UNEXPECTEDLY!
● Initial jobless claims unexpectedly rise.
● Weekly jobless claims rise more than expected to 362,000.
As Joe Biden warned (threatened?), “Milton Friedman isn’t running the show anymore.”
But hey, happy days are here again! Amity Shlaes on Biden As the New FDR: It’s the same old bad deal for jobs.
Not until World War II did joblessness finally begin to subside, in good measure because of military mobilization — important, but not the same as peacetime employment.
As often discussed, errors in monetary policy contributed to the misfortune that was the 1930s. The cause of the duration of the Depression, though, was Washington’s persistent intervention. The chief economist at Chase, Benjamin Anderson, noted that after failing by playing God, the government chose not to retire but simply “to play God more vigorously.”
The first lesson of this sorry account is that an arbitrary national economic campaign from atop generates damaging uncertainty in the economy. However charmingly it reverberates, the very phrase “bold persistent experimentation” stifles growth.
The second point is that what helps the union hurts the worker. President Biden’s proposal to end “Right to Work,” if it becomes law, will dramatically stifle employment.
Flashback: FDR’s policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate.