Ignorance of Economics Is No Excuse
The new Spanish leftist party Podemos takes great inspiration from the victory of Syriza in Greece. As NPR reports:
Much of Europe is watching Greece closely after an anti-austerity party won elections there last weekend. And Spaniards are paying particular attention because Greece may be influential. A similar new political party--left-wing, anti-establishment--has formed in Spain over the past year. And polls show that it could win power in elections this fall.
If Podemos is elected, Spaniards may be disappointed in the results. Consider the cognitive dissonance here:
Many Spaniards are ... frustrated that while the economy here is growing, unemployment still tops 23 percent and double that for youth. Polls show voters are switching to Podemos. It promises to raise the minimum wage, hike taxes on the rich and re-evaluate whether Spain should pay its debts.
Making it more expensive to hire workers and reducing the return on investment don't seem like policies designed to deal with Spain's appalling unemployment problem. Europe has had higher unemployment than the United States for most of the past two decades. In 2004, economist William B. Conerly suggested some reasons for that: longer and more generous unemployment benefits, reducing the incentive to find a job; inflexible wages; and job protections that make businesses reluctant to hire workers whom they won't be able to let go. The economist Mark Perry reports that the unemployment rate in European countries with a minimum wage is twice as high as in countries with no minimum wage. And minimum wage laws certainly seem to reduce youth employment.
Alas, as I noted after the State of the Union, President Obama also
wants more and better jobs. And yet he wants to raise taxes on the savings and investment that produce economic growth and better jobs. And he proposes a higher minimum wage, which would cost some low-skilled workers their jobs.
Perhaps if we copy enough European policies, we can achieve European unemployment rates. In the meantime, the Spaniards seem likely to worsen their dire economic situation.
