The Cato Institute is a 501(c)(3)—a nonprofit organization. Of course, as an employee I get paid more than my job costs me—I make what you might call “profit”—but because of the tax designation of my employer, I could be getting big forgiveness on any federal student loans I might have. Indeed, a new, quick-read report from the Brookings Institution shows that someone could potentially get all of their graduate schooling covered for free through the federal Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program which, by the way, is expected to cost the American taxpayer a lot more than originally anticipated.

The general way PSLF operates is if you work for government, a 501(c)3 organization, or some other qualifying entity like a public interest law firm, you can get the remainder of your federal student loans forgiven after 10 years of regular payments. Sound great? Well don’t order yet! Those payments are also controlled, capped at 10 percent of income above 150 percent of the poverty line. So a single person would pay nothing on income below $17,820, and 10 percent on income above that. And it doesn’t matter if you get paid more than your job-description doppelganger in a for-profit venture—as long as you work for a “nonprofit” you qualify for PSLF.

The Brookings report describes how someone could essentially get a graduate degree for free through PSLF as long as he had substantial—but not huge—undergraduate debt and worked in a relatively low-paid field. Of course, many people will want to earn more than low pay, but PSLF furnishes strong incentives to stick with a low-paying job for awhile, or more likely, take on much bigger debt and all the nice-to-have college stuff that goes with big college revenue.

Go ahead, future Jack McCoy, take that dip in the lazy river!

Of course, this is not free to taxpayers, many of whom have not gone to college, or may work in struggling for-profit businesses, or may even have thought the right thing to do was to get an inexpensive—and frill free—education. But according to the report, their PSLF bill is rising as enrollment in the program is much higher than anticipated, and nearly one-third of enrollees have debt exceeding $100,000. The report doesn’t give estimated total costs because those are very hard to predict, but estimates of what would be saved with controls such as capping forgivable amounts have risen by more than 2000 percent just from 2014 to 2016! The figures are in the billions of dollars.

There is a strong argument, of course, that there is nothing more noble about working for government, or a nonprofit hospital, or even a think tank, than owning a neighborhood shoe store, or being an accountant at Apple, or risking all you have on a new, entrepreneurial venture, all of which seek to offer things of value to other people. Heck, it is the production of goods and services for profit that gives us the “excess” wealth that enables us to pay for government and all its programs. But few employees, regardless for whom they work, are losing money on their jobs, and many—see, for instance, federal workers—make big profits from their nonprofit jobs not just financially, but also with lots of vacation time, or job security, or simply doing something fun every day.

We’re all working for profit. Why should we be treated—especially given big costs and unintended consequences—differently just because of our employers’ tax designation?

As widely reported, the soft employment data for August and declines in August retail sales and industrial production (manufacturing IP also down) have reduced market odds on a Fed rate hike at its meeting 20-21 September. According to the CME FedWatch Tool, based on trading in federal funds, the probability of a rate hike tomorrow is only 0.12. The same CME tool gives a probability of .46 the Fed will stand pat through December. Now what? I wish I knew. Here is how I think about the question.

First, it now appears that the Fed will go into its December meeting, as it did last year, with forward guidance on the table for a federal funds rate increase. The FOMC might, of course, alter its 2016 forward guidance at its September meeting. If the Committee reduces its guidance to indicate a fed funds range 25 basis points higher than now, but below prior guidance, will that create a strengthened implied “promise” to act in December? That would double down on its current problem with forward guidance. Will the FOMC hike even if employment data through November remain soft? Or, suppose employment growth resumes; will the market take seriously that the FOMC would consider a 50 bps hike in December as implied by current forward guidance?

Second, what are Janet Yellen’s incentives? A year from now, looking back, is the Fed likely to be in a better position and her reputation enhanced if the Fed has raised the federal funds target rate in 2016 and it turns out to be premature or the if Fed has held steady whereas it would have been better to have tightened in 2016? Given the data in hand as I write, it seems to me that waiting makes more sense. Yes, unemployment is below 5 percent and recent employment growth solid, but softening. However, there is little sign of rising inflation. On conventional measures, there is still slack in the labor market; for example, the labor-force participation rate is still well below prior levels. And, don’t forget that in 1999 unemployment fell to almost 4 percent.

Third, if the Fed gets behind by not moving in 2016, how hard will it be to catch up? How much difference can it make if the Fed moves in early 2017 rather than in 2016? Only an old-fashioned fine-tuner can believe it makes much difference.

We can replay this same argument at every future FOMC meeting. What must happen to create a compelling case for the Fed to move? My interpretation of the rate increase last December is that it had less to do with compelling new information than with the fact that the Fed had long promised to move in 2015. That says much more about the wisdom of forward guidance than about sensible monetary policy.

Here is a suggestion for the FOMC, which seems so obvious that I assume the Committee must already be considering it. The FOMC should recast its forward guidance away from the calendar. At its September meeting, the guidance should apply to end of third quarter 2017, 2018 and 2019 rather than end of those calendar years. At each meeting, the guidance would then apply to 4 quarters ahead, 8 quarters ahead and 12 quarters ahead. With this approach, the Committee would never again face an apparent calendar deadline to act.

Seems obvious to me, and very simple. Yes, perhaps guts forward guidance and that would be a good thing. The mantra should be “data dependence, not date dependence.”

A major Wall Street Journal article claims, “A group of economists that includes Messrs. Hanson and Autor estimates that Chinese competition was responsible for 2.4 million jobs lost in the U.S. between 1999 and 2011.”  In a recent interview with the Minneapolis Fed, however, David Autor said, “That 2 million number is something of an upper bound, as we stress.” The central estimate was a 10% job loss which works out to 1.2 million jobs in 2011, rather than 2.4 million.  Since 2011, however, the U.S. added 600,000 manufacturing jobs – while imports from China rose by 21% – so both the job loss estimate and its alleged link to trade (rather than recession) need a second look.

“The China Shock,” by David Autor, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson examined the effect of manufactured imports from one country (China) on local U.S. labor markets. That is interesting and useful as far as it goes.  But a microeconomic model designed for local “commuting zones” cannot properly be extended to the entire national economy without employing a macroeconomic model.  

For one thing, the authors look only at one side of trade – imports – and only between two countries.  They ignore rising U.S. exports to China - including soaring U.S. service exports to China.  They are at best discussing one side of bilateral trade. And they fail to consider spillover effects of China’s soaring imports from other countries (such as Australia, Hong Kong and Canada) which were then able to use the extra income to buy more U.S. exports. 

Autor, Dorn and Hanson offer a seemingly rough estimate that “had import competition not grown after 1999” then there would have been 10% more U.S. manufacturing jobs in 2011.  In that hypothetical “if-then” sense, they suggest that “direct import competition [could] amount to 10 percent of the realized job loss” from 1999 to 2011. 

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