How wrong is IBD on California? Let us count the ways

Investor's Business Daily has a hit piece out on California, as you can tell from the headline, "Taxifornia does it again." Here's the first paragraph of the editorial*, to give you a good flavor of it:

California's far-left government has done it again. Not realizing its real problems are excessive spending on misplaced priorities, excessive taxes, too much debt and a far-too generous welfare state, its legislature working in cahoots with Gov. Jerry "tax-and-spend" Brown has pushed through the largest tax hike in state history.

Amazingly, the editorial does not mention regulations once, though it did get around to the "job-killing $15-an-hour minimum wage" recently passed, along with the proposal for a single-payer health insurance system. I guess that counts as massive self-restraint on the editors' part.

The article calls California "the highest-tax state in the union." If that's so, it's just another example of the false claim (popular also with Arthur Laffer and the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council) that high taxes always mean bad policy outcomes. (FWIW, according to Forbes, California only has the sixth-highest state and local tax burden.)

So what have been the consequences of all of California's tax increases? According to IBD, "Since 2004, California has lost more than 1 million people, representing a $26 billion net income loss." Of course, no one has actually been lost. California's population grew by almost exactly 4 million between 2004 and 2016, from 35.25 million to 39.25 million. What IBD's editors are referring to is net interstate immigration and even there, the analysis is a little squirrely. From 2004 to 2008, the state had net interstate emigration of over 100,000 per year, with a low point of 288,000 net loss in 2006 (you know, during the housing disaster), but in every year since 2009, the number has been under 100,000 per year. Of course, interstate immigration is only one element of population change, and IBD conveniently omits the rest.

And the $26 billion alleged income loss due to interstate out-migration over that time period? A rounding error in an economy which grew from $1.8 trillion (2004) to $2.2 trillion (2015) annually in real 2009 dollars. I'm not even going to bother searching for their unlisted source.

The article further claims that because of taxes, over 10,000 firms, including Toyota, "have either fled the state or reduced their investments." Of course, Toyota has been replaced in its Fremont factory by Tesla, the most valuable auto company in the United States by market capitalization (yes, I agree: it does need to make profits sometime to maintain this). Again, we need to look at the bigger picture. California hit its pre-recession peak employment in January 2008 at 16,949,800 (6.1% unemployment rate), went below 16 million employed and over 12% unemployment in the worst of the Great Recession, but in December 2016 reached 18,376,600 employed with just a 5.2% unemployment rate. So something more than offset all the companies that "fled," I guess.

Of course, not everything is hunky-dory in California. As Woody Guthrie sang in 1940, "you won't find it [California] so hot, if you ain't got the do-re-mi." It's just as true today. California has persistent problems with a shortage of affordable housing, with studies rating it as having the highest housing costs in the country. But that means, contrary to the tax-doomsayers, that it is low-income people moving out and higher income people moving into the state, the opposite of what we'd expect if the anti-tax hype were true.

All in all, the editorial is Exhibit 538 in pressuring states to cut taxes, pretending you can provide infrastructure, education, and training without tax revenue, and that you can create prosperity by creating low-wage jobs.

* Thanks to a non-blogging friend for pointing out this editorial.

Obamacare hasn't killed full-time jobs, either

When we last looked at Obamacare as an alleged "job-killer," Matt Yglesias had just pointed out that 2014, the first full year of insurance on the exchanges, was also the best year for job creation since 1999. But recently a non-blogging friend reminded me of a related anti-Obamacare meme, the idea that employers have been cutting their workers below 32 hours per week so they would not have to provide them with health insurance. His argument was, logically enough, that this would mean a loss of full-time jobs.

As with so many other anecdotal Obamacare horror stories, this one does not stand up to even simple inspection. Just like total job creation, it turns out that full-time (BLS uses 35 hours/week, not 32, by the way) job creation has quickly increased since December 2013, just before exchange insurance went into effect. Not only that, part-time employment has fallen slightly. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' monthly "Employment Situation" (Table A-9 in both cases) tells the tale.

Date            Full or Part Time     Not Seasonally Adjusted Jobs          Seasonally Adjusted Jobs

December 2013   Full-time          116,661,000                                      117,278,000
July 2015             Full-time         123,142,000                                     121,589,000
Change                                      + 6,481,000                                      + 4,311,000

December 2013   Part-time           27,762,000                                        27,372,000
July 2015             Part-time          26,850,000                                        27,265,000
Change                                          - 912,000                                          - 107,000

I included both seasonally adjusted and not seasonally adjusted data for completeness sake, but when we are comparing a summer month to a winter month, surely the seasonally adjusted figures are the correct ones to use. For those of you keeping score at home, then, full-time jobs have increased by 4.3 million since Obamacare exchange insurance went into effect, whereas part-time jobs have fallen by 107,000. Neither of these fits the anecdotes of workers being shunted from full-time to part-time work to avoid providing insurance. This increase in full-time work has been accomplished in the span of just 19 months, or an average of over 226,000 new full-time jobs per month.

Of course, it's theoretically possible that using sophisticated statistical controls might uncover a hidden negative relationship; that we'd have even more full-time jobs than we do if the exchanges hadn't gone into effect. Even if that were true, it's obvious that everything else going on in the Obama economy is having a much bigger effect on full-time employment, so there's no justification for using the epithet "job-killing" on the off chance that it's true.

Cross-posted at Angry Bear.

Stephen Moore (Heritage, of course) can't even get his cherry-picked data right UPDATED

If you have had the stomach to read the malarkey that the Heritage Foundation puts out, you have no doubt noticed that many of their publications are, well, fact-challenged. Just looking back at this blog, there are stories on how Heritage wants us to think poverty is swell, and multiple versions of how Heritage did not pioneer the ideas underlying the Affordable Care Act.

Today, I turn from Obamacare godfather Stuart Butler to the new Heritage chief economist, Stephen Moore. In a great diary at Daily Kos, SantaFeMarie sums up the sordid story of Moore's July 7 column in the Kansas City Star where, trying to defend himself and Arthur Laffer from the well-deserved ire of Paul Krugman, he claims that 0/low-tax states have seen better job growth than high-tax states. In the original article, he wrote:

No-income-tax Texas gained 1 million jobs over the last five years, California, with its 13 percent tax rate, managed to lose jobs. Oops. Florida gained hundreds of thousands of jobs while New York lost jobs. Oops.

I hope you're sitting down. Although this article was written in July 2014 (and the original version, in Investors Business Daily, appeared July 2), the "last five years" Moore is referring to are: December 2007, the first month of the recession, to December 2012. As you no doubt know, employment data is released monthly, with state-by-state numbers available at a one-month lag from the national numbers. So April or May 2014 was available to Moore when he wrote. But he didn't use that 16 or 17 months' worth of data.

Misleading point #1: This choice of dates excludes California's excellent economic performance subsequent to its 2012 tax and minimum wage increases, as Paul Krugman analyzed in his most recent column. As Star editorial writer Yael T. Abouhalkah (who has long covered everything from fiscal policy to tax increment financing) points out, since Moore's ending date of December 2012, California has added 541,000 jobs, while Texas has an additional 523,400. "So, high taxes are good?" he quipped.

Misleading points #2 through #4: Within Moore's chosen "last five years," he still managed to misstate job performance by over 1.2 million jobs. #2: Texas did not gain "1 million jobs," but only 497,400 (off by 502,600). #3: Florida did not gain "hundreds of thousands of jobs," but lost 461,500, just 30,000 less than the much large California economy (off by at least 661,000). #4: And New York did not lose jobs at all, but added 75,900 (off by 75,900, being generous).

Oops.

On July 24, the Star published a corrected version of Moore's article which, according to Abouhalkah, Moore signed off on. Moore does not acknowledge that the corrections destroy his argument. On Friday afternoon, July 25, I sent a contact form to the editors at Investors Business Daily asking if we could expect a similar correction there. I'll keep you posted.

UPDATE: It's now the evening of July 31, and I have received no response from Investors Business Daily. Nor has Columbia Journalism Review, which reports that the Star's editorial page editor does not plan on using anything from Stephen Moore again (though this could be moot, as she is retiring). And you can see here that there has been no correction made to Moore's original article, which still includes the stats which are 1.2 million jobs off.

Read more here:http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/readers-opinion/as-i-see-it/article685284.html#storylink=cpy

Everything You Need to Know About Tax Freedom Day®

Today, April 21, is 2014 Tax Freedom Day®, according to the Tax Foundation. The Tax Foundation is not exactly known for unbiased research, and its promotion of Tax Freedom Day® is no exception.

The Foundation claims that Tax Freedom Day® is "a vivid, calendar-based illustration of the cost of government." In other words, instead of saying that its analysts expect total taxes in the United States (including social insurance) to reach 30.2% of net national income (NNI) in 2014, they say that Tax Freedom Day® arrives three days later than last year. Precise, huh?

Of course, the word "freedom" tips us off to the fact that the Tax Foundation is actually trying to create an emotional response. Something along the lines of, "Oh boy, after today I'm working for myself rather than the greedy government!" The implication further is that the later Tax Freedom Day® occurs, the worse it is for the country. The thing is, neither of these insinuations is true.

As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out every year, that emotional response, frequently picked up directly by the media, is not true for the vast majority of Americans. As CBPP's Figure 1 below shows, for the federal portion of taxes, more than 80% of Americans are paying less than the 20.1% federal component of Tax Freedom Day® would suggest. (In addition, the burden of some taxes does not fall on individuals at all.) The Tax Foundation responds that it's not trying to mislead anyone, it's just comparing "total U.S. tax collections with total U.S. income." Of course, if that were all it was really trying to do, it could just say that projected tax collections equal x% of NNI. But no, it trumpets Tax Freedom Day®.

Moreover, a relatively late Tax Freedom Day® is usually a sign that incomes are increasing, so taxes are, too. As the Foundation writes this year,

Tax Freedom Day is three days later than last year due mainly to the country’s continued slow economic recovery, which is expected to boost tax revenue especially from the corporate, payroll, and individual income tax.

 Despite the dig "slow," the Foundation is saying that economic recovery boosts tax revenue. Another example should make this clearer. The same document continues, "The latest ever Tax Freedom Day was May 1, 2000, meaning Americans paid 33.0 percent of their total income in taxes." Horrors! Such confiscatory taxation obviously meant that the economy was in the tank in 2000. You know I'm joking: Actually, the economy was booming and the federal government had a budget surplus. Again, higher incomes and profits boosted tax revenue. Indeed, the economy in 2000 created 2,088,000 jobs, way more than during the entire George W. Bush administration (1,282,000). Maybe the Tax Foundation should pay attention.

This brings me to the ultimate point about Tax Freedom Day®. It's all there in the ®. As it indicates, Tax Freedom Day® is a trademark registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. If it were a serious concept, there would be no reason to trademark it at all. What the ® tells us is that Tax Freedom Day® is just a marketing gimmick.

Class dismissed.

The Folly of Subsidizing Retail

Next to giving subsidies for a company to relocate, or to prevent it from locating, the lease defensible common use of investment incentives is for retail. Why should this be? Let me count the ways.

Most importantly, retail is a derivative economic activity, as David Cay Johnston says. A location's population and income determine how much retail it can support. For this reason, the apparent job creation of retail subsidies is completely phantom, as sales and jobs are simply transferred from older stores to newer locations. The best proof of this is contained in a groundbreaking study by the East-West Gateway Council of Governments, the regional planning agency of the St. Louis metropolitan area.

East-West Gateway's study found that from 1990 to 2007 (i.e., before the financial crisis), the over 100 local governments of the St. Louis metro area had collectively provided over $2 billion in subsidies for malls and other retail facilities. Most of this was in the form of tax increment financing, a popular local subsidy tool in both Missouri (to the tune of $339 million annual average from 2004 to 2006; see p. 7 in the source) and Illinois. Yet, by the end of this 17 year period, there were only 5400 more retail jobs in the metro area than at the beginning. This would total $370,370 per job if the jobs were created by the subsidies; however, it is more likely that they are simply due to income growth in the region. (Note to reporters: This would be a great study to replicate in your area.)

Second, retail jobs are not all that good. Here is a custom graph from FRED showing the nominal wage trend for all production and non-supervisory workers (blue) and for production and nonsupervisory workers in retail (red). As you can see, the wage gap has been increasing for 40 years. As of September, the exact figures were $13.86/hr. for retail vs. $19.81/hr. for all private industries. Moreover, given that the overall total as shown in the graph actually represents a decline in real wages, the decline in retail is much more pronounced.

In addition to the low pay, retail workers rarely get benefits. According to a new report, only 29% of retail workers get health care benefits, even though half of retail employees have college degrees and 70% are over age 24.

Third, retail does not generate much secondary employment, the way manufacturing does. It does require warehouse jobs, but those generally get subsidized, too, as in the case of Wal-Mart.

The bottom line, then, is simple. Retail is a derivative economic activity that generates almost no new spinoff activity, and local governments (except perhaps in poor areas with food deserts) should not subsidize it. As we have seen in St. Louis, local governments have proven perfectly capable of wasting billions of dollars for temporary gains in sales tax revenues. It's time to stop the madness.

Is the Growth of Manufacturing Production a Mirage?

A lot of people lament the decline in manufacturing employment, which has fallen by about 1/3 since 2000. As Upjohn Institute economist Susan Houseman points out in the linked article, we're talking about 5.5 million lost manufacturing jobs in that time frame. Here's what it looks like in long perspective

Instead of recovering as it did in previous recessions, after the 2001 recession manufacturing employment continued to fall, as Houseman points out.

But a number of commentators, including Matthew Yglesias and some more conservative ones cited by Houseman, have argued that what we really ought to be looking at is manufacturing output, which has risen steadily except for small blips during recessions.

What's wrong with needing fewer people in manufacturing due to greatly increased productivity?

Houseman argues that the increased productivity is a mirage, due to a single industry, computers. She writes:

Real value added in the computer industry grew at a staggering rate of 22 percent per year from 1997 to 2007 and 16 percent per year from 2000 to 2010. In contrast, average growth of real value added in the rest of manufacturing was just 1.2 percent per year from 1997 to 2007; real value added in the rest of manufacturing was actually about 6 percent lower in 2010 than at the start of the decade.

With that kind of growth, many multiples of GDP growth, we must be an export powerhouse in computers and electronics, right? (Insert joke here.)*

Of course we aren't, so where does that gigantic growth rate come from? If you remember the debates over inflation that gave us the Boskin Commission, you will recall that one of its criticisms of Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index (CPI) data was it did not adequately account for improvements in quality over time. Houseman argues that the huge increases in computer power and semiconductor processing speed are what are beneath the apparently massive growth in productivity in the industry. In other words, the price deflators used to calculate real growth are the real reason productivity is apparently growing so rapidly in computers.

If Houseman is right, it means that falling manufacturing employment really is a problem; we have not become so productive that we simply need fewer manufacturing workers. And the fact that productivity is growing by leaps and bounds, yet our trade deficit in electronics keeps getting worse, seems to me to be strong evidence that she is on to something.


* From the Austin Lounge Lizards song, "The Drugs I Need."

Cross-posted with Angry Bear.

Social Security Hurt by Republican Jobs Obstructionism

The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) published its commentary on Monday's release of the Social Security Trustees Report, which found that the Social Security trust fund would be exhausted in 2033. CEPR rightly blames the recession for the deterioration of Social Security's finances. As I argued last September with regard to falling health care coverage, the new results from the Trustees show the need for a jobs agenda.

In fact, in just four years, the estimated trust fund exhaustion date (intermediate assumption) has gotten eight years closer. It was 2041 in the 2008 report, 2037 in the 2009 report, 2037 in the 2010 report, and 2036 in the 2011 report. Jared Bernstein charts these trends going back to 1985:





Source: Trustees Reports. via Jared Bernstein.

The CEPR analysis highlights just how crucial jobs are to Social Security's solvency:

As workers have found themselves without jobs, Social Security has received fewer contributions. The 2007 Trustees' Report projected 169.0 million workers in 2011 earning $6.5 trillion in taxable earnings. Last year, there were only 157.7 million workers earning $5.5 trillion.

In other words, there was a $1 trillion shortfall of income in 2011 alone compared to the pre-recession baseline. If this doesn't highlight the need for much greater action on the jobs front, nothing does.

Yet what is the Republican response to this situation? At the federal level, there has been universal opposition to anything that might create more jobs as long as Obama is President. At the state and local level, as Paul Krugman points out, 70% of the decline in public sector jobs has come in Texas and in the states where Republicans took control of government in 2010.

What we see from the Trustees Report is that as jobs and income decline, Social Security is directly harmed. And I'm starting to have the feeling that for the Republicans, this is a feature, not a bug.