The Nature of Things

On this Labor Day, Americans are feeling very insecure about jobs.  Furthermore, they don't understand why politicians are not as concerned about the unemployment rate as they are.  In poll after poll, they have expressed their feelings loudly and clearly.  They want their leaders to stop obsessing about the deficit and focus their energies on creating more jobs. ( Click on the graph to see a larger image .) This is fairly typical of those polls.  Voters from all across the political spectrum and in every region of the country believe by a margin of more than two-to-one that politicians should be working to create more jobs, rather than talking about the deficit 24-7. And it is not only average voters who think this way.  Knowledgeable economists, some of them with a Nobel Prize on their mantel , have warned for years that we are spending too much time dithering on the deficit.   The problem is jobs, lack thereof .  If we improve the economy and put pe...

The big news in the business world today is that American business had profits of an annualized rate of $1.66 TRILLION between July and September of this year. That is a record. Those are the biggest profits ever recorded by American businesses. And yet these same American businesses are constantly whining that the Obama Administration doesn't love them and that they have created an environment that is hostile to business. Personally, I wouldn't mind a share of that hostility! It was also announced today that the economy grew faster during that same period than was previously reported. The growth rate was 2.5% instead of 2%. That's nothing to shout about, but it is a clear indication that, thanks to government assistance that pulled it out of a deep, deep hole, the economy is moving in the right direction. We've now had five consecutive quarters when the GDP grew. So why hasn't this good news for business translated into more job creation? While some jobs ...