Donald Trump's 47-Percent Moment

[kpete]

Donald Trump's 47-Percent Moment
The GOP front-runner blasts Mitt Romney's infamous remarks.
But he recently suggested 50 percent of Americans are deadbeats.

.......................


During a June 2015 one-on-one interview on Fox News, host Sean Hannity asked Trump if he, as president, could get 50 million Americans out of poverty. Of course, Trump said, and he added:

I would create incentives for people to work. People don't have an incentive. They make more money by sitting there doing nothing than they make if they have a job. We have to create incentives that they actually do much better by working. Right now they have a disincentive. They have an incentive not to work.

This was a routine conservative contention: assistance programs cause people not to work. And Hannity pressed Trump: would he insist that recipients of food stamps, welfare, and other government assistance "have to work for it?" Trump replied that could be necessary, and he remarked that Bill Clinton had pushed such a approach with welfare reform. Then Trump made a broader point:

The problem we have right now—we have a society that sits back and says we don't have to do anything. Eventually, the 50 percent cannot carry—and it's unfair to them—but cannot carry the other 50 percent.

So one half of the nation is carrying the other half, and the attitude of those in the latter half is, "we don't have to do anything." This is darn close to Romney's 47-percent analysis, but three points greater. Trump was depicting 50 percent of Americans as people seeking a free ride.


MORE:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/03/donald-trump-mitt-romney-47-percent

[Herman4747]

1. Alas, this may not hurt Trump among his core supporters. n/t

[Agnosticsherbet]

2. The hardcore 37% who support Trump will high five and praise the lord on hearing this statement.

Most Americans are not part of his 37%.

[True Earthling]

3. He has a point...cutting benefits improved job growth according to this study...

by the National Bureau of Economic Research...the largest economics research organization in the United States...

THE IMPACT OF UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFIT EXTENSIONS ON EMPLOYMENT:
THE 2014 EMPLOYMENT MIRACLE?

https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nber.org%2Fpapers%2Fw20884.pdf

We measure the effect of unemployment benefit duration on employment. We exploit the variation
induced by the decision of Congress in December 2013 not to reauthorize the unprecedented benefit
extensions introduced during the Great Recession. Federal benefit extensions that ranged from 0 to
47 weeks across U.S. states at the beginning of December 2013 were abruptly cut to zero. To achieve
identification we use the fact that this policy change was exogenous to cross-sectional differences
across U.S. states and we exploit a policy discontinuity at state borders. We find that a 1% drop in
benefit duration leads to a statistically significant increase of employment by 0.0161 log points. In
levels, 1.8 million additional jobs were created in 2014 due to the benefit cut. Almost 1 million of
these jobs were filled by workers from out of the labor force who would not have participated in the
labor market had benefit extensions been reauthorized.

While we did not impose any theoretical restrictions of a particular labor market model on
our empirical analysis, the findings are consistent with the standard equilibrium labor market
search model. For example, the primary labor market effect of a cut in unemployment benefit
duration in the framework of Mortensen and Pissarides (1994) is the positive impact on job
creation. It is this rise in job creation that leads in equilibrium to the increase in employment.
Another important finding in this paper concerns the effect of unemployment benefit duration
on labor force participation. Prior to the reform, the consensus in the profession seemed
to predict a negative impact of the cut in benefit durations on the size of the labor force.
Instead, we found that the reform led to almost a million non-participants entering the labor
market. It seems plausible that they were encouraged by the improved probability of finding
jobs due to the positive effect of the reform on job creation.

It seems quite remarkable that, despite their clear importance, the aggregate labor market
implications of unemployment benefit policies have been virtually unexplored in the empirical
literature. This gap in knowledge seems limiting not only for our ability to develop good
economic theories but also for making sound policy choices. For example, unemployment
benefit extensions are routinely used for the purposes of macroeconomic stabilization. Yet,
the findings in this paper imply that the negative effects of unemployment benefit extensions
on employment far outweighs the potential stimulative effects often ascribed to this policy. It
appears important to take these effects into account.

The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is an American private nonprofit research organization "committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic community."[1] The NBER is well known for providing start and end dates for recessions in the United States.

The NBER is the largest economics research organization in the United States.[2] Many of the American winners of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences were NBER Research Associates.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Bureau_of_Economic_Research


About the NBER

http://www.nber.org/info.html

The NBER is the nation's leading nonprofit economic research organization. Twenty-five Nobel Prize winners in Economics and thirteen past chairs of the President's Council of Economic Advisers have been researchers at the NBER. The more than 1,400 professors of economics and business now teaching at colleges and universities in North America who are NBER researchers are the leading scholars in their fields. These Bureau associates concentrate on four types of empirical research: developing new statistical measurements, estimating quantitative models of economic behavior, assessing the economic effects of public policies, and projecting the effects of alternative policy proposals. The NBER is supported by research grants from government agencies and private foundations, by investment income, and by contributions from individuals and corporations. Our corporate associates are acknowledged below.

(15 corporate sponsors... all contributing between $10,000 - $25,000)

https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nber.org%2FCorporate%2520Supporters%25202015.pdf