The Claim Game

When a report is good, politicians claim credit. But when it's not so good, they blame others.

   The nationwide unemployment rate in April was 3.9 percent, according to a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the lowest since the year 2000.
   So, of course, the president claimed credit for that good news, even though the downward trend in the jobless rate began long before he took office just 15 months ago.
   Meanwhile, the number of payroll jobs increased by 164,000 in April. Wage levels have also been rising, but this simply reflects the basic economic Law of Supply and Demand. As supply (the number of workers available)  diminishes, labor (the price paid to labor, also known as wages) rises.
   The economy in general has, of course, been steadily rising, but what has been true for eight years, since the end of the Great Recession, which coincided with the presidency of Barack Obama.
   Democrats point this out, and Republicans reply, yeah that's OK, but the recovery could have been and will be so much better with us in charge. This way they calmly ignore the historical fact that the slide began under a GOP administration.
   Bur regardless of who's in the Oval Office, an economy is likely to go its own way, influenced not by Wall Street investors and gyrations in the stock market, but by the over-riding basic Law of Supply and Demand.
   Otherwise, the country would be facing an economy fully managed by the government, as attempted in several countries of Eastern Europe 100 years ago and still being attempted in smaller nations today. 
   But that doesn't work, either.
   Somewhere in between a totally controlled economy -- read, dictatorship -- and a system that puts no regulations on how businesses behave and how they treat workers -- read, chaos and victimization -- is therefore a better goal.
   That seems to be where America has been headed, ever since labor unions succeeded in dragging management into an arrangement of fair treatment and a living wage, assisted by a government sympathetic to the needs of ordinary people.
   On the whole, competition within a free enterprise system may well be the best attainable system for all parties concerned, with government and an independent central bank as stabilizing forces.
   However, when one party -- capitalism or labor -- gains too much power and drags the economic system too far to one side, the people in general suffer. Leftist socialism is too disorganized and stifles innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit, leading to a dictatorship. But right-wing conservatism rewards the few at the expense of the many, also leading to a dictatorship.
   Somewhere in the middle, then, is a system that rewards the ambitious few but at the same time disallows unfair treatment of the many.
   So far, America has avoided domination by extremists of either persuasion.
   So far.   
   All this is important to keep in mind as some try to impose their extremist goals that would benefit a few at the expense of the many.