“We are,” Michael A. Walsh, looking at the dismal state of the U.S. economy writes in the New York Post, “witnessing the total failure of academic Keynesian economics, with its heavy emphasis on high taxes and exorbitant government spending.” (Via Instapundit.) As Michael Barone reminds us, it’s not just government spending that’s dragging the economy down:
. . . the Obama Democrats piled further burdens on would-be employers in the private sector. Obamacare and the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill are scheduled to be followed by thousands of regulations that will impose impossible-to-estimate costs on the economy.
That seems to have led to a hiring freeze. . . . [W]hile the number of layoffs is now vastly less than in the first half of 2009, the number of new hires has not increased appreciably. Many more people have been unemployed for longer periods than in previous recessions, and many more have stopped looking for work altogether.
It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the threat of tax increases and increased regulatory burdens have produced something in the nature of a hiring strike.
With the departure of his economic team, the president would do well to tap some people familiar with the burdens of federal regulations, you know, guys who have worked in the private sector.
Although they may have worked in the private sector, the Marxist will pick fellow Marxists; however, given Obama’s track record, he will more than likely pick them from academia.
yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
Now let us add to our understanding of these matters, that $1.6T annual deficits are, in themselves, a threat of tax increases. No, not just a threat; a certainty of either future tax increases or future inflation – and inflation is the cruelest tax. Hence, the importance of cutting the deficit. Which means: cutting spending.
It’s the spending. It’s the deficits. It’s Obamacare (raising various costs associated with having employees). It’s Dodd-Frank. It’s all the other new regulations, and threats of new regulations and new taxes (example: cap n crap). It’s all of it.
It’s all exactly, 100% wrong. No
LeviVirginia, Obama didn’t “save the economy.” No Virginia, Obama didn’t “prevent a Depression” or “make us better off than we would have been otherwise.” No, no, no.And you know those “rich people” that Obama wants to tax more? Out in the real world, they’re called small business owners. Taxing them means killing small-business jobs.
The corrective policies that we need are clear: Just repeal everything Obama has done. Then do more of whatever Obama would hate.
Hi ILC,
“The corrective policies that we need are clear: Just repeal everything Obama has done. Then do more of whatever Obama would hate.”
OK. If we do as you suggest, how does it actually restore the economy to full employment from where we are right now? What are the mechanisms that bring the market back to health as you see it, once we do as you suggest?
To correct the situation, first there will be blood. Hundreds of thousands of people are employed by our government, and have to go. Millions draw retirement, disability, or medical benefits which have to be pared down.
Where do these folks go? They won’t go quietly, that’s for sure.
GOP and Democrat talk a great game of budget cuts, tax hikes, and economic philosophies. The politician who speaks to what happens to the ordinary average guy and his wife, and how she intends to mitigate the human carnage will win the Presidency, and bring her party into overwhelming dominance (for at least 2years).
the president would do well to tap some people familiar with the burdens of federal regulations, you know, guys who have worked in the private sector
As long as that “private sector” doesn’t include Goldman, BofA, or any of the other rent-seeking parasites of the financial “industry”.
Cas: the anti-Obama agenda alone won’t pull us from this mess (a mess that’s been in the making for decades) but an anti-Obama agenda will certainly slow the hemorrhage.
That’s all total bullshit. The financial sector is posting record profits and the healthcare industry is adding new jobs by the tens of thousands every month. How does that match up with businesses being over-regulated? Obama extended the tax cuts, do you not remember that happening? How stupid can you people be?
Then, Levi, if things are so rosy, how come job growth overall is so anemic?
Hi SCR,
“the anti-Obama agenda alone won’t pull us from this mess (a mess that’s been in the making for decades) but an anti-Obama agenda will certainly slow the hemorrhage.”
I agree with that, but it is unclear to me how the proposed ideas will also “slow the hemorrage” as you suggest. I am just trying to understand the expected causal chain that proponents (e.g., ILC) who hold the “raise interest rates, cut taxes with offsetting cuts in government spending” view expect to unfold if they get their way, and see everything they want granted to them; i.e., how do they see improvements in the budget deficit (even surpluses) and improvements in the economy taking shape.
DaveO asks. “Where will all of these people go that work for the government when they are laid off”? Where are all the school personnel (teachers, janitors, secretaries, etc. ) that are being laid off now going?
Another issue is that companies have learned they can get by on less employees by squeaking out productivity from the remaining workers.
Which begs the question – did some of these unemployed people even deserve to have their job in the first place?
It’s not usually the productive and hard working employees that get the boot.
Job growth is anemic because things aren’t so rosy and Obama is implementing bad economic policies. That much is true – but it’s certainly not because he’s overtaxing and over-regulating people. Obama extended Bush’s tax cuts and as I mentioned, the healthcare and financial industries who should in theory be most affected by any excessive regulating are some of the stronger parts of the economy.
It’s perfectly appropriate to criticize Obama’s handling of the economy, but you do have to use your brain just a little bit and come up with some reasonable explanations. You can’t just say the problem is over-taxing and over-regulation and expect that to be an argument. Obama has done neither of those things.
Levi fails economics, again (really, is anyone surprised the depths of ignorance that is Levi?)
Insurance and financial agencies do ‘well’ in a depression (well, compared to other companies) because in addtion to the standard method of generating profits to be reinvested in the company (through investments, services provided, costs etc.) They have an ‘alternative’ source of income. Premiums for insurance companies and people using the bank for banks (moreso since FDIC means that if the bank screws up and loses money, Uncle Sam picks up the tab). Since they have the alternate income that is (less) market depenedent, investors turn to them in times of trouble.
(ILC, This is my understanding, if I’m wrong, please correct me. Unlike Levi, I don’t like to cling to falicies)
Now hush Levi, adults are talking.
it’s certainly not because he’s overtaxing and over-regulating people.
Tell that to the oil companies that can’t drill, the coal companies who have had approved leases ripped out from under them, to Boeing who is being sued for opening a factory in a red state…
Facts are inconvenient things.
Obama Regulations to increase coal industry costs by $180 Billion.
More of Obama’s Job-Killing Regulations
Part of the apparent failure of Keynesian pump-priming is that if fails to properly differentiate between capital spending and overhead. While at-times it may be appropriate to spend borrowed-funds on large, long-tern infrastructure projects as a means of encouraging the economy, it fails when borrowed-funds are spent on on-going, ordinary payroll-and-benefits for the bureaucracy…which is what much of the Bush and Obama funding did.
Paying state and federal public-service workers (who are all unionized by-the-way) to just keep doing the non-productive jobs doesn’t boost the economy like infrastructure spending, or the government making extraordinary capital purchases from the private sector. Especially if it’s merely to avoid public-sector layoffs, resulting in a zero-sum expenditure without any capital improvement to the infrastructure, value-added industrial capacity, or productivity gains.
True, they instituted these regulatory burdens at exactly the wrong time, which has only excerabled U.S. uncompetitiveness.
But I think both the Left and the Right are in denial about the impact of globalization. Since WWII, America has generally been a productivty miracle which enabled real wages for Americans to far exceed the rest of the world. When the USSR fell, it validated market based economic systems and everybody in the world adapted it. That left the U.S. with uncompetitive real wages.
If Americans would lower their standard of living, the market clearing price for U.S. labor would make the U.S. competitive again. That’s unacceptable, however, in part because of the enttilement culture created by 80 years of liberalism, but also because consumers are so levered that accepting lower real wages will mean they can’t meet their financial obligations whicy would cause the financial system to seize again as consumers default on those obligations. So policy makers are trying to hold our standard of living relatively flat while the rest of the world catches up.
The good news is the Boston Consulting Group says that Chinese real wages are growing so rapidly, manufacturers will be indifferent between locating in China and locating in the U.S. by 2015. The question is does the U.S. governemnt have the borrowing capacity to maintain the life support until real wages reach equillibrium.
I’ve seen it happen due to seniority. Those who’d been around for 20 years or so were able to walk around the office all day and chat with their friends. Good, hard working, productive folk with less than five years got the boot.
TGC,
I also know here we’ve gotten rid of all our ‘low scoring’ performers and any further cuts will be coming from the ‘normally you’d be safe’ catagory.
Globalization certainly exacerbates the impact of over-regulation. A manufacturer weighing the costs of locating jobs in the USA or abroad has to take into account the cost of taxes (the USA has the highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world) and regulation. The USA has some competitive advantages… a skilled work force, proximity to market, and a consistent legal system (at least until the courts abrogated investor contracts with GM and Chrysler to facilitate the Government takeover of those companies). These advantages will enable employers to tolerate burdensome regulation… but only up to a point. The overzealous, business-hating Obama regime has galloped past that point.
V he K @ 15:
Your efforts are wasted on Levi; he’s too busy holding his breath, crapping in his diapers, and throwing a temper tantrum to listen to anything that doesn’t reinforce his demented world view.
Wow. After I made my comment, I read this story in the New York Times, “Companies Spend on Equipment, Not Workers”, which makes my point in a roundabout way. Companies are substituting technology for labor because U.S. labor is over-priced. A machine doesn’t require health insurance, social security insurance, Medicare, paid sick days, paid vacation days, overtime pay, can run 24/7, and there’s no learning curve. As is typical for a Times article, it does have a bit of a left-wing bent in a couple of areas, but in general it is a fair article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/10/business/10capital.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
I know that any attempt to engage a blind, robotic, partisan hack is futile; but some of the talking points they burble are useful jumping off points for the type of discussions people who are actually capable of thought and reason can appreciate.
I thought that was all implied, but OK.
– Repeal ObamaCare: Reduces new costs associated with having employees, returning to a more Bush-era balance of incentives to hire employees.
– Repeal 99-week unemployment benefits: increases people’s incentives to take jobs. (Think of a 2-income couple. A was laid off, B continues to work. The family gets by OK. Giving A 99-week unemployment benefits is just paying him to not work; paying him to take only his ideal job.)
– Make the Bush tax cuts permanent: also increases people’s incentives to work, e.g. to start new small businesses.
– Repeal new regulations, end the threat of cap-n-crap: Reduces costs of being in business, improving the cost structure of the whole economy / improving the Aggregate Supply curve (whose deterioration has given us, and will continue giving us, stagflationary conditions).
– Market-oriented medical reforms: will finally, meaningfully “bend the cost curve down”, a great boon to the rest of the economy.
– Entitlement reform in general: can mean large spending reductions.
– Large spending reductions: mean large deficit reductions, thus a lowering of future tax/inflation expectations, increasing the after-tax, discounted present value of all business efforts. Further, the government will no longer be draining $1.6T of capital from the markets each year. Will allow the Fed to reverse QE.
– Reversing QE: a key step in returning to sound money, again lowering future inflation expectations, causing commodity prices to come down, again benefitting the whole economy.
– Reversing ZIRP / allowing the market to set interest rates: will restore incentives for people to save, to pay down debts, and to charge off (default on) unpayable debts; in other words, the liquidation of 20 years of malinvestments that have been accumulated under the Fed’s strategy of inflating asset bubbles to forestall natural recessions that should have been allowed to liquidate inefficiencies (malinvestments) sooner.
– Reversing TARP / bailouts: also for the liquidation of malinvestments and restoration of market incentives (threat of failure) to the economy.
In short: lighten the burden of government, restore market incentives, restore sound money, kill expectations of future costs (expectations of future taxes, inflation, and/or regulation increases).
As malinvestments are liquidated, there could be a short, sharp recession. But you know what? It’s not guaranteed… because the economy would have so many beneficial factors going (as I’ve outlined).
And even if it happens: better to get it over with. We are already in a new Great Depression; we are just using Big Government, QE and ZIRP to try and mask it a little while longer. We won’t be able to mask it forever, and the longer we try, the worse we make it in the end. The difference between the Depression of 1920 and the Depression of 1930 is that Harding used Small Government measures to get it the hell over with; while Hoover (and later Roosevelt) used insane Big Government measures to drag out the agony for over a decade.
Unfortunately, yes. But it’s so unnecessary (if we had just adopted the right measures in the 2000 recession, or after 9-11, or even after the 2008 Panic).
SCR, we agree. AIG bailout == hidden Goldman bailout == Evil.
I’m not sure that they do. I’m not saying you’re wrong; I’m saying that I haven’t studied that sub-topic.
Awesome, as always.
And it always will. Even on the rare occasions when the Federal government spends on an actual infrastructure improvement: why not let the private sector do it? Or at least the States? The Federal role should be to remove obstacles (e.g. laws/regulations that prevent the private sector).
I hear dumb leftists frequently lament that private industry is “sitting on” $2 Trillion in capital; as though there is something immoral about this. The reason they are holding back is because the EPA, HHS, the SEC, and dozens of Federal Agencies are writing thousands of pages of new regulations and industry has no idea how there regulations are going to impact their business models.
If the goal is economic growth and job creation, the administration should be peeling back regulations and encouraging investment; Obama’s policies do exactly the opposite. What may we conclude from this?
As malinvestments are liquidated, there could be a short, sharp recession.
Of course.
And what happens during a recession?
Owners buy a factory and equipment for a song.
People with ready cash who have saved can now afford and purchase a home.
Obama Party members live in this delusion where they think that the government ordering something to be at a certain price actually grants it that value. It does not. The sooner they learn that the only value of an object is the most someone else is willing to pay for it, the better off we will all be.
What the Obama Party has done is akin to the Dutch government declaring that tulip bulbs must have a price floor of 250 guilders in order to avoid economic ruin. What happens?
1) People grow more tulips
2) Other countries that grow tulips send more of them
3) Companies invest in tulips rather than other productive items because of the guaranteed return
In contrast, if the government lets the price of tulips fall where it may, the price will fall dramatically, which then drives people growing less of them, and returns it to equilibrium.
Government is a one-way ratchet. It has no capability whatsoever to rise and fall, sink or swim. It can only hand down arbitrary rules and then, when those backfire, try to create new rules that only result in more problems.
Also known as “trade”.
Actually since about 1789.
Indeed. Chinese workers used to say “How can we possibly compete with super-productive American workers?” So much for low Chinese wages being the cause of our problems. They aren’t. Lack of productive investment under market incentives (as capital is instead blown on asset bubbles and $1.6T deficits, or made moot by the government picking the economy’s winners and losers) is the cause of our problems.
True. But again: wouldn’t it be smartest to adopt policies which would let Americans progress again on productivity and innovation?
Which is an impossibility. Think about trade. It’s denominated in money, but the money is only a representation of the value of the real goods that are being traded. If China/India are producing goods for trade and we aren’t, then China/India get the money, which means they get the high physical living standard from the rest of the world because they can outbid us for the commodities and other goods in trade. The only way we can maintain our physical living standard (keeping it at least “flat”) is if we producing *increasing* amounts of goods for trade.
So, once more, it comes back to having policies that are pro-production: not industrial policy (which would only be more government intervention), but policies of free markets and sound money that encourage efficiency, production and the creation of new businesses.
Assuming current productivity levels; i.e., assuming that productivity is basically static over time. It is not. The country that forms new capital and lets new businesses decide what is best to do with it under market pressures, is the company whose productivity and economy will keep moving forward.The question is does the U.S. governemnt have the borrowing capacity to maintain the life support until real wages reach equillibrium.No. We don’t. Borrowing must be backed by an ability to repay. If Chinese productivity / production are moving forward, and U.S. is not, why should anyone lend to us? If the (anti-business, anti-production) policy matrix of the Obama administration is a ‘given’, then the U.S. has already borrowed more than it will ever be able to repay.
Exactly. The liquidation of malinvestments makes many things a lot more affordable to those who are prudent and/or productive, which sets up the next growth cycle.
Don’t believe all the “deflation” propaganda coming from the Keynesian establishment. Another word for deflation is, affordability.
Sorry, my #28 mangles the final bit of quotation from Scott (and my answer). It should look more like this:
No. We don’t. Borrowing must be backed by an ability to repay. If Chinese productivity / production are moving forward, and U.S. is not, why should anyone lend to us? If the (anti-business, anti-production) policy matrix of the Obama administration is a ‘given’, then the U.S. has already borrowed more than it will ever be able to repay.
I see your point. It’s also true that companies substituting technology for labor is what enabled U.S. labor to become high-priced, to begin with.
Capitalism is: using capital, i.e. tools and technology (created originally from savings and risk-taking), to multiply the productivity of human labor. The loss of jobs from fewer people being needed to do task X, is made up for by people working on new things (that they couldn’t work on before). Freedom (free markets) under sound money is the best environment for it.
Here is where I plug this easy, fun book again: http://www.amazon.com/How-Economy-Grows-Why-Crashes/dp/047052670X
V the K: They’re doing EXACTLY what they did when faced with similar circumstances under the FDR thugocracy. He created so much uncertainty, it wasn’t a good idea to spend any money trying to grow your business. It’s just sound business to avoid the risk when you don’t know what’s coming down the pike in 6 months.
More and more Chinese see that the U.S. doesn’t need to default on its obligations, because QE (having the Fed print money from thin air to prop up the U.S. Treasury bond market in the face of Obama’s insane deficits) already constitutes a covert or ‘soft’ default: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/06/10/china-official-its-too-late-us-already-defaulting/
Good luck Obama, getting them to lend us more money when QE stops.
Hi ILC,
Thank you for your reply. My comments are also directed at others who hold the same or similar views of the world as you do. You break your comments into three categories–aggregate supply issues (efficiency, incentives, etc), aggregate demand issues, and I pull out of AD, monetary issues, and out of AS & AD, healthcare issues. The reasoning is below, but let me give you the summary here.
Following your suggestions: Starting from the premise that we have much higher real interest rates than we do now (one of your suggestions)–TThe short run impact, as you point out would be a depression, as AD goes left, and AS starts to move right. The price level will fall. There would be more unemployment. The question remains though how do we get equilibrium? In the classical model that I suspect you have in mind, the real money supply increases as the price level falls (since real MS = MS/P, where P = Price level). Two major effects: interest rates fall, spurring more firm investment, raising AD. Together with lower real wages, this also stimulates real hiring. Second, lower interest rates and greater real money supply, and higher real wealth spur consumers to buy more (since their dollars go further). Together with the supply side reforms you have in mind, that will lead to more investment and more consumption, and the start of a virtuous cycle. Is this the mechanism you have in mind for getting the economy up and running again in the long run?
If so, the questions and observations I have are: If lower interest rates are supposed to get firms to invest more, why not now, when they are as low as they can practicably be? Is it just a case of firms being “uncertain” of the actions of government stopping them (as you suggest), or is it also a function of a very real lack of demand providing a very real stop to investment and hiring? If you grant me some of that, why would firms want to invest in a depression, when AD is, well, depressed? One possibility: Real wages fall, so as prices fall, so do nominal wages, at a faster rate. As for consumers, the model appears to assume that real wealth will have risen for consumers who are employed (or not). Given that the major form of wealth that a consumer has is in their house, how will this increase in wealth come about. Sure the upper reaches of society will have the ability to buy, but will this offset the lower purchasing power of everyone else, given the levels of debt that we have? Will firms hire in the face of depressed demand? What will get their “animal spirits” moving? Further, how are you going to manage the extraordinarily high rates of “liquidation” of debt as people default. The real value of debt will rise, as the price level falls, being a constant drag. Would you lobby for more forgiving bankruptcy laws to hasten the manner in which debt clears the system, or will people have to be morally and economically responsible to their creditors throughout the process of adjustment that you have in mind? And if people are allowed to default on their debt, how will this affect creditors?
With regards to monetary policy: OK: If interest rates were 2or 3% or higher right now, what would your policy recommendation be, in the face of a faltering economy? Would it be to ditch monetary policy and let the “market sort it out”, or would you look to lower short term rates rates, to lower the long term structure of interest rates (LTR)? After all, right now, do we see any evidence in the LTRs that inflationary expectations are being built in? Since QE is about to expire, you will get one of your wish list. As for ZIRP, we have seen an increase in the savings rate in this country since the crash. And as I asked before, did near zero rates of interest since the 1980s deter the Chinese from saving? Since consumers are also debtors, how will raising interest rates help them to eliminate debt that is getting more expensive to service? I would be more sympathetic to your claim about flexibility if we didn’t pass a law that makes it way harder for consumers to declare bankruptcy, and start again.
With regards to AS issues: You appear to abandon new tax cuts, so, on that, we are in accord. The main argument I have here concerns where we are on the Laffer Curve that you have in your head. I am nowhere as certain as you that we are on the right side of that curve. As for the rest, it will depend on whether the regulations actually address market failure or not in an efficient manner. As for U/E benefits, I would be more sympathetic to your view if the kind of unemployment we had was structural—i.e., caused by technological changes in the economy, closing some industries down, making them smaller, making it imperative for those people who lost jobs to move on. But I don’t see that here—it looks cyclical to me, caused by a collapse of the Aggregate Demand schedule. There are not as many jobs around as there are people looking for them. In that case, cutting U/E is really damaging. However, having said that, I agree that your example is a good one. It is just as likely though that both parents are out of work. The typical story also is that people do find work again, but at lower pay and benefits.
On healthcare issues: I agree we should scrap Obamacare, but not for the reasons you want to. You want to bend the cost curve, but how will that be done? Health care is a market full of market failure. A free market is just not going to happen, unless you mean by free—dominated by oligopolistic and monopolistic practices that will squeeze individuals to deliver care at really high prices. A great paper on this was one written by Kenneth Arrow back in the sixties, http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/82/2/PHCBP.pdf. The only way to “bend the cost curve” is to exercise market power. And the extent that we do, is the extent to which costs will be contained. I see nothing sensible about the approach we have right now, and I think Obamacare, though it has some good, is a real dog’s breakfast that does not go far enough to contain costs.
I just don’t feel that going back to some version of the status quo actually helps this nation—we get plenty more uninsured getting crappy health care, and so that negatively affects the Aggregate Supply function in the long-run.
With regards to AD issues: Given were we are now, I expect that Aggregate Demand will fall, given the withdrawal of government funding from various sectors of the economy, for a given set of tax rates. Partially offsetting this would be some pick-up in investment, but this would have to be set against the increases in real interest rates that you want, so I am unsure how this would play out. Overall though, given the large cuts in government spending that you want, AD will fall.
Cas, your basic problem is this: since you are dependent on the government for money, you assume everyone else is.
And since you pay nothing in taxes, you cannot make the connection as to where the money for yor checks come; you simply believe that there is some sort of magical stash somewhere, either in the Treasury or “the rich”, and that if that stash were just redistributed, everything would be sunshine and rainbows.
You cannot understand the economics involved because you need magic to make your system run. Period.
Hi NDT,
Since you didn’t bother to address what I actually said in my post, there isn’t much point in discussing things, is there?
Not if the Fed is reversing $2 trillion in QE.
I’m not sure how you get that. As changes in wages tend to lag changes in consumer prices, inflation tends to lower real wages and deflation tends to raise them. In the Depression, the physical living standard (e.g. butter consumption) was quite good for people who had jobs.
First, because businesses today have relatively weak prospects. The massive overhang of deficit, debt and “confiscatory philosophy” constitutes a threat of future taxes (and/or inflation, the cruelest tax). As such, it reduces the after-tax, discounted present value of all business efforts. No business should want to borrow in such an environment (and, no bank should want to lend). Conversely, eliminating it will raise the after-tax, discounted present value of all business efforts and thus stimulate business borrowing; QE must be reversed simultaneously to prevent it from becoming hyperinflationary.
Second, it’s the quality of investment that counts. You are still thinking in demand-model terms, stuck on the idea that “spending is the economy” and I want to raise the quantity of investment spending as such. I don’t necessarily. I want to raise the quantity of *productive* spending; of good investments not malinvestments. Higher real interest rates are conducive to efficient/productive investment.
I don’t think you understand the process of capital formation. Capital is not just dollars or assets. It’s dollars/assets, developed into tools and processes which maintain or increase productivity. It takes a capable person, often working hard, to develop it and keep it going. Wild investment spending (malinvestment), such as happens during asset bubbles, is not meaningful capital formation and actually works against it.
What is a depression? It’s when government gets in the way of the economy, preventing growth and adjustment. People want to spend. People want to produce. Absent unnatural incentives (like 99-week unemployment benefits), people want to take jobs. In short, the economy “wants” to equilibrate at full employment. It doesn’t happen, when government prevents it. For example, in the Great Depression, government followed policies which simultaneously inhibited growth and maintained artificially high real wages. Mass unemployment was an inevitable result. Conversely, in the Depression of 1920 and in the double-recession of the early 1980s, government followed policies which simultaneously allowed private sector growth and increased the freedom of wages to adjust to market-clearing levels (i.e. downward as well as upward – think Reagan’s PATCO-busting). The result was the opposite, i.e. mass employment.
Sorry, that’s all the time I have this morning.
Hi ILC,
Thanks for your reply. This conversation is over the hill, so I suggest that we continue the conversation as part of a new thread. When we next speak, I will reference this thread so we can pick up the conversation. Would that be all right with you?