Counter-Cyclical Disability Debauchery

29 Friday May 2015

Posted by pnuetz in Government, Macroeconomics

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Countercyclical Fiscal Policy, Disability Insurance Trust Fund, Government Failure, Political Calculations, Risk pooling, Social Security

Should economic growth drive changes in the Social Security disability insurance rolls? It appears to have done just that over the past ten years, suggesting that the program embodies a degree of sham. The Political Calculations blog has some fascinating charts and discussion of this phenomenon entitled “The Disability Dumping Ground“. It shows that the number of workers receiving disability benefits rose across many age cohorts, and especially more “mature” cohorts, as the economy entered the Great Recession. Successful claims continued to rise throughout the weak economic recovery, but the increases began to taper as economic activity finally neared and exceeded pre-recession levels. However, the post notes that:

“the vast majority of those who were added to Social Security’s disability rolls during the period from 2008 through 2013 are still on them.“

One must question whether the Obama Administration had a motive to encourage more latitude in the approval of disability claims during this period:

“And because being classified as disabled would remove such individuals from being counted as both unemployed and part of the U.S. civilian labor force, the Obama administration had a strong incentive to get the program’s administrators to look the other way at the disability insurance applications for benefits that were being made as jobless benefits were expiring, as the resulting math would considerably reduce the official unemployment rates reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.“

Of course, an intentional effort to bring more of the long-term unemployed onto the disability rolls might be defended as counter-cyclical fiscal policy and on immediate humanitarian grounds. However, the accelerated depletion of the Disability Insurance Trust Fund implies “that the payments to individuals receiving … benefits will be reduced by nearly one-fifth.” Such cuts would be extremely unjust to those suffering from more legitimate disabilities. In any case, this makes the pretext under which payroll taxes are collected highly suspect.

It would be interesting to know whether changes in the disability rolls or benefit payments bore a correlation to economic growth over a longer history. The social gains from pooling risks at this level are easily frittered by mismanagement and fraudulent activity, faults to which government activity is particularly prone.

Stimulus and The Infrastructural Itch

06 Friday Feb 2015

Posted by pnuetz in infrastructure

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autonomous vehicles, budget deficits, Countercyclical Fiscal Policy, crowding out, economic stimulus, Holman Jenkins, infrastructure, John Cochrane, Obama budget, transportation infrastructure, Warren Meyer

Politicians may be rightly convinced that to utter the phrase “investment in infrastructure” is to goose the dopamine levels of voters and political reporters. It is an hypnotic mantra, especially if it can be paired with “economic stimulus”. And it seemingly matters not whether the benefits of an actual project exceed costs. The time-lines involved in infrastructure investment, legislative, planning, and construction, almost guarantee an absence of political accountability for projects that end badly.

Apparently, it doesn’t even matter whether an infrastructure project actually gets underway. President Obama knows that the promised spending can go to any pet initiative. This is driven home in “Infrastructure Bait and Switch” by Warren Meyer. He distinguishes between two types of this “B&S”:

“The first time around [Obama] sold the stimulus bill as mainly an infrastructure spending bill — remember all that talk of shovel-ready projects? Only a trivial percentage of that bill was infrastructure. At most 6% was infrastructure, and in practice a lot less since Obama admitted later there were no shovel-ready projects. … The rest of it was mainly stuff like salary support for state government officials. Do you think he would have as easily sold the ‘wage support for state government officials’ bill in the depth of a recession? No way, so he called it, falsely, an infrastructure bill.

The other bait and switch that occurs is within the infrastructure category. We have seen this at the state level in AZ several times. Politicians love light rail, for some reason I do not understand, perhaps because it increases their personal power in a way that individual driving does not. Anyway, they always want money for light rail projects, but bills to fund light rail almost always fail. So they tack on a few highway projects, that people really want, call it a highway bill and pass it that way. But it turns out most of the money is for non-highway stuff.”

Meyer links to this post in support of his “6%-was-infrastructure” claim, and he is right.

Holman Jenkins makes the same basic point in “The Infrastructure Medicine Show“, noting that the temptation to misallocate resources into boondoggles is made worse by the perception that “free money” is available by virtue of the Federal Reserves’s zero interest rates policy:

“In the U.S., why does top-down infrastructure enthusiasm always seem to turn to California-style bullet trains—i.e., projects certain to lose money but beloved by politicians and pork-barreling interest groups?”

I disagree with Jenkins’ assertion that public infrastructure investment should only follow economic growth. Rather, it should occur on an ongoing basis to meet important needs as they arise, and the threshold for any project’s benefits should match the opportunity cost of private capital investment. To some approximation, this might help protect against crowding out of the sort decried by John Cochrane.

The supposed infrastructure crisis, so often invoked by politicians, appeals to any motorist who has ever encountered a pothole. But in terms of basic transportation infrastructure, the “crisis” is something of a myth. In fact, if the widely anticipated revolution in autonomous vehicles transpires, it will greatly diminish needs for expanded transportation infrastructure of all kinds.

President Obama touts infrastructure investment in his new budget proposal using the Keynesian language of economic stimulus. But in another interesting post, Warren Meyer points out that a proposal to run budget deficits of $500+ billion going forward, in the middle of an economic expansion, is not exactly sensible as countercyclical fiscal policy. When might the U.S. government run a budget surplus? In a mild fit of sarcasm, Meyer highlights an irony:

“While those evil private short-term-focused private actors have used the improving economy to de-leverage back below 2007 levels, governments have increased their debt as a percentage of GDP by just over 50% since just before the last recession.”

P.S.: Jerry Brown wasn’t the focus here, but I love the cartoon above. It’s a nice depiction of the boondoggling impulse common to so many politicians.

Strangling By Stimulus

01 Sunday Feb 2015

Posted by pnuetz in Government

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Austerity, Countercyclical Fiscal Policy, crowding out, Fiscal Stimulus, Growth in government, infrastructure, John Cochrane, Mercatus Center, Mises Institute, regulation, Robert Higgs, Scott Sumner, Sequestration, Timely Targeted Temporary

Will more government spending fix a weak economy? That is certainly a common refrain heard from economists and other pundits, including prominent members of the private business community. The historical record suggests otherwise, however, and there are practical reasons to doubt the efficacy of this sort of “fiscal stimulus.” Some of these are explored in “‘Timely, Targeted and Temporary?’ An Analysis of Government Expansions Over the Past Century“, from the Mercatus Center. In particular, countercyclical spending efforts have violated the “three Ts” often said to be required for successful demand-side policies. These efforts have been systematically late, badly targeted, and have resulted in permanent expansions in the resources absorbed by the government sector.

“Fiscal stimulus efforts going back to the 1930s consistently fail to meet the three Ts objective:

Improper timing. Policymakers have consistently struggled to properly time fiscal stimulus spending. In every postwar recession in the 20th century where stimulus spending was attempted, government spending peaked well after the economy was already in recovery. Policy lags—recognition, decision-making, implementation, and impact—are largely responsible for this fact.

Inefficient targeting. Going back to the New Deal, policymakers have targeted stimulus funds on the basis of politics rather than what delivers the most bang for the taxpayer buck. Further, individual policymakers cannot possess all the collective knowledge required to allocate and direct economic resources in the most efficient and effective manner, as markets do.

Permanent expansion of government. Stimulus funding has almost always led to permanent expansion in the size and scope of government. Indeed, the alleged need for immediate stimulus opens the door for expansions in government that might not have occurred under normal circumstances. On the rare occasions that the increased spending has been temporary, the costs have generally outweighed the benefits.“

As for inefficient targeting, I often hear that our nation’s infrastructural needs clinch the argument for stimulus spending. But those needs should be the focus of long-term planning and addressed on a continuing basis, not in bursts dictated by the state of the business cycle. Good projects should not be neglected in good times or bad, and there is no justification for undertaking a project if is not worthwhile on its merits. If increased spending can stabilize a weak economy, government should simply do something it does well: write checks. Who does infrastructure spending help in those bad times? It certainly fails to address the basic human needs left unmet in a weak economic environment; it may or may not add high-paying construction jobs. (An aside: in the last recession, the stimulus program didn’t so much add construction jobs as it did accelerate certain “shovel-ready” projects.)

Proponents of government stimulus always have a culprit in mind for the economy’s ills: weak demand or under-consumption. They say government can lead the way out with more spending. This post on Sacred Cow Chips, “Keynesian Bull Chips“, disputes this point of view and provides some links on the topic, including this post by John Cochrane that is now ungated on his blog. Stimulus efforts are usually billed as temporary but rarely are. The expanded budgets always seem to remain expanded, and government absorbs an increasing share of the nation’s spending. Meanwhile, the value of government’s contribution to output is overstated, since most of the output is not subject to a market test or valuation.

The growth of government increasingly burdens private sector. Apart from tax distortions, the resources available to the private sector are gradually crowded and squeezed by the growth of public spending. Private investment is curtailed as government deficits absorb a growing share of private saving. Increasingly detailed regulation diminishes the private sector’s productivity. Robert Higgs at the Mises Institute asks: “How Much Longer Can the U.S. Economy Bear the Burdens?” That’s a very good question.

The opposite of expansionary fiscal policy is fiscal austerity: lower spending, and lower deficits. The budget sequester, originally passed in 2011, is a good example. Keynesians typically contend that austerity will weaken the economy, but the evidence often suggests the contrary. Here is a Scott Sumner post on that point. For robust economic growth, cut spending broadly, cut taxes, and deregulate.