Last week, Mitt Romney declaredthat if his new, ...
Now, usually politicians ( Barack Obama included ) gethammered for overstating how much the economy will improve under their watch. But by at least some forecasts, Mr. Romney’s promises may actually be a little underambitious, in that his promised job growth is pretty close to what’s already expected.
In its semi-annual long-term economic forecast released in April, Macroeconomic Advisers projected that the economy would add 11.8 million jobs from 2012 to 2016. That means Mr. Romney believes his newly announced policies would add an extra 200,000 jobs on top of what people already expected, or a jobs bonus of about 2 percent. Themore jobs the better, of course, butthat’s not really much to write home about.
Moody’s Analytics, another forecasting firm, projects similar job growth:
Payroll Employment Change
Sources: BLS, Moody’s Analytics
Year Millions of jobs
2010 -0.93
2011 1.50
2012 1.85
2013 1.89
2014 3.12
2015 3.76
2016 3.07
2017 1.35
2013-2016 11.84
In an e-mail Monday,Mark Zandi, the chiefeconomist at Moody’s Analytics, emphasized that he actually expects the economy to remain on about the same path regardless of who is elected:
The forecast is agnostic with regardto who is elected in November. The key assumption is that whoever wins they will reasonably gracefully address the fiscal cliff, increase the Treasury debt ceilingwithout major incident, and achieve something close to fiscal sustainability.
My view, is that the economy’s fundamentals are much improved, as households deleverage, the financial system re-capitalizes, and American businesses become global competitive. Moreover, the construction cycle is on the verge of turning up significantly, which by itself will create a boat load of jobs, particularly in 2014-15. If policymakers can getit roughly right soon after election, all of this will shine through quickly.
Not everyone is so upbeat.
Jan Hatzius, the chiefeconomist at Goldman Sachs, told me that he has not developed explicit forecasts that go through the end of 2016, but he says he expected an averagejob growth of just under 150,000 a month from now through the end of 2013.
Given those expectations for the start of the next presidential term, hesaid that Mr. Romney’s promise ofjob growth averaging 250,000 a month over the next four years “would bequite a good outcome.”
Additionally, the Congressional Budget Office’s latestlong-term economic forecast , released in January, showed that employment would grow by just 10 million from the first quarter of 2013 to the first quarter of 2017, the dates of the next presidentialterm. (Two asides: The numbers are thesame if you use the last quarter of 2012 through the last quarter of 2016. Additionally, note that the C.B.O.’s forecast refers to thenumber of workers employed, as opposed to the number of payroll jobs in existence, which was the metric in the other forecasts cited.)
That C.B.O. forecast implies that Mr. Romney would be promising an extra 2million jobs, or a 20 percent bonus from what’s already expected. Pretty impressive.
By law, though, the Congressional Budget Office must base its projections on the laws that are on the books rather than on what Congress is expected to do. That means that the office’s forecast assumes the“fiscal cliff” — with its sharp tax increases and deep spending cuts — materializes at the end of this year. Most economists do not believe Congress will allow this to happen.
Needless to say, the C.B.O.’s jobs numberswould probably lookstronger if they likewise assumed Congress does not allow the country to go over the cliff. In that case, Mr. Romney’s job growth premium would be at least somewhat less impressive.
So what to make of all these figures?
First, as you can probably tell from both these forecasts and the events of the last decade, there is a huge margin of error when it comes to predicting economic trends for the next week, let alone the next four years. So it’s very hard to judge whether a promised gain of 12 million jobs under Mr. Romney’s policy overhaul significantly deviatesfrom what would happen without the overhaul.
Perhaps the more important corollary, though, is that there’s a huge margin of error in what Mr. Romney is promising, too. And that’s true for just about any economic forecast you hear from any politician (or pundit or journalist for that matter).
Politicians throw outlots of different numbers for what the economy will do under the assumption that their exact agenda ispassed, which is a pretty unrealistic assumption in the first place. Even if their policies do sail through the sausagefactory that is Washington unscathed, there’s no telling what effect they’ll have when they move outof the world of bullet points and into the actual economy. So take any forecasts you hear from either presidential campaign with a boulder-size grain ofsalt.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/07/romneys-job-growth-promises/
Empty Promises...

President Obama’s assault on Mitt Romney for sending jobs overseas draws from a playbook used repeatedly by politicians of the right and left over the last two decades.
In 1992, Ross Perotran for president on the strength of the “ giant sucking sound ” of jobs going to Mexico. Four years later, Pat Buchanan tried to gain the Republican nomination by promising to repeal the North American Free Trade Agreement and withdraw from the World Trade Organization. In 2004, John Kerry accused George W. Bush of providing tax breaks to outsourcers.

Multinational companies’ freedom to move their moneyacross borders, to wherever the return is highest, raises new issues. Corporations can relocate to escape taxes and regulation, setting up shop where the rules are easiest. Investment in machines and high-technology plants abroad erodesthe productivity edge that American workers hold over workers in China or Brazil.
The challenges call for a more sophisticated debateabout trade. American policy makers might consider global taxation treaties, to reduce the scope for tax competition. They could engage foreign countries in a debate on global standards — overcoming mistrustof American protectionism to develop rules protecting workers from abuse by footloose corporations seekingthe cheapest labor. And they could thinkabout the kind of safety net needed toprotect workers from the dislocationsthat the relentless onslaught of globalization is sure to bring.
The Obama administration has made some progressalong these lines. The Obama health care law is the singlemost important contribution to the nation’s social safetynet since the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson, ensuring that workers who lose their jobs in the future do not also lose their health insurance. But President Obama hasyet to move beyond blunt criticism of outsourcing to sketch out a strategyto embrace the inevitable march of globalization.
He could still criticizeMitt Romney. But themost useful critique of Mr. Romney’s stance is not that he favors outsourcing but that the rest of his economic platform — which proposes cuts in government spending on education, unemployment insurance and other social programs to pay for tax cuts for high-income Americans — would undercut the nation’s ability to cope in the globalized economy he appears to champion.
Hewing to the standard anti-outsourcing playbook may gain afew votes in November. But American workers need more. They need a set of policiesthat gives them a stake in the fruits of the more prosperousglobal economy that globalization can bring.