It’s the first Friday of the month and that means it’s Labor Report Day! As Kermit the Frog would say, “Yay!” I like to think of myself as an optimist. And actually, compared to my friends, I am Pollyanna. So I was looking forward to today, hoping (as always) that despite all the evidence, we would break through some invisible barrier and the economy would start to grow jobs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), that did not happen today.

The economy created 113,000 jobs. That’s not very good. According to Dean Baker, the economy needs to create 90,000 jobs per month to keep even. That means, we gained 23,000 jobs in January. Given that we need very roughly ten million jobs to get up to full employment, it would take us 36 years.

Okay, I’m being silly there. January was not a typical month. But the numbers do put the state of the economy in perspective. The economy is growing at a snail’s pace. The most jobs created in a month last year was February with 280,000 jobs. This is a net of 190,000 jobs. Even at that rate, we are not looking at full employment for almost four and a half years. So this all looks very bleak.

Some are trying to put a positive spin on the numbers. “It’s the bad weather!” they say. But luckily, we have Dean Baker around to pour cold water on that idea:

The big problem with the idea that this winter is so much worse than the last is that it assumes the nation is New York. The weather certainly has been bad in the northeast this year. But it isn’t that much worse than last year. What’s more, at the same time, the west has been dry and warm. As a first order approximation, I’m sure that the extra work in the west offset the reduction in the east.

Even more disappointing than the new jobs number this month is that last month’s net job loss was only revised up by 1,000 jobs—so we lost a net of roughly 14,000 jobs in December. But who knows? Next month, we may see a major increase in in the estimates of both December and January. And in the end, that’s what makes the jobs report so great. By the time the numbers are finalized, we are two months on and fretting or celebrating new ones. Yay!

Bill O’Reilly is the cognitive dissonance champion, and this recent kerfuffle with Dana Milbank is a perfect example. After O’Reilly’s shameful pre-Super Bowl interview with President Obama, Milbank wrote, Bill O’Reilly’s Obama Interview Showed a Nation Still Divided. He did what few are brave enough to do. He watched the interview more than once and generated some statistics. According to him, O’Reilly interrupted Obama 42 times. Even more telling, of the 2,500 words spoken in the interview, O’Reilly spoke almost 1,000 of them.

None of this should be surprising. It was clear that O’Reilly’s intention was not to interview the President but to “give it to him.” The interview was simply red meat for his old and conservative viewers. These are people who just know that Obama is secretly destroying the country. What I find interesting is that these are exactly the same people who are more or less okay with Bill Clinton now, even though they thought the exact same thing when Clinton was actually president. So no one should expect much from Bill O’Reilly or his audience.

But on Tuesday, O’Reilly went on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show to call Milbank a liar over and over again. What exactly was Milbank lying about? No one knows because O’Reilly didn’t say. I’m sure he can find minor things to complain about. Milbank said “O’Reilly spoke nearly 1,000” of the words. O’Reilly might have a problem with the word “nearly.” He may think some of his interruptions weren’t really interruptions. But if he had substantive points, I’m sure he would have mentioned them.

There are a couple of things that bug me about all of this. I’m not really bothered that O’Reilly would defend himself. That’s natural; I would do the same. But he did it in a totally inappropriate way. First, if you are going to say someone lied, you need to be specific. That wasn’t the only name calling either. O’Reilly said, “These far-left kooks, like this nut at the Washington Post, Milbank—but he’s a dishonest man.” Dana Milbank is a far-left kook? That’s news to me.

I go out of my way to not read Milbank because he is the prototypical Washington centrist. The same day that O’Reilly was screeching about what a liar he was, Milbank was misreporting the CBO economic analysis of Obamacare, Obamacare’s Scorekeepers Deliver a Game-Changer. He said, “Obamacare has been undermined by the very entity they had used to validate it.” That’s not at all true, but that’s the kind of thing that upper-class Washington centrist pundits write.

I’ve seen this kind of name calling many times before from O’Reilly. Whenever a liberal disagrees with him, they are “far-left liberals.” Despite the fact that O’Reilly claims to be a political independent, his idea of the Overton Window is Joe Lieberman on the left and Louie Gohmert on the right—if there is a right. There is no problem with finding some political views unacceptable. But the problem with O’Reilly’s “far-left liberals” moniker is that it isn’t true. What he’s actually saying is that he doesn’t like people who have liberal views. This is the same as people claiming that Obama is a socialist. If Obama is a socialist, what is the name for an actual socialist? As for Milbank being a “far-left liberal,” then what am I?

The other problem is O’Reilly’s oft claimed justification that he’s “an opinion guy.” That’s why its perfectly okay to get all kinds of facts wrong and never to admit it. Well, even though Dana Milbank doesn’t have a show on Fox News, he is nonetheless “an opinion guy.” This is why the Washington Post adds the words “Opinion Writer” after his name. Of course, this is no excuse for getting facts wrong. But in the column about O’Reilly, it does not seem that Milbank got the facts wrong. It would seem that the only time facts matter to O’Reilly is when someone else uses them against him. And then they only matter in as much as O’Reilly can dismiss them out of hand as lies without even mentioning which facts he’s talking about.

But humans are amazing animals. We can justify anything. And O’Reilly is certainly not a stupid man. He has more than enough brains to work out reasons why almost a year after it was debunked, he is still using the “IRS chief visited the White House 157 times” talking point. And that’s why he can think that he never misleads his audience whereas Dana Milbank is a far-left liberal kook who does nothing but lie.

We have more election forecasts, although this one is from real political scientists, so it deserves to be taken seriously. The model is thanks to John Sides and the rest of the crew that hang out over at The Monkey Cage, How Republicans Can Win the Senate in 2014. They put the probability at 54% and say that it is all going to come down to four elections: Alaska, Iowa, Louisiana, and Montana.

That’s all fine. I’ve given them a 50% chance of taking back the Senate for about a year now. And I’m not clear whether their computer model really provides any more insights than my wild ass guess. That’s not to put down the effort. The information is useful and I recommend reading the article if you are interested in such matters. But in the end, it’s going to be the idiosyncrasies of the election that determines who controls the Senate in 2014.

It’s still early, but the model claims that, for example, Georgia leans Republican. This is despite the fact that Michelle Nunn is actually leading in the polls. Even more interesting, Kentucky is put firmly in the Republican column, but according to the Kentucky Herald-Leader, Alison Lundergan Grimes Holds a Slim 4-point Advantage Over Mitch McConnell in Kentucky.

Clearly, we are going to know a lot more after the Republican primaries. The big question is whether the GOP will nominate some of those magnificent nutjobs that they are so known for. I think it is important to remember that if the Republicans were smart about this stuff, they would already control the Senate. The problem is that “crazy” is a stochastic variable. The real question is whether just by random chance the Republicans will nominate a high or low number of crazies.

Regardless, we are still stuck with the usual calculus for the 2014 Senate elections. The Republicans have a good chance of taking over the Senate. And they also have a good chance of screwing up. As a Democrat, I’m not thrilled with that. But if I were a Republican, I would be worried.

Do you like to see high wire acts performed without a net? I don’t. In fact, lack of a net makes the whole thing far less entertaining to me. Knowing that the performer might die if he makes a mistake takes most if not all of the fun out of it. I do, however, understand that seeing a performer without a net might heighten the excitement of the event. But it also implied that the viewer doesn’t mind the prospect of watching the performer die.

I think the same thing is true of the conservative campaign against the social safety net. Sure, when someone manages to claw his way out of extreme poverty, it is thrilling. It’s far more impressive than if he had all his basic needs met and been given a good education. But it also implies that watching people born into poverty live unfulfilling and short lives is not a problem. That’s where I have to differ.

The problem with looking at social policy this way is that it is the same as watching a circus act. But a man’s life is not a circus act. There is no pretending. And such a man didn’t decide that he would rather be born into poverty without any help. He’s innocent in this real life drama. He is also not in control. Social policy is set by people who were not born into poverty—people for whom life did work out. And these are exactly the people who should not be making such decisions.

I thought about this because Robert Reich wrote a very good article over at his website, Why Widening Inequality Is Hobbling Equal Opportunity. It is about an issue that I’ve written about a lot around here. There cannot be anything close to “equality of opportunity” if absolute equality is as out of balance as it now is. As Reich points out, “Since the ‘recovery’ began, 95% of the gains have gone to the top 1 percent, and median incomes have dropped.” In other words, the top 1% got 95%; the next 4% got the remaining 5%; the next 5% got 2%; and the bottom 90% lost 2%.

The big problem here is not that the rich are getting richer. The problem is that as the rich get richer, they get more political power to warp the economy ever more to make them even richer. But don’t even get hung up on that. Instead, think about the simplest issue of political power: voting. Why don’t the poor vote at as high a rate as the rich? A big part of it is that the rich have lots of leisure time. If necessary, they can take the whole day to vote. (Of course, in rich areas, it never takes a whole day to vote.) The poor have to be on time to work. The poor have to pick up their kids. In other words, the poor have a lot of other things they have to do with their time and voting is often not an option.

Even aside from this aspect of the unfairness of our system, there is the fundamental problem with the very idea of meritocracy. In such a system, the best and hardest working are supposed to be rewarded with the most wealth. But what are these “winners” supposed to do with their wealth. One of the most natural things is for them to provide the best opportunities for their children. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it does mean that the children of these people will have better health, better education, and better connections than the children of poor people who are otherwise identical. Thus, within just one generation, we no longer have a meritocracy.

This isn’t just theory. Last year, Sarah McBride did a study of which Silicon Valley start-ups got funded by venture capital firms. And as no one should be surprised, pedigree was the most important thing. “A prestigious degree, a proven track record and personal connections to power-brokers are at least as important as a great idea. Scrappy unknowns with a suitcase and a dream are the exceptions, not the rule.” Or in the world at large, my favorite example: Tagg Romney.

So the whole argument that we should work toward “equality of opportunity” and not “equality of outcomes” is just nonsense. It is a way for the power elite to deflect attention from the real issue. And the real issue is that we have an economic system that grossly magnifies differences. A man who is 5% more useful to the economy than another man ends up getting 500% more. And sadly, it isn’t even the case that winners in this system are the best or most valuable people. And that’s not a good system; that’s just a system that hasn’t been fine tuned. But the people who are winners, want to keep the system as rigged as it now is and hopefully make it even more rigged as time goes on.

If we are to provide more equality of opportunity, we must get our absolute equality more in line. I’m not talking about absolute equality. No one thinks that is a good thing, because it doesn’t give people incentives to try. But we have effectively created an aristocracy in this country. The poor are to the point of thinking there is no point in trying. So high levels of inequality are as bad as absolute equality when it comes to incentives. The question is whether we are going to do anything about it. And the very least we can do is to make our social safety nets stronger.

I have a personal note about the Coke diversity commercial which is embedded below. I didn’t watch the Super Bowl on Sunday, but it was on at the place I was staying, so I saw a bit of it. And part of that was the Coke commercial. It is extremely beautiful and the sound design was just perfect. But I only really got one thing out of it: the Muslim women buying Chinese food from a street vendor. That was totally brilliant!

It bothers me that others look at the ad and think that it divides us. Such people have an incredibly simplistic view of community. People don’t have to share religion or language or anything specifically. What binds us together is not our particular totems. What binds us together is shown in that image of Americans from different places meeting to do business. That is America. And that is what conservatives always claim to be in favor of.

We can disagree about most things. The essence of what we are is commerce. In times long past we were bound together to hunt and gather and farm. Now we bind together because one of us makes delicious Chinese food and one of us wants to eat delicious Chinese food. What is more American than that?

All my life—Five decades!—I have gone to Chinese restaurants. And then as now, they always had menus that looked like the image above. The fact that they had Chinese characters on them did not make the restaurants un-American. Nor did the fact that the waiter often spoke almost no English. That’s why the menu items are numbered! So we can do that most American of things: buy stuff in the most convenient way possible.

But the conservatives complaining about the commercial don’t seem to understand America. What’s more, they seem afraid. They seem to be worrying that America is becoming less American. And by that they mean white and protestant. But it’s time to wake up. That was never what America was. And even if it had been, there’s a great big world out there. America represents less than 4.5% of the world’s population. It’s time to stop thinking that we are the only people who matter in the world.

Coke is certainly aware of that. I don’t think the commercial was aimed at Americans. They are going after that more than 95.5% of the world who might enjoy a refreshing Coke. But Coke is still seen as an American company. So they are selling this notion that America is the world. And in so doing, they’ve created the best advertisement for America ever created, all in the name of selling some product. What’s more American than that?!

Afterword

A lot of conservatives have compared the new commercial with the “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing” commercial from 1971. They claim that the old commercial was inclusive whereas the new one is divisive. I wasn’t old enough then, but I have little doubt that conservatives hated that old ad at the time. It’s so very liberal and hippy and feel good. But that is exactly what conservatives always do. Of course they are in favor of whatever happened socially 40 years ago, just as conservatives will be fine with the new ad in 40 years. Same as it ever was and sadly always will be. It’s the song they sing!

Let’s do a little dive into the CBO report (pdf) that is wrongly being reported as, ObamaCare Will Cost America More Than Two Million Jobs. This is not at all what the CBO report actually says. But I do think the CBO screwed up by presenting this convenient factoid for conservatives to spin. And it isn’t the first time they’ve done this. They should be more careful.

What the CBO actually said is that ObamaCare will reduce the number of hours worked by people that is equivalent to 2.3 million jobs. The vast majority of this reduction is workers cutting back because they are now working more hours than they want to in order to keep their health insurance. (I will discuss the others below.) For example, a lot of people work full time when they would rather work part part because they have to work more to get health insurance. The fact that these people will cut back on their hours is a good thing, not a bad thing.

Of course, to modern conservatives, it may be a bad thing. Again and again, we have seen major conservative politicians calling for things like an end to unemployment insurance because they feel that more desperate people will find jobs quicker. A similar argument can be made for forcing people to work more hours than they want. Of course, conservatives are not making this argument. They are instead acting as though ObamaCare will destroy two million jobs. This just isn’t true.

People who cut back on their hours will create more slack in the labor marker. According to the CBO, the first effect will be to put upward pressure on wages as companies try to keep employees by paying them more. To me, this would imply that companies create new jobs to offset the lower hours that current employees want to work. That would be what they would do if businesses acted the way conservatives always claim: rationally. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. The CBO says that any actual job losses or gains will be negligible. Companies will apparently just live with reduced productivity. But the main thing is that ObamaCare is not causing these people to lose their jobs; it is giving them more freedom so they can work as much as they want.

There is another aspect of ObamaCare that is not so good. This is a problem with all means tested programs. Some people will get incentives to work less because the more they work, the less healthcare subsidy they get. Almost two years ago to the day, I wrote about this in, Catch 22 for Poor in America. What happens is that people who get this kind of government assistance experience huge incentives not to work more because of benefit cuts. For example, consider someone who gets $100 in food stamps per month but who is right at the edge of qualifying at all. If he makes $50 more per month, his food stamps will be cut off. So by working more, he comes out with $50 less per month. That’s a huge disincentive. (The actual effect is generally smaller because benefits are cut gradually.)

(Note: this never happens with taxes. I’m sure everyone has heard stories of a guy who got a raise but ended with less money because he was bumped up into a higher tax bracket. This can’t happen because we have marginal tax rates. The new 39.6% top tax rate does not apply to all income of people who make over $400,000 per year. That is the rate on all income above $400,000. See: Of Puppets and Marginal Tax Rates.)

The same thing is going on with ObamaCare. Personally, I think this is a small price to pay for the benefits of the program. But if conservatives were really concerned about this problem, they would do something about the disincentives in other welfare systems. And they would have backed “Medicare for all” instead of this cumbersome “free market” approach in ObamaCare. But of course conservatives don’t do these things because they don’t care. This is just a convenient opportunity to misreport information in the name of clubbing ObamaCare some more.

The bottom line for all of this is the 2.3 million full time equivalent hours that ObamaCare will cost is mostly a good thing—a very good thing. But I’m sure that this new conservative talking point will be with us for years. Facts don’t matter to the conservative movement. And in a fundamental sense, facts don’t matter to the media. It is just easier for them to do their both sides now routine, “Republicans say ObamaCare will cost over two million jobs but Democrats counter that this isn’t true. Who can say what’s true?!” Well, now you can.

Update (6 February 2014 8:27 pm)

The CBO says that Obamacare overall will create jobs: