NPR: Maybe a slow economy is just what we need!
posted at 1:21 pm on April 27, 2012 by Ed Morrissey
Old and busted: The economy is picking up steam under Obama and that’s great news. New hotness: The economy is slow … and that’s great news! After this morning’s GDP report from the Department of Commerce, NPR offered the counterfactual headline you’d only see during a Democratic administration:
Wait, someone at NPR must have thought later. We can’t admit that the economy is slow at 2.2% GDP, even though everyone else already knows it. When readers click on the link, the argument magically changes to this:
Scott Neuman offers this defense of slow-growth policies:
Growth rates have been modest at best compared with the 4-plus percent growth in the years well before the U.S. began slouching toward its worst post-World War II recession.
On Friday, the government reported that the economy grew at a 2.2 percent pace in the first quarter, down from the 3 percent rate at the end of 2011. The Federal Reserve this week said it expects growth to “remain moderate over coming quarters and then to pick up gradually.”
Common sense says high growth rates are good and slower, more modest ones are not so good. But is that always the case? After all, the “irrational exuberance” of the early 2000s helped bring on the recession as people borrowed and spent their way to prosperity.
Actually, it wasn’t irrational exuberance of growth that Alan Greenspan criticized in that period; it was irrational exuberance in the stock markets that concerned him. That did cause people to use their homes like ATM machines, and fueled growth in that period unhealthily, but that was created by a deliberate distortion in lending markets, not by the economic growth itself.
Most of the economists Neuman quotes disagree with him, saying that slow growth combined with high unemployment is unhealthy — and wouldn’t become healthy until unemployment went below 6%, at least. In most years, that would just be common sense. In an election year with a Democratic incumbent in the White House, apparently the government-subsidized media feels more free to indulge counterfactual flights of fancy. I can’t imagine why …
Related Posts:
Breaking on Hot Air
It’s come to this: Venezuela approves funds to relieve the toilet-paper shortage
Video: Dem Congressman rips IRS for abuses, threatens bringing in special prosecutor
Blowback
Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.
Trackbacks/Pings
Trackback URL
Comments
Only solution to this for Dems and RINOs, for tax ‘expenditures’ –
Tax Ireland!
Liam on May 21, 2013 at 8:03 PM
Shouldn’t O’bama be able to talk to some of his relatives over there and sort things out?
rightmind on May 21, 2013 at 8:09 PM
That is called “competition’. Something Obama understands about as well as he spells or pronounces common words.
pat on May 21, 2013 at 8:10 PM
Abolish the corporate tax. It isn’t even close to being worth having. Just make dividends part of income.
Count to 10 on May 21, 2013 at 8:11 PM
Don’t touch the Guinness…
d1carter on May 21, 2013 at 8:11 PM
Tax it like hell!
It’s costing American liberals spending money.
What are you — anti-American?
I bet you’d shoot a guy you might catch raping a woman, without knowing his circumstances and how he feels.
Liam on May 21, 2013 at 8:15 PM
Since some of my companies do business offshore, I am as guilty as Apple, albeit on a comparatively infinitesimal scale, in setting up Irish holding companies that place company funds in American banks and other American-based financial vehicles. All perfectly legal.
Why, because I don’t wish to pay a single penny more in taxes, no matter to which government that’s involved. Why does Apple do it or, for that matter, any other huge publicly traded entity do it? Well, if they didn’t, they’d be open to shareholder suits for “wasting corporate assets” or shareholder “Change of Management” proxy fights at their next annual meeting, which would be prosecuted by some multi-billion dollar investment fund holders.
A publicly held company has a lot more scrutiny, due to its board’s fiduciary duty to shareholders, than does a simple, greedy bastard like me.
TXUS on May 21, 2013 at 8:18 PM
lol, He was just socially awkward and didn’t know how to ask politely.
arnold ziffel on May 21, 2013 at 8:19 PM
I hope you get filthy rich.
And never hire liberals.
Liam on May 21, 2013 at 8:19 PM
I love to mention this sort of stuff to my Apple using lib friends.
How Apple uses foreign labor (toss in exploit for extra effect) and minimizes their tax exposure thru perfectly legal means.
Fun to watch them squirm.
Hill60 on May 21, 2013 at 8:20 PM
Ban St Patrick’s Day parades !!
burrata on May 21, 2013 at 8:20 PM
Kill a rapist, offend a liberal.
Liam on May 21, 2013 at 8:21 PM
No! We can’t do THAT!
Tax it instead! See — a level playing field.
Liam on May 21, 2013 at 8:23 PM
If following the law to avoid paying taxes is wrong, can we impeach Obama on the fact that he claimed deductions on his 1040?
malclave on May 21, 2013 at 8:27 PM
That’s funny. When Clinton made one of his returns public years ago, he wrote off his used undershorts at $2.50 each.
I don’t file a long form any more. But when I did, I never claimed my charitable donations. What I return to God does not leave me room to try getting back a piece of it.
Liam on May 21, 2013 at 8:31 PM
I’d like to travel back into the past and bitchslap everyone involved in setting up LoN/UN
dmacleo on May 21, 2013 at 8:33 PM
Well, when your choice is paying the Irish 12.5% on offshore earnings vs. the IRS’s 35% on same, almost three times as much, this Texan’s ready to share a pint and a “top ‘o the mornin’ to ye.”
TXUS on May 21, 2013 at 8:33 PM
Great !
Now let them try to tax Cinco de Mayo parade ,
you know for a level playing field !!
burrata on May 21, 2013 at 8:33 PM
Long as ye buy the first pint, we celebrate!
Liam on May 21, 2013 at 8:35 PM
That would be racist, man. What is wrong with you?
The Irish aren’t a minority.
Why do I hang out with you people? /
Liam on May 21, 2013 at 8:37 PM
Nigh a problem, William. I’ll buy the pints, you bring the lassies.
TXUS on May 21, 2013 at 8:47 PM
Deal!
I have a thing for redheads. That okay there?
Liam on May 21, 2013 at 8:49 PM
Éirinn go Brách (or for my English friends, Erin go Bragh)
IrishEyes on May 21, 2013 at 8:52 PM
From an American of Scot lineage: Ciamar a tha thu?
Liam on May 21, 2013 at 8:55 PM
Tax Bono.
Ronnie on May 21, 2013 at 8:55 PM
That’s one way of looking at it, the other way of looking at it, is that by claiming the deduction, it provides more to give. i.e, if you are in the 28% bracket, if you don’t take the deduction, for every dollar you donate, you have to earn $1.39.
AZfederalist on May 21, 2013 at 8:57 PM
+1000
Out his a$$!
He’s nothing but an international panhandler in a Bond Street suit.
Liam on May 21, 2013 at 8:58 PM
I’m no longer in position to itemize. But I have a personal religious view. I worked from there.
Liam on May 21, 2013 at 9:01 PM
I do, too. If I get $100 bill from a bank (I hate $100 bills) I put it in the first charity box I see, wrapped in a $1. We’re not rich, rich. We just have a little breathing room. My philosophy is good deeds don’t count if you tell someone or claim it as a deduction. My accountant hates me… lol.
Fallon on May 21, 2013 at 9:06 PM
I’m of the view, as according to Scripture, that for what we do in private with the Lord, He will reward us openly.
I believe as you do.
Liam on May 21, 2013 at 9:10 PM
Everybody needs to do what their conscience tells them. I think where one would get off track is if one were to give because it is tax deducttible.
AZfederalist on May 21, 2013 at 9:10 PM
… as far as giving without publicizing it; up until this week, I was under the impression that my charitable donations were completely private and that the IRS would keep those records private.
AZfederalist on May 21, 2013 at 9:13 PM
THAT describes a liberal.
Liam on May 21, 2013 at 9:13 PM
Think about it — Bill Clinton deducted from his $2.50 a pair for his ‘donated undershorts, and we’re expected to think he’s somehow a ‘nice guy’?
Liam on May 21, 2013 at 9:18 PM
I’m in a bad mood all day.
Give me a troll to chew on.
Liam on May 21, 2013 at 9:21 PM
We do a lot of things wrong in Ireland
but the corporate tax rate was one of the things we did right
now the eurocrats want to take it away
breffnian on May 21, 2013 at 9:29 PM
Apple: “Hey Ireland how about a low tax rate?”
Ireland: Brilliant!
Apple: Brilliant!
BKennedy on May 21, 2013 at 9:56 PM
Good. That’s my only problem with Apple doing this; that they are a bunch of hypocritical progs.
As to declaring taxes, I’ve considered the doing in private aspect, and really respect those who chose that route, but when I consider all the pure evil the government does with my tax dollar, I chose to keep as much out of their wicked hands as legally possible. I still fear it won’t be enough to wash me of the guilt I have in continuing to fund that evil.
pannw on May 21, 2013 at 10:31 PM
The proggie lib hears only “misses out on … tax revenue” and says, “That’s not fair! You’re not paying your fair share!”
When asked about the jobs, the proggie lib responds indignantly, “Well, since you won’t give EVERYONE a well-paying programmer or executive job, then THAT’S NOT FAIR either!”
When told life isn’t fair, the proggie lib snarls, “Once the government controls everything, IT WILL BE!”
Marcola on May 22, 2013 at 12:26 AM
Letting too many snakes onto the Emerald Isle in P.C. stupidity.
O’Sharia.
profitsbeard on May 22, 2013 at 3:49 AM
Say there wasn’t anyone on that panel that has a rich heiress wife that shelters her NINE-figure fortune in a Trust, is there?
Cough-Cindy-Cough-McCain…
Tekov Yahoser on May 22, 2013 at 4:57 AM
I guess the Senate Democrats figured they’d found a pot o’ gold.
Odysseus on May 22, 2013 at 7:27 AM
The nerve of those Irish.
Not taxing everyone that wants to do business in their country over 50%. To not support their ruling elite with well earned compensation and benefits such as “seperate but equal” healthcare, pensions/social security, immunity from tax and regulations as well as most non felonious law.
They are obviously infidels and heathens unworthy of our fearless leaders support.
acyl72 on May 22, 2013 at 7:31 AM