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February 25, 2004

Ketchup isn’t a Vegetable

It’s a Durable Good.

For the most part, I’ve avoided posting about the sorry excuse for “Economic Policy” that is this Administration’s. Brad DeLong does such an excellent of covering the “Clown Show,” that there seems little that I could add.

But their desperate attempt to disguise the fact the GWB is the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over a net loss of jobs1 during his term has engendered instances of true humour.

It takes real wit to contemplate reclassifying food-service work as manufacturing jobs2. Fortunately, Representative John Dingel was right there to congratulate Gregory Mankiw on his cleverness.

1 I discount the logical possibility — which not even the Administration actually believes — that their latest forecast might actually come true, and non-farm payroll employment for 2004 might be ever-so slightly higher than the 132.5 million when Bush took office.

2“See! We’re not losing manufacturing jobs, we’re gaining …”

Posted by distler at February 25, 2004 1:23 AM

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5 Comments & 0 Trackbacks

Re: Ketchup isn’t a Vegetable

On the other hand side it is kind of honest. I always suspected that the stuff sold by the burger chains is not actual food.

Posted by: Volker Braun on February 25, 2004 8:59 AM | Permalink | Reply to this

Re: Ketchup isn’t a Vegetable

Not that I am not interested in politics - but how does one code footnotes with MT?

Posted by: Urs Schreiber on February 25, 2004 9:33 AM | Permalink | Reply to this

Footnotes

Manually. (View the source to see what I did.)

There is a footnote class, which styles the footnote. Internal links are generated by giving the footnote an id (which must be unique for that month – since id’s must be unique on a page, and this footnote appears on February’s Monthly Archive page).

Posted by: Jacques Distler on February 25, 2004 11:28 AM | Permalink | Reply to this

Re: Ketchup isn’t a Vegetable

Don’t know much about economic cycles do you? Given the inflated numbers and their resulting inflated markets fabricated by the Clinton Administration, you should be thankful that unemployment is as low as it is. Also, a math whiz as you clearly are should be able to quickly see the irony in Liberals bashing the Conservative agenda when all you find in Europe are 1) Liberals, 2) unemployment in the range of 10-15%, and 3) taxation in the range of 25-75%. Recommend shifting major to http://www.eco.utexas.edu/ or never again speaking on economic topics.

Posted by: the praetorian on March 14, 2004 6:17 AM | Permalink | Reply to this

Bashing

Who’s bashing the Conservative Agenda: fiscal prudence, small Government, commitment to free trade … ?

Oh, wait! You meant the Agenda of the Bushies. Sorry.

Their economic agenda was to extract as much money from the Treasury for their rich friends and hope that the Economy would take care of itself.

They lost that gamble.

[In case you’re wondering why the tax cuts did not have the (allegedly) desired stimulatory effect on Aggregate Demand, try looking up the “Multiplier Effect” in an elementary Economics text.]

They are now reduced to fudging their economic forecast numbers and blaming the previous Administration for their own incompetence.

And, yes, President Hoover tried to blame his troubles on the Coolidge Administration, too.

Posted by: Jacques Distler on March 14, 2004 8:12 AM | Permalink | PGP Sig | Reply to this

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