Obama Versus Obama on the Economy

"There are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to be much more efficient with fewer workers. You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM, you don’t go to a bank teller. Or you see it when you go to the airport and you use a kiosk instead of checking at the gate. What we have to do now, and this is what the jobs council is all about, is identifying where the jobs for the future are going to be, how do we make sure that there’s a match between what people are getting trained for and the jobs that exist, how do we make sure that capital is flowing in those places with the greatest opportunity".

Obama helping the GOP again. His first point is true but it has little to do with the current rate of unemployment. New technologies have a long history of increasing productivity and reducing the number of workers needed to do things that capital can do more cost effectively. Does he really believe that the rate of technological change has increased enough on his watch to cause a mismatch between the skills demanded by business and the skills available in the labor force? That would mean that we have structural unemployment that cannot be fixed by monetary or fiscal policy. That is what his buddies in the GOP have been saying for a long time.

Another problem with his analysis is that trying to discover the jobs of the future, and educating the labor force to fill those jobs, is a long term solution to the unemployment problem. It does nothing to deal with the current unemployment problem, and it implies that government will do little to fix the problem. Rather than dealing directly with the lack of jobs, the administration can play around with the education system. This fits nicely into his comfort zone. He has always promoted education as the answer to our economic and social problems.

In any case Obama is his own worse enemy. He continues to take positions on the economy, and the government response to high unemployment and budget deficits, that mimic those of the GOP. He either needs new economic advisers or new political advisers that will pay any attention to his economic staff.