And speaking of the working poor, the Great European Austerity Bombing continues unabated, with precisely the results you would expect.
Unemployment in the euro zone rose to yet another record high in the first two months of the year, official data showed Tuesday, providing confirmation that the economy remains in a deep freeze.
The jobless rate reached 12 percent in both January and February, the highest since the creation of the euro in 1999, Eurostat, the statistical agency of the European Union, reported from Luxembourg.
The January jobless rate for the 17-nation currency union was revised upward from the previously reported 11.9 percent.
For the overall European Union, the February jobless rate rose to 10.9 percent from 10.8 percent in January, Eurostat said, with more than 26 million people without work across the 27-nation bloc.
Perhaps more deficit reduction in the UK is necessary, as an example. Sadly, the only thing keeping us from the same situation was the stimulus the President got through. It was only about half as large as it needed to be, but that’s why we’re dealing with 8% unemployment rather than 12%. Republicans won’t make the mistake of allowing the economy to improve until they get the reins back, then deficits won’t matter again.
Now that we’re on the sequestration diet, I expect that 8% to start creeping back up towards 9%. After all, the only reason those overpaid government jobs we’re shedding aren’t being replaced by shiny new awesome higher-paying private sector jobs is shut up and you’re lazy and Obama can’t shoot hoops and Google doodles of Hugo Weaving and Benghazi and food stamps and Obama took Cole’s effing mustard.
Until then, we’ll stall out for the next four years because national debt is immoral (and soon impeachable) so we must eliminate even more government jobs and put people on government safety net programs, and then cut the programs because there’s too many people on them. Then and only then will millions of jobs suddenly poop out of The Invisible Asshole Of The Free Market. Sure, they don’t pay enough to not require government help, but that’s why God made sure you have more than 40 hours in a week that you could work through.
Maybe if all those European Poors were working 90 hours a week at (less than) minimum wage while homeschooling their kids, volunteering for church and training for neighborhood firearms defense militias like us Puritan-streak rock-ribbed salt-of-the-earth ‘Muricans, they’d know le freedom.
Morzer
Freedom is just another word for no-one else having anything left to lose.
Just Some Fuckhead
The good news is that Europe is overdue for a war and this could be just the catalyst needed.
ribber
I *knew* Obama took Cole’s mustard!
Scott S.
If y’all elect me president in 2016, I’ll deal with the austerity goons by giving them their own tropical island to live on. And then testing nukes on it.
Rick Massimo
I wish the GOP would post a flippable sign somewhere so I would know whether “It’s Obama’s fault there are no jobs” or “There are plenty of jobs; the lazy moochers just don’t want them.”
Maybe they have an odd-even day schedule, and I just haven’t heard …
ruemara
It’s a rather hopeless old world, ain’t it?
StringOnAStick
Perfectly precise, Sir Zandar; so much truth in so little space, seasoned with a few teaspoons of humor.
maya
Time to break out Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror and brush up on 14th century customs and recipes.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Scott S.: That should take atoll on them.
Origuy
The UK just needs more austerity.
Chris
@Rick Massimo:
I KNOW! It’s been one of my biggest pet peeves about their bullshit, the constant flip flop between “blame Obama” and “blame the poor.”
dmsilev
@Scott S.: Can’t we just encourage them to build Rapture instead?
Cassidy
So why don’t these Euro countries pull out and fix their economies without having the austerity assholes and (I’m assuming) EU tell them what to do.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Just Some Fuckhead:
You’re on time out, mister!
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Advertise it as Bikini Island. Lots of “Chads” will show up.
Chris
@dmsilev:
I like that, because then James Bond and Barbara Bach can destroy the city and all the Randroids on it.
Except Jaws. That guy’s fucking indestructible.
Redshirt
Who’s driving the Austerity Brigade in Europe? Germany? All the banks? Just the German banks?
schrodinger's cat
@Cassidy: Common currency that’s why, they cannot use any monetary policy. I don’t what is UK’s problem, probably just conservative dogma.
schrodinger's cat
@Just Some Fuckhead: You know who else wanted a war in Europe
Roger Moore
@Rick Massimo:
Well, if Obama weren’t wasting our hard earned cash giving teh poors free Obamacare and Obamaphones, they’d be more inclined to take all the wonderful jobs our Galtian overlords have been creating for them.
schrodinger's cat
@Redshirt: The rich, the rentiers, the ones who live off on investments rather than wages. European Romneys.
mclaren
If you look at the American economy objectively, you can see that both Republican and Democratic financial policies make perfect sense.
Shithole America is shedding jobs so fast, what with offshoring and replacement of skilled jobs by robots/databases/algorithms, that our big problem is: too many workers.
The most straightforward way to deal with too many workers is to kill ’em off. Then you won’t have those pesky extra mouths to feed. Shithole America’s insane broken health care system is doing an excellent job of killing off our population, so both Republicans and Democrats have joined forces to avoid fixing it. The Democrats have privatized our broken health care system by forcing everyone to buy unaffordable private health insurance whose premiums are guaranteed to rise infinitely due to a total lack of ACA cost controls on underlying medical costs — good news, since this means that eventually no American will be able to afford health care. That will kill off lots of U.S. ciitzens. Republicans have an even better plan: repeal the ACA, which will eliminate health care for all Americans even faster, since most people can’t afford private insurance nowadays. Both solutions work well and should kill lots of Americans.
Next, we have the massive layoffs of K-12 teachers. As Paul Krugman points out, the main result of government cuts during the austerity regime in America has been to fire lots ‘n lots of K-12 teachers in local communities. Excellent news, since this will reduce the labor force of educated workers. With any luck, huge and ever-increasing numbers of uneducated kids will quit school entirely and go to work as corner drug dealers and get shot by other corner drug dealers. More reduction in the workforce.
Finally we have America’s endless unwinnable foreign wars. As both Republicans and Democrats ramp these up, we can slaughter an ever-increasing percentage of our future workforce in insane foreign wars. Even better, those vets who don’t get killed wind up with chronic brain damage and go postal with automatic weapons, reducing the workforce still further. Good news all around.
Sly
More to the point, UK Austerity is the logical outcome of both-sides-do-itism; LibDems have demonstrated that when self-identified centrist people are given a choice between somewhat ineffective do-gooders and thoroughly competent sociopaths, it isn’t even a contest.
Sociopaths. Every time.
catclub
Dean Baker noted that NYT is lowballing how significant that 12% unemployment is.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Cassidy:
Because that would require admitting that the Eurozone is a poorly designed flop. The sequel would be assigning the blame to those who created the economic problems and making others responsible for solving them. Blame? Responsibility? Right. Much easier to endorse another one-size-fits-all solution.
Cassidy
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: @schrodinger’s cat: I guess I just don’t see why a parliament of any of the smaller countries wouldn’t tell them to fuck off since they’re forcing devastating policies on them? I also have little knowledge of the area, so that’s on me.
mclaren
@Redshirt:
The drive toward austerity is only one of the sixteen unsustainable trends driven by the billionaires who create most U.S. public policy through think tanks, campaign contributions, and adroit media propaganda:
1. Accelerating transfer of wealth to the .001% (“the billionaires”)
2. Accelerating transfer of manufacturing out of the country
3. Marginalization or destruction of effective labor unions
4. Destruction of the middle class (i.e., the consumer class)
5. Capture of government by billionaires of both parties
6. Capture of the Republican Party by anti-Constitutional billionaires via Tea Party-financed candidates
7. Constitutional changes, including changes in practice to rule of law and an ever-widening circle of elites with immunity from prosecution
8. Creation via trade agreements of a transnational state that enshrines corporate sovereignty
9. Permanent war and a permanently expanding military
10. Permanently expanding national security state, including militarization of police, widespread spying and punishment for political crimes
11. The ticking time bomb of increasing numbers of returning untreated war-damaged battle-trained veterans
12. Oil dependence without recognition of oil as a soon-to-be-depleted energy source
13. Deterioration of the environment, largely due to oil and carbon dependence, among other causes
14. Destruction of the integrity of our food supply
15. Destruction of public education
16. Climate catastrophe and the collapse of human populations and level of civilization
Redshirt
@mclaren: I was curious specifically about European austerity, not American, but thanks for the detailed response.
Pooh
@mclaren:
Happy fun times.
Maude
@Cassidy:
#26
Because the little governments agree with the austerity policies. It’s about class, not fairness.
mclaren
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
As a practical matter, pulling out of the Eurozone would create economic consequences as bad as or worse than the austerity policies themselves. Countries in the Eurozone get enormous advantages in trade with one another and a common currency. If Spain were to suddenly pull out of the Eurozone and let its currency devalue, for example, everyone in Spain would suddenly become much poorer relative to the rest of Europe, its government would have to cut back on public spending to manage its skyrocketing trade deficit, there would be massive public unrest as guest workers exited the country en masse and demands for public assistance (welfare) went through the roof, and so on.
Devaluing a currency has a much bigger effect today when every consumer item is likely to be manufactured from parts imported from across the world. The iron rule of the financial markets in determining whether a government remains solvent places countries who devalue their currency and run big deficits (and whose currency isn’t the global default exchange currency, which America’s is) in the merciless hands of the IMF — whose austerity policies are even worse than the ones being forced on Spain and Cyprus and Greece by the Eurocrats.
Roger Moore
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Besides, it’s not as if the Eurocrats are the ones feeling the pain. Things won’t get better until the Austerians start losing elections over their failed economic policies. And it won’t get fixed completely until Angela Merkel loses her election for messing up the German economy.
I also think that Matt Yglesias’s proposal has something to do with it. His idea is that prominent national politicians who follow the Eurocrats in lockstep know they’ll be rewarded with safe, cushy EU jobs if and when doing so makes them unelectable in their home countries. It’s sort of like publicly financed, pro-EU wingnut welfare.
Villago Delenda Est
@schrodinger’s cat:
Keynes was wrong about one thing. The rentiers should not be euthanized. They should be paraded around the Place de la Concorde in tumbrels prior to the issuance of their just desserts.
The Moar You Know
@Chris: A GOOD Republican does both.
In all honesty, kinda stunned that the austerity crew got such a firm grasp on the Eurozone nations.
schrodinger's cat
@Cassidy: Leaving the EU would cause a lot of pain short term. Kinda like chemotherapy, can kill you, but what other choice do you have, if you have cancer?
ETA: EU countries have no good choices, they have to choose the least bad choice.
schrodinger's cat
I think the threat of communism kept the worst instincts of western capitalists in check. But the fall of communism in the Soviet Union and China’s embrace of capitalism has changed that calculus.
Maude
@schrodinger’s cat:
#36
Excellent point.
mikefromArlington
Teabaggers Shrugged
mikefromArlington
Teabaggers Shrugged
MellHell 820 47 212,890
nobody 655 108 153,271
honkytonkdonk 619 40 153,384
Roger 633 53 110,349
morrell 327 79 64,800
MERIT 211 295 58,391
Sirbadman 290 119 54,146
1SG Reaper 251 29 52,498
james 167 48 36,867
Chris 155 58 35,303
Leo 187 203 34,984
colon viper 164 18 32,656
mark 146 21 30,299
Stitch 130 11 27,217
General Scott 178 551 27,108
goodman 119 61 26,267
Sir Galahan 95 38 25,961
Coln Koren 107 23 25,860
cmoney 78 105 21,644
nTrudr 76 43 20,055
Gangsta NOT 78 153 19,396
jazza 104 24 18,806
Desdechardo 71 25 17,219
kahial 100 154 16,563
Belletron 66 59 16,153
Lt Page 81 30 14,557
jackson 66 22 14,117
TIM 61 169 13,607
Srgt Slaughter 56 16 13,375
Alex 42 230 13,048
pat 67 27 12,237
Herr Flugenheizen 54 226 9,195
Tommy 41 107 9,181
Chowda 56 166 8,134
gomer pyle 25 1181 6,393
Average 182.1714 129.6857 40169.46
Median 104 58 25860
Teabaggers Shrugged!
mikefromArlington
Teabaggers Shrugged!
Maude
OT
UN passed the gun “control” treaty.
Lurking Canadian
The patient is not responding well to the leeches. Nurse, bring me my lancet. We are not letting blood fast enough.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@schrodinger’s cat:
A number of us have voiced similar opinions ’round these parts over the years. If the Galtian Overlords are deliberately trying to bring about the creation of a new violently anti-capitalist ideology to replace Communism, they are doing a bang-up job of it.
Roger Moore
@mikefromArlington:
WTF, dude?
Higgs Boson's Mate
@mclaren:
I’m at a loss to see how not having any purchasing power because you’re unemployed or underemployed, or because a portion of your savings has been confiscated (And I doubt that we’ve seen the end of that tactic) is better than not having any purchasing power because your currency has been devalued. Trade tariffs are negotiable, the terms imposed by German banks not so much. Living in a nation that incurs ruinous long term debt while accepting terms that nearly guarantee that it will incur more ruinous long term debt is, to me, far less attractive than devaluing your currency and working your way out of that.
Yutsano
@Redshirt: Just as a note: when one uses Friedman as a reference (as mclaren just did) one has indeed lost the plot.
Litlebritdifrnt
I just got back from court with some rather interesting news. I was in the lawyer’s lounge with my boss and three republicans, one of whom (the judge) is a lifetime member of the NRA and wears a gun to court every day so you kinda can get where he is coming from? One lawyer republican said “I’m a republican but I’m telling you if I didn’t think that people would think I was a crazy “Paulite” I would switch to independent, I just don’t want to be associated with those crazy people in Raleigh”. The the Judge asked the third republican “Keith can’t you do something about those crazy people in Raleigh, they just don’t know what chaos they are causing”. Keith replied “I don’t know what we can do, they have completely lost their minds”. Three republicans all voicing their opinion that our republican legislature has lost its collective mind. There must be a disturbance in the force somewhere.
Tonal Crow
No. The stimulus was important, but so was the Fed’s willingness to buy truckloads of bonds and to keep short-term interest rates at rock bottom, thus making enough cheap money available that the crappy banks couldn’t help but lend some of it. ‘Course, it would have been better to have nationalized the insolvent big banks, but then the Republicans would have cried “sockialism!”
ETA: Using the s-word ONCE AGAIN consigns your message to the bit-bucket without an error message.
Anoniminous
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
On the other hand it’s intellectually gratifying to watch the continual failure of Neo-Classical Economic based policies as we head into the Galtian Overlording future.
the Conster
@Litlebritdifrnt:
What’s happening in Raleigh? I can’t keep up with all of the Republican crazy.
Tim I
I think the original post is far too defeatist. We have elections coming up 18 months. If we work our asses off to get our voters out, we have a chance at holding the Senate and re-taking the House. This will be hard, but I intend to go all in on trying.
Davis X. Machina
Come a godly ruler who possesses the Mandate of Heaven, and the cows will calve, the ewes lamb, and the grain grow heavy in the ear again.
But until then, more sacrifices.
El Caganer
The people have no bread? Let them eat cake. On second thought, let them eat…nothing.
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/04/01/food-a01.html
MomSense
One of the tea partiers I grew up with defended austerity by saying that the real problem that is harming the economy is “diversity”.
UGH!
Redshirt
@the Conster: The Repukes have total control in NC for the first time in like 100 years and are using it for typical Wingnut purposes: Wreck everything.
Anoniminous
@MomSense:
It’s the 1%’s Formula:
Ignorance + Sexism + Racism = WIN!
Higgs Boson's Mate
@MomSense:
Austerity cannot fail…
If it wasn’t for all of those fucking Gammas and the whiny-ass Betas things would be perfect for the Alphas.
srv
DOUGJ BAT SIGNAL!!!!
Charlie Rose doing an IAmA on reddit
FlipYrWhig
@MomSense: I still think that people don’t really understand the difference between “the economy” and “the budget.” And that’s where all the confusion about “the deficit” comes from.
ranchandsyrup
Unsolicited musical accompaniment: The Joy Formidable — Austere
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbYghzgt9IU
SatanicPanic
@FlipYrWhig: Or they use “the budget” in the same sense as being “on a budget”. Or that “the debt” and “the deficit” are not the same either.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@FlipYrWhig:
People really don’t understand marginal tax rates either.
Morzer
@Davis X. Machina:
Well, what did you think those religious heart-extraction operatives were trying to achieve in Tenochtitlan?
Admittedly, Cortez was not the Randroid they were looking for, but still….
Tonal Crow
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Well no wonder the economy’s in the crapper! Did you know that if you earn a dollar under $50,000, you pay only 10% in taxes, but if you earn $50,000.01, you pay 30%? Your taxes jump from $5,000 to $15,000 just because you earn an extra penny!?!?!??!!!!!! And the lib’rals wonder why we’re going Galt!
/typical wingnut
Bubblegum Tate
I have been informed by the wingnuts that Europe’s unemployment rate is not due to austerity, but rather is due to “fiat money and massive debt.” So…you know…suck it, libtards!
Just Some Fuckhead
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
This. I had to explain marginal tax rates to a CPA friend on Facebook. A Certified Public Accountant.
(Republican, of course.)
Omnes Omnibus
@Bubblegum Tate: I have seen that one from a libertarian friend of mine from college.
patrick II
@MomSense:
He’s right. If we were all millionaires there would not be a problem.
Morzer
@patrick II:
A chicken in every pot and a car-elevator in every garage!
NonyNony
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Please tell me he’s just a disagreeable asshole and NOT that he really didn’t understand marginal tax rates.
Please?
EconWatcher
Well, at least we know Europeans aren’t the type to succumb to hate and extremism in the face of high unemployment and suffering.
Oh, wait….
gene108
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Also too the derivatives markets that dwarf the actual sovereign debt underlying them would go ka-plooey and bring on another financial crisis.
Greece’s GDP is about 325 billion dollars. If Greece’s debt is 125 percent of GDP you are still looking at a number one-half the size of our SoD and DHS budgets.
The derivatives on Euro debt are what make defaulting so dangerous. The size of the debt could be managed otherwise.
Bubblegum Tate
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
A couple years ago on a wingnut blog, I saw a liberal make the point about economic growth in the 1950s when the top marginal rate was 90 percent. In response one wingnut accused him of claiming that people “paid 90 percent of their income to the government.” He repeatedly made this accusation, until I pointed out to the wingnut how marginal rates work. I will never forget his response:
“Oh…well [liberal poster] is so stupid, he probably really did think that people paid 90 percent of their income in taxes! So my point stands!”
Higgs Boson's Mate
@gene108:
Interesting. If I’m understanding the situation correctly, the Bastards of the Universe have placed so many bets (Not investments, bets) on economic outcomes that not allowing them to play out as expected would be ruinous to nearly everyone. What a great system; Heads I win, Tails you lose.
Chyron HR
@Just Some Fuckhead:
If you’re voluntarily friends with those people*, then who exactly is the stupid one in this scenario?
* Accountants.
gene108
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
I think people understand marginal tax rates. Income * Tax Rate = Total Taxes.
It’s the effective tax rates that confuse the bejeebsus out of folks.
My marginal tax rate is say 25%, but because I have a home mortgage and can deduct the interest and property tax, my effective tax rate is less than someone with a comparable income, who is renting.
I think both those on the Left* and the Right have a hard time figuring out what our effective tax rates should be, so we focus on marginal tax rates instead.
*Yes, Lefties who drool over Ike-era marginal tax rates don’t grok that the AMT was put in place because despite high marginal tax rates, there were enough deductions in the tax code that the effective tax rate for the rich was significantly lower than the marginal rate.
TenguPhule
So basically trickle down, but from the other end of the bull.
chris
I think people understand marginal tax rates. Income * Tax Rate = Total Taxes.
Not sure if serious…
It helps if you know that economists use “marginal” to mean what a mathematician or physicist would call a “derivative” (probably because “derivative” means something else in finance)… but only if you know calculus in the first place. (This works for terms like “marginal cost”, too.)
Marginal tax rate = dTaxes/dIncome.
Anyway, on a site like this, I’m surprised to be able to be the first one to make this joke: The austerity will continue until morale improves.
The Golux
Let me be the first to suggest that “Invisible Asshole of the Free Market” be elevated to the status it deserves, that of a Category.
Alex S.
@Anoniminous:
Yep…the poorer you are, the more you want to work.
I misread that as the Invisible Asshole of The Free Merkel.
Keith G
If only there were a leader somewhere who would be willing to stridently argue that a nation’s finance is not at all like a household budget and counter cyclical spending is not only important, it is mandatory.
Davis X. Machina
@Alex S.: Be nice to Frau Merkel.
At this point the only stimulus package large enough to bump the EU out of recession involves having her invade Poland…
FlipYrWhig
@Keith G: that’s never going to work, though. People will ALWAYS understand the concept of budgeting by analogy to their own personal finances. It’s kind of like saying that they shouldn’t think of God (when they do) as a person.
@gene108: all we need to do is to put an extra line or two on the tax forms. Write your gross income. Write your taxes paid. Divide. Does anyone do this? I know that I don’t. I don’t know what it would turn out to be, at all. It’s pretty important to the whole psychology of paying taxes, and yet essentially nobody does it.
Roger Moore
@FlipYrWhig:
My tax software does it for me without me having to lift a finger. I get nice, fat deductions for mortgage interest and state taxes, so my effective tax rate is under Mitt’s magic 15%. It’s pretty amazing how much my taxes went down once I got a mortgage.
catclub
@FlipYrWhig: Or they will misunderstand budgets in comparison with their own finances.
Home mortgages, governments have infinite lifespan, lack of printing press for currency, lack of military.
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera
dollared
The financial crisis is Europe’s 9/11: The Excuse to Make The Lower Classes Suck on It.
The Shock Doctrine is not an expose, it’s a playbook.
It really sucks, because so many earnest people are the key tools making it happen, all for the benefit of the rich. How on earth does England cut everyone’s benefits and just give the money to the rich? How does that just get labelled “austerity” when it’s “theft?”
Keith G
@FlipYrWhig: Oh that’s right, human’s can’t learn new things by repeated exposure to new ideas.
FlipYrWhig
@Keith G: they can, but that one is deeply ingrained. To defeat that metaphor you’re going to have to give people another one that works better. Frankly, it’s better to think of it as a parallel with a family budget than to think of it as the king’s treasure. That one has never fully gone away either.
Morzer
@Davis X. Machina:
Or France, if she wants to restore Tsar Nicholas 0th of the House of Bourbon-Sarkozy.
gene108
@chris:
Economists don’t write the tax code, Congress does and Congress doesn’t do calculus.
Tax rates are slabs. Make 0 – 1000, get taxed at ‘x’, the next 1001-5000 gets taxed at ‘y’ for that slab and so forth and so on.
No need for icky math with elongated S’s and letters in place of numbers.
gene108
@gene108:
Also, too if Congress* wanted to change the whole tax rat ‘x’ for ‘x’ slab of income they could and make it so any time you moved up a tax bracket all your taxes went up retroactively.
The math be damned.
*When I took taxation in college, my instructor made the point of the underlying basis of our tax code, “Because Congress said so”.
ellennelle
heh.
sequestor just another word for austerity, ‘muhricun style.
Mnemosyne
@Keith G:
They can, but humans learn best through metaphors and comparisons. If you can come up with an easily-understood way to explain the differences between the government’s budget and a household budget, I’d love to hear it.
IMO, the problem with the “household” metaphor is that liberals let it be too narrow. If someone says we need to “tighten our belts” and cut expenses, ask them what they would do if they had a bunch of bills to pay — would they quit their job so they had less income to pay the existing bills, or get a second job to have more income so they could pay off those existing bills? If they say they would get a second job, then congratulations — they just decided they want to increase taxes (ie get more income for the government). Etc.