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Este blog trata basicamente de ideias, se possível inteligentes, para pessoas inteligentes. Ele também se ocupa de ideias aplicadas à política, em especial à política econômica. Ele constitui uma tentativa de manter um pensamento crítico e independente sobre livros, sobre questões culturais em geral, focando numa discussão bem informada sobre temas de relações internacionais e de política externa do Brasil. Para meus livros e ensaios ver o website: www.pralmeida.org. Para a maior parte de meus textos, ver minha página na plataforma Academia.edu, link: https://itamaraty.academia.edu/PauloRobertodeAlmeida;

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terça-feira, 26 de março de 2013

O emprego de UM MILHAO de dolares: interessado?

Não, não é o que você está pensando?
Eu não estou oferecendo -- nem poderia, sendo um modesto assalariado desse nosso modestíssimo governo, num país nem tão modesto assim, já que os companheiros são sempre hiperbólicos, aliás, os maiores, desde Cabral -- nenhum emprego nessa faixa de rendimento.
Isso é o que está custando (talvez até mais) cada emprego penosamente criado pelas poderosas injeções fiscais do governo americano, que tenta tirar leite de pedra, ou seja, fazer a economia reviver à custa de bilhões, centenas de bilhões de dólares de "estímulos keynesianos".
O Fed (através do Mint americano) está despejando dinheiro como nunca na economia, e a despeito de não terem iniciado um terceiro QE (ou quantitative easing, ou seja, despejar dinheiro na economia, de helicóptero sobre Wall Street e nas velhas indústrias decadentes), estão trabalhando como nunca trabalharam, desde a grande depressão, para ver se a economia deslancha.
Quem a Coreia do Norte não resolve o problema, assim como o fizeram nazistas e fascistas em face de um New Deal moribundo?
Isso deixaria os marxistas muito contentes, pois eles nunca deixaram de achar que o capitalismo, quando tem uma dessas crises de "superprodução" -- eu nunca deixarei de me surpreender em face das contradições marxistas -- arranja logo uma guerra para fazer a sua destruição criativa e assim continuar acumulando capital. Vá lá entender...
Em todo caso, o artigo abaixo, desse jornal desavergonhadamente capitalista que é o WSJ, trata do assunto. Sim, se trata de empregos a um milhão de dólares, mas é isso que vai custar ao contribuinte americano criar alguns milhares de novos empregos, quando o setor privado poderia estar fazendo isso, se o governo não se metesse muito no seu caminho.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

Mortimer Zuckerman: The Great Recession Has Been Followed by the Grand Illusion

Don't be fooled by the latest jobs numbers. The unemployment situation in the U.S. is still dire.

The Great Recession is an apt name for America's current stagnation, but the present phase might also be called the Grand Illusion—because the happy talk and statistics that go with it, especially regarding jobs, give a rosier picture than the facts justify.
The country isn't really advancing. By comparison with earlier recessions, it is going backward. Despite the most stimulative fiscal policy in American history and a trillion-dollar expansion to the money supply, the economy over the last three years has been declining. After 2.4% annual growth rates in gross domestic product in 2010 and 2011, the economy slowed to 1.5% growth in 2012. Cumulative growth for the past 12 quarters was just 6.3%, the slowest of all 11 recessions since World War II.
And last year's anemic growth looks likely to continue. Sequestration will take $600 billion of government expenditures out of the economy over the next 10 years, including $85 billion this year alone. The 2% increase in payroll taxes will hit about 160 million workers and drain $110 billion from their disposable incomes. The Obama health-care tax will be a drag of more than $30 billion. The recent 50-cent surge in gasoline prices represents another $65 billion drag on consumer cash flow.
February's headline unemployment rate was portrayed as 7.7%, down from 7.9% in January. The dip was accompanied by huzzahs in the news media claiming the improvement to be "outstanding" and "amazing." But if you account for the people who are excluded from that number—such as "discouraged workers" no longer looking for a job, involuntary part-time workers and others who are "marginally attached" to the labor force—then the real unemployment rate is somewhere between 14% and 15%.
Other numbers reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics have deteriorated. The 236,000 net new jobs added to the economy in February is misleading—the gross number of new jobs included 340,000 in the part-time, low wage category. Many of the so-called net new jobs are second or third jobs going to people who are already working, rather than going to those who are unemployed.
The number of Americans unemployed for six months or longer went up by 89,000 in February to a total of 4.8 million. The average duration of unemployment rose to 36.9 weeks, up from 35.3 weeks in January. The labor-force participation rate, which measures the percentage of working-age people in the workforce, also dropped to 63.5%, the lowest in 30 years. The average workweek is a low 34.5 hours thanks to employers shortening workers' hours or asking employees to take unpaid leave.
Since World War II, it has typically taken 24 months to reach a new peak in employment after the onset of a recession. Yet the country is more than 60 months away from its previous high in 2007, and the economy is still down 3.2 million jobs from that year.
Just to absorb the workforce's new entrants, the U.S. economy needs to add 1.8 million to three million new jobs every year. At the current rate, it will be seven years before the jobs lost in the Great Recession are restored. Employers will need to make at least 300,000 hires every month to recover the ground that has been lost.
The job-training programs announced by the Obama administration in his State of the Union address are sensible, but they won't soon bridge the gap for workers with skills in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Nor is there yet any reform of the patent system, which imposes long delays on innovators, inventors and entrepreneurs seeking approvals. It often takes two years to obtain the environmental health and safety permits to build a modern electronic plant, a lifetime in the tech world.
When employers can't expand or develop new lines because of the shortage of certain skills, the employment opportunities for the less skilled are also restricted. To help with this shortage, the administration's proposals for job-training programs do deserve support. The stress should be on vocational training, postsecondary education and every program that will broaden access to computer science and strengthen science, technology, engineering and math in high schools and at the university level.
But the payoffs from these programs are in the future, and it is vital today to increase the number of annual visas and grants of permanent residency status for foreigners skilled in science and technology. The current situation is preposterous: The brightest and best brains from all over the globe are attracted to American universities, but once they get their degrees America sends them packing. Keeping these foreigners out means they will compete against us in the industries that are growing here and around the world.
What the administration gives us is politics. What the country needs are constructive strategies free of ideology. But the risks of future economic shocks will multiply so long as we remain locked in a rancorous political culture with a leadership more inclined to public relations than hardheaded pragmatic recognition of what must be done to restore America's vitality.

Mr. Zuckerman is chairman and editor in chief of U.S. News & World Report.
A version of this article appeared March 26, 2013, on page A13 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Great Recession Has Been Followed by the Grand Illusion.

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