This epic and must-read Comment of the Day by Chris Marschner—which he had to battle to get posted because of the WordPress glitches that have been plaguing EA commenters (and me, of course) for months, had me rejoicing in the wide range of expertise and experience the Ethics Alarms readers bring to the mission here. Then it caused me to become frustrated and depressed. The media makes no effort to explain these issues and enlighten the public with similar clear exposition, and if it did, I wonder how many Americans would take the time to read it. I also wonder how many Americans would understand such an explanation even if they tried.

Meanwhile, I despair of any politician or candidate for office having the clarity of thought and speech to bring what Chris is talking about into the political campaigns this year—-and there are no more crucial matters than these for voters to understand. In the 1992 presidential campaign, rogue candidate Ross Perot bought time on network TV to explain the national debt and why it was dangerous. He used humble tools: paper charts and a pointer. But Perot understood what he was describing, pulled no punches, and spoke clearly and simply. It was a national service: I voted for him as my gesture of gratitude.

If only Donald Trump could explain and debunk the lies being used to misrepresent the economy as clearly as Ross Perot explained the debt…but Trump couldn’t explain that the square of the hypotenuse in a right triangle is equal to the sum of the square of the other two sides without descending into stream-of-consciousness blather.

Isn’t there some way we could draft Chris Marschner to run for President?

Here is his Comment of the Day, supplemented by his subsequent comment expanding on his original post, on “The Deceitful January Jobs Report”…

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I was hoping you would address this issue of misleading economic data. The jobs report is one that is always subject to deceit. Beyond the absolute numbers and hours worked we should mention that the growth sectors of jobs were health care, low wage hospitality and government. Many of these jobs are driven in large part by the massive numbers (about 7.5 million) of illegal “migrants” who have been given parole by the Biden administration and dispersed throughout the country.

When I taught first year Economics I would tell my students that numerical values do not tell the whole story and you must dig into the numbers to draw any real conclusions. For example, a higher investment value does not mean our capital stock is increasing which would lead to more output at lower costs. I see the Biden administration as the proverbial glazer who breaks windows to increase business. That activity will increase nominal GDP but we are wasting resources unnecessarily.

Every choice has an opportunity cost. Another stat that was touted recently was that quarterly GDP growth was a robust 3.3 percent. How can that be if weekly take home pay growth was less than the hike in prices during the same time? It cannot. Therefore, we must look to other causal forces to increase consumption spending, The only reasonable conclusion is that the increase in consumption originates with the spending by the millions of “migrants” who are issued plastic spending cards by government and more people hired to deal with the “migrants”. [See: Chicago Spent $100 Million on “migrants”’ Since August ]

In addition, the federal government spends billions of borrowed dollars at a cost of about 5.5% that it does not otherwise have and distributes it to NGO’s. The more “migrants” you have the more people you need to process them. If you look at fact checking pages about how much each family gets per month they will tell you that figures used by conservative groups is false because they fixate on resettlement costs of Afghans and not those illegally entering the U.S.. The fact-checkers also do not expose the value of the benefit subsidies received through third party NGO’s or local governments. [See: DHS Announces Distribution of More Than $77 Million in Congressional Funding for Communities Receiving “migrants” | Homeland Security]
The fact of the matter is that someone is paying for the hotel rooms and food costs of these parolees.

If we assume that each family receives a subsidy equivalent to that of 2040 hours of work at minimum wage, that translates to $30,600 per family, or a total of 57.375 billion on an annualized basis. That is a conservative estimate because we know that “migrants” in Chicago are getting $9,000 cash assistance monthly. [See: Database shows where Chicago is spending on migrant crisis – Axios Chicago]

Nowhere in any of the data provided are education costs discussed. One stat in one of the cited articles said that 30 percent of the “migrants” are school age children. That would mean that 2.25 million children have been added to our schools at an average cost of $17,000 each or 38.25 billion dollars annually.

The biggest challenge for people trying to evaluate the costs and benefits is that most of the media are part of the cabal seeking to mislead the public by simply parroting the statements of the NGO’s and government officials whose livelihoods are dependent on social problems. What we have is a government intent on creating problems so that they can allocate billions of unfunded dollars to groups who will actively work to keep the misinformation campaign of politicians going so they don’t have to get a real job….

Everything boils down to the idea that Biden et al break things and then spend gobs of money, claiming that he is responsible for an increase in something good, or blaming others when things are falling apart.

Claim: 8 million new jobs since inaugurated. Fact: most of these jobs did not disappear; they were simply on hold during the government mandated shutdown.New job creation stats come from ADP (a payroll service) which counts new positions added onto existing accounts, a number which is then extrapolated to represent “new hires nationally.” The household survey also plays a role, but in neither case do hours worked translate into the number of jobs created number. An unduplicated headcount and the number of hours must be factored in to get a realistic picture.

We have heard of the “gig economy”. What this means is that jobs are now counted in terms of projects: if Tom works for 3 months doing editing for xyz corp and 6 months as a web developer for abc corp, but then spend 3 months in hiatus waiting for a new “gig,” then the government will report that two jobs were created. Yet only 9 months of employment occurred.

We keep hearing about consumer spending. It is still brisk, which is why the Fed is loathe to lower rates. Well, when you add millions of new buyers to the economy by opening up the borders, consumption expenditures will have to increase. This opening of the border, or should I say, not enforcing existing law at the same time supply chains were strained due to government-mandated closures gave prices no where to go but through the roof. Without the influx of illegal aliens upward price pressure would not have been so high. 

The current wave of lootings has also caused GDP to rise because lost inventories must be replaced. Insurance covers some of the cost to stores, and some costs will come in the form of lost profits. Unfortunately, most of the money to replace goods goes to foreign suppliers, so these negatively impact our net export values in GDP calculations. None of this adds value to the American consumer.

The immigration issue impacts American citizens in multiple ways. The most concerning is that the census counts all these parolees in determining Congressional representation. Even if they cannot vote, these aliens effectively dilute the voices of the citizenry at the ballot box. Given that most of the new arrivals are considered minorities, that minorities are the primary target for progressive politicians who see them as a means to retaining power, and that by and large ethnic groups tend to migrate to like communities for support and cultural compatibility, adding 100,000 new persons to a district will likely cause that district to be split into two. It is likely that the newly created district will be inclined to vote in similar fashion as the original district.In the event that new migrants move into areas represented by progressives but with declining populations, the migrant population will have the effect of protecting the incumbent politician. In either case, this effects the Electoral College and the apportionment of electoral votes.

All of these Biden policies are by design to “fundamentally transform” the United States into something other than a Constitutional Republican form of government. The notion that we are one nation comprised of many sovereign states is what the progressives want to eliminate, and one that many of our founders feared.