking for them. They don't pay well but that's not Obama's fault. Local, state, and CONGRESS are responsible for increasing the minimum wage. Also, there has been a growth in the technical and other professional fields. The problem is that there are two people in the labor force competing for those jobs. And some of them are either over-qualified or require additional training to quality. Again, not Obama's fault.

http://www.bls.gov/ces/cesbtabs.htm

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

12. This needs to be pinned because there are DUers who continue to blame Obama for this.

[Jamaal510]

15. K&R