Third Party & Independents: Archives

Misha, you must not watch the same news I do - are you a Fox fan? The economy as measured by GDP growth is coming back, but that ain’t saying much since the global economy has been doing the same. Remember, this was a global recession, except for China.

Jobs - Why not be honest and tell the folks that 8 of 10 of those jobs were part-time with no benefits. I will give you the 200,000 jobs in one month but it is a blip - an anomaly. Polls currently show less than 40% of the people think the country is headed in the right direction economically. The main reason for that I suspect is job security - there is very little to go around and less and less with each passing month.

The economy is doing well for the wealthy and for corporations who do business overseas. For the rest of us here- any growth in wages is being eaten up twice fold by rising health care, gasoline, milk and vegetable costs.

Add to this Greenspan’s sternest of warnings yet about the deficits and the effect they will have on future GDP growth, - his concern now for inflation when just a few months ago the Fed was still keeping an eye on deflationary signs, and I would agree with the majority of voters - the Economy is better for most of us.

You are a bright person. Some detailed facts are needed however to support your contention and the facts available don’t. Hence an article which makes sweeping statements about how well off we are. Well, compared to third world countries we are - but, signs are popping up everywhere that third world status may be in our future unless we alter course pretty drastically NOW.

80% of Realtors for corporations polled recently indicated they planned to move call centers and data processing jobs overseas in the near future. You see, somehow the facts just seem to be getting lost by those who have a record of defending free trade and hallowed corporations whom we all know have nothing but the best interests of workers as their primary reason for existence. :-)

Oh yes, and let us not forget the little fact about Congress not extending unemployment benefits which 100,000 or so off the rolls for counting unemployment statistics. This is smoke and mirrors at its finest. The truth is there in the fed, the CBO, and OMB, the truth is there in the WSJ, and on Lou Dobbs.

The truth is we are still out a couple million jobs in America since 2001 and of the ones that have been created, the great majority of them constitute a huge step down in pay and benefits compared the jobs lost.

David- all the facts needed to back up my points are in those two articles I linked for you. I have found that posting long economic analysis leads to people skiming the article rather than reading it, a point that you actually suggested to me.

The reason people dont feel confident in the economy just yet is because they havent fully heard the good news- which the numbers back up. Economists are all saying the economy is headed in the right direction and these statistics I sited prove it. Your only real response to the jobs is an unsubstantiated claim that “Why not be honest and tell the folks that 8 of 10 of those jobs were part-time with no benefits” that I can only assume came out of thin air. There is a vested interest in the opponents of the president to try to make the economy seem as bad as possible to push him out- and the impulse is understand although economically empty.

As for the costs of gas- as I have pointed out numerous times on this weblog, that is just, as you say, smoke and mirrors. Adjusted for inflation gas prices are actually rather lower for the last 50 years, and that is with increased miles/gallon AND higher quality of gasoline avaliable for all. As for health care costs going up- that is mostly the result of better medicines being avaliable. This is something people often miss- we have more medicines, more procedures now. These are good things, but they cost money. People are living longer, surviving sickness that would have killed them before, so they need to spend more on health care. Anyway, on the jobs front things are going great, as all indicators show.

I think critism of the economic situation would be more credible if opponents of the president awknowledge that things are going well when they are rather than repeating the same lines regardless of what economic news has come down. It reminds me of an late 19th century philosopher- when told that his theory did not conform to the facts, he responded “well so much the worse for the facts”!

Thks David, for making a succinct and pointed argument, and saving me time!

I happened to awake late this morning, as I was taking in a Cubs game today. I flipped on CNN to find the Dow hovering around -100.00, for the day. I immediately assumed the jobs numbers were less than expected. Soon I knew I was mistakened, but then again, the market ain’t stupid!

Neither it seems are American voters. Good paying jobs are closer to their pocketbooks than the portfolio the GOP claims everyone has.

Al Gore lost Ohio by 115,000 votes. Under Bush, the state has lost 265,000 manufacturing jobs. There is no massaging those figures.

Yes, when my stock portfolio climbs out of the red (im sitting at a 30% loss) then i’ll believe the economy is back on track. Sadly i dont think things are gonna change until this winter at the earliest.

People, the recovery has nothing if anything to do with George W.

Why don’t people seem to get this. The recovery has to do with Greenspan and the Federal reserve and perhaps a little on the Bush stimulus plan. (I’ve taken the soapbox on this before.)

With the devaluation of the dollar it raises oil prices and hence effects the whole chain on up to the consumer.

Yes, it creates more trade overseas but it also raises costs on everything,I don’t mean to be a broken record.

But it does create jobs as it stabs the middle-classes and lower economic classes in the back. There will be, if there isn’t already, a sharp upturn in interest rates as a reaction, but the cost of oil will be up for some time afterwards hence the cost of everything still higher than normal.

Now, in the political spectrum most people are freakin’ stupid so they’ll nod and have no idea how everything is inter-related and works to create a recovery. But in part ‘this’ recovery is a reaction to trade deficits and not sluggish labor markets entirely and was helped along by the rediculous Bush spending (stimulus package) and the war (stimulus of it’s own accord).

I’ll make this clear and simple it’s not a recovery in my view until the costs on things stablize and aren’t inflated as they are currently. Jobs are created by the inflation, as nuts as that sounds, as our dollar is worth less in the global market which increases trade oveseas. Hence the jobs.

Are you ready for some illogical logic to contrast your thinking?

Trade deficits if controlled, are okay as they lower the cost of things and give us a better quality of life in the lower to middle classes. If kept in check wisely and made up for with modulating lower interest rates as needed, trade deficits can be a good thing for us. We buy less American goods but through the Bill Clinton era we were okay with it, why because it helped our manufacturers to buy parts inexpensively. Why else were we okay with it because there were useful stimulus packages instead of the mindless republican stimulus spending flooding our market with currencies in no man’s land (obscure diseffective sectors) with the stimulus. The war is also a stimulus to the economy too.

All of these factors create jobs but LOWERING TAXES, Trickle down economics saved us?

Please get off the crackpipe, “The Laffer Curve” or what is commonly known as “SUPPLY SIDE ECONOMICS” does nothing but get votes for republicans.

Try telling that to an economics proffessor that The Laffer Curve is responsible for the recovery.

You might as well have said “a priest and a rabbi walked into a bar…” because what you are about to say next as your reason for saying it, is sure to be worth a laugh. People are gullible enough to believe George W. did it though.

YAY! TAX CUTS! (idiots)

B>B)

Oh wait, wait, wait, but where are the jobs then?

Ha-Ha! When you raise costs on manufacturing you cause lay offs due to new expenditures for those parts that manufacturers are reliant on buying overseas by fostering inflation as Greenspan did.

It has recovered via lowering interest rates but spawned lay-offs by mitigating our purchasing power overseas through currency devaluation in the global marketplace.

When you gouge manufacturers with new costs they have to make up for that. If you take the dollar too low we pay more for parts we are reliant on hence businesses have to drop workers.

Also it raises cost of oil and there are jobs there too in transportation. Airline tickets are shooting up and they are laying people off as well, as fuel and other costs rise.

Oh, hence tourism is effected which is vital to many local economies. That equals lay offs too and deprives states of revenues.

Then the bill for the war is coming in as Bush is trying to make his tax cuts permanent. So the lower economic groups foot the bill, entirely.

YAY!

(I’ll stop my soapbox)

:>O#

(whoops, sorry I have to continue)

%X>l:)

When you deprive states of those needed revenues they raise state taxes and property taxes. Which isn’t good for you or me. Unless you are in a republican red state then they just let prisoners out of prisons earlier and you have to absorb more taxes locally to pay for cops on the street.
Infrastructure construction gets delayed, social services get overburdened, Courthouses get overburdened at your expense $$$. Oh but that’s not all, there’s door number three. The local economy is completely depressed, hence Alabama. Depressed local economies have higher crime rates.

How did it come to crime rates? It’s all a chain.

:>(#

Misha, the 8 out of 10 jobs created being part-time came from Lou Dobbs. But, since you questioned it, I thought I would do my own research. I looked at the April Jobs report directly for the following information.

Could only find part-time work……. 1,279 1,399 1,340 1,414 1,431

The numbers above are in thousands and go sequentially from Dec. 2003 to Apr. 2004. See a trend? From Dec. to April, the number of folks who could only find part-time work is 1431-1279 = 152,000 folks. That is 54.6% of the new jobs created are being held by folks who could only find part-time work.

Agricultural Self-employed workers March 896,000 - April 934,000. Difference = 38,000 new self-employed agricultural workers.

Non-Agricultural Self-employed workers March 9,210 ,000 April 9,228,000 Difference 18,000.

Most newly self-employed start part-time. And newly self-employed are not counted in the part-time statistics. Therefore in the month of April, 56,000 new jobs were created by newly self-employed. Let us assume %50 of those were full-time newly self-employed a conservative assumption. That is another 28,000 part-timers, or 10% of the 278,000 new jobs created.

So, we are now up to 64.6% of the 278,000 jobs created being part time.

And let us not forget that the 56,000 self-employed have no benefits associated with employers and part-timers don’t qualify for benefits. Add them up, 56,000 self employed plus 152,000 part-timers = 208,000 new workers without employer paid benefits. 208,000 divided by 278,000 jobs created = 74.8% without benefits.

Ok, so Lou Dobbs numbers were a bit different from mine, and he probably has more data than I have access to in the April jobs report.

But, Like all of the information above, the report states the Civilian work force increased by 91,000 persons.

S0, lets add this up. 278,000 new jobs were created. 91 thousand of those jobs were taken by new people entering the work force. So the number of people who used to work and got employed in April is only 278-91 = 187,000 people who lost jobs and then found jobs in April. Of that 187,000 folks who lost jobs and found jobs in April, 208,000 were employed without benefits.

Get the picture, In April we saw a net loss of jobs with benefits.

Also, note from the report, “Both the unemployment rate, 5.6 percent, and the number of unemployed persons, 8.2 million, were essentially unchanged in April. The unemployment rate has been either 5.6 or 5.7 percent since last December.”

So, we are not making a dent in the unemployment rate.

Please, do not accuse me of pulling numbers out of the air. It is a foolish thing to do. It is not something I would dream of doing in a public forum. I won’t embarrass myself by such tactics used by others.

Skunkbud, it is not correct to say Bush’s policies had nothing to do with the recovery. I don’t find much defend Bush on, but, his tax cuts did prevent the recession from being elongated. The tax cuts for the wealthy did result in increase capital investments which permitted corporations to invest in enhanced non-human productivity capital equipment and increase mainatenance of older equipment. All of this resulted in greater productivity and allowed some market competitor price wars to break out which cut into earnings - look at GM and Ford, for example. This would not have been possible without increased flows into capital markets.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not defending Bush’s tax cuts as a whole - I was and am opposed to the cuts allowed for the wealthiest. But, to say that his tax cuts had little or nothing to do with economic turnaround, is simply a false statement. The middle class tax cuts helped to by permitting demand to maintain through the holiday season.

And in depressed local economies, there are lower average earnings because employers don’t have to pay much given it’s a depressed local economy.

Ah the cycle of permanent and generational poverty.

THANKS REPUBLICANS!

David,

The tax cuts wasn’t what the recovery was comprised of as you know (Greenspan + stimulus) but to say it kept it from being elongated, I’m not so sure.

It did fill the gap for some, yes and did create more capital investment I’m sure. But the recovery not being elongated was the lowering of interest rates that flooded the economy with currency and Bush’s stimulus which was strangely spent in many places. And the war too in some, if not many, regards.

So I don’t know if it kept us from a potentially longer recession but the jump to our economy was mostly the actions of greenspan and the stimulus.

The holiday season? Perhaps you are correct.

I also remember reading some years ago that in economically depressed times there is a slight increase in spending at thankgiving and christmas time and an increase in liquor sales(drugs,o.d.’s). I don’t mean that in jest, it’s almost like a form of escapism in the onset of a recession. but it’s been too many years to go look that up.

Perhaps, you are right.

Also the lowering of interest rates made it possible to borrow to have those Gm & Ford wars too. It increased home buying and building as well, obviously.

Am I wrong?

Skunkbud, you are not wrong and a great deal has been written to support your statements. What keeps economicians employed is the infinite number of variables that can potentially influence the economic webs from global to local. Occasionally, I take the time to ponder the brilliance of Greenspan.

He talks like a Friedman economist so very often, but not infrequently, like this week, he departs from that philosophy and anchors his comments deep in concrete reality like the consequences of current fiscal policy on our economy in just a very few years and worsening from that point outward in hugely negative ways. I found his comments about floating the debt to foreign investors particularly astute and foretelling.

Test?

Well what I was saying is that borrowing rates could have been very instrumental in the effects we’re seeing within manufacturing.

Such as with the machines non-human and otherwise in reference to maintenence to older equipment (in contrast to buying new equipment).(repair also shows thriftiness atleast from the outset)

Whereas the tax cuts themselves were actually lower on the totempole of reasons as to why the capital investment and increased expenditures within such corporations took place. Perhaps definably reinvested but minimal in scope of what took place essentially that led to growth.

Now Greenspan needed to jumpstart the markets out of it’s dip but the fear on Wall Street is that it will rebound with a rise in rates, from what I gather. Could mean trouble?

But it was greenspan’s moves that did it. Secondly the stimulus package and the war stimulus (and it’s horrible to think of people dying as a boon to our econ) but I really do think that the tax-cuts were minimal in causing a rebound to our economy. perhaps getting us over a hump in terms of investments as you stated but as a defining integral cause to a turn around, hmmm.

But I’m not a economist.
So really Friedman and school of thought are lost on me. But floating the debt needs to be done as we need to shore up our overwhelming trade deficits. As well as devaluation will open up overseas markets to us but it may be too low and be shoring the debt up at too high a rate rather than incremental decrease.

I have to agree with skunkbud on this one. A stimulous to capital is meaningless if there are no consumers. It probably did help put people out of work through investment in automation, but it certainly didn’t increase sell-through of merchandise.

The low interest rates and meager middle-class tax cuts kept the economy fom tanking worse, but a tax cut targeted at consumers rather than creating capital would have shortened the recession considerably.

As for currency deflation, it’s interesting that Snow talking down the dollar didn’t affect our trade deficit with China at all. In fact it was at a record high while the dollar was at a record low.

I think a better foreign policy is needed. Economic warfare with a country that holds a majority of US debt sounds like a bad idea. :)

skunk said:

“People, the recovery has nothing if anything to do with George W.”

I said:

“Just like Bush had nothing to do with the recession he was so loudly blamed for early in the presidency, he has just about as little to do about this recovery.”

Please try to READ what actually wrote instead of straw-maning an argument to think that I am just a Bush-crony because I disagree with Democrats…

288,000 jobs a “statistical blip?” Last month’s blip was even more massive. In only two months, we have blips totalling over a half million jobs! How many blips in a row—and how huge do the blips have to be—before they’re not blips anymore? Just a question.

Bush is not totally responsible for the deep economic problems we face, but he has done nothing to emeliorate them. Deregulation, Social Security piracy, Union busting, outsourcing, tax code for the rich, fish depletion, environmental disasters, government waste and educational breakdown began before Rove ever imagined a Shrub Presidency. Bush occasionally plays lip service to these problems, but mostly he ignores or exacerbates them. Instead of thinking things through in consultation with his staff he prays about it and then follows Rove or Cheney back into hell. War spending and massive home mortgage business triggered by 40 year low interest rates will continue to mask our economic problems until November. Then we can expect a repeat of the post Vietnam inflation without having anything left in Social Security for politicians to rob. Shrubs preemptive war, battle with terrorism, environmental, education, energy, tax and economic policies are abominations. Shrubs chronies have made plenty of deals with Hussien, Noriega and bin Laden, who they now demonize. But it’s not his fault! We are the complacent gullible fools who make it possible for Prince Bandar, BushCo, Carlyle, Halliburton… to steal, maim and kill at will.

Misha, I agree with you except on a few points.

“Health care costs are up because of improved medicines.”

Which ones are you talking about,another new Viagra? I’m not sure what that statement is based on except the belief that capatalism provides the best healthcare.

The rising cost of energy and the rising budget and trade deficits aren’t of any concerns to you?
What form of economics is that? I think all these can be linked to Bush.

environmental disaster? All environmental indicators are IMPROVING under Bush (as they were under Clinton- and for the last 30 years actually). You may not think he is not doing enough, but to say disaster.. come on now! My favorite attack on Bush’s enviro policy was when he proposed the Healthy Forrests Initiative, which the Democrats all attacked and stopped. Then came the California wildfire disaster, which is exactly what the healthy forest initiative was designed to prevent, and the same exact bill passed 98-1 in Congress.

Social Security piracy? you are going to have to provide more information. As I have repeatedly written, as most economists agree, social security is completely unsustainable and we need to move toward getting in into the private sector. UNFORTUNATELY, Bush has done nothing to make this happen, just pay lip-service to the idea, while forcing more and more Americans into this system which hurts nearly every person, especially the working poor (because they cant afford to invest into the market as well as putting 12.5% of their money in social security).

Union busting? Maybe I havent been paying attention- what Union has Bush busted? in what way? did he use force?

outsourcing? As i explained in the article I linked to on this post- this is hardly a problem. To the extent that it takes jobs “away” from Americans it gives them to people who (a) need them more (b) do them at better costs. Thus outsourcing helps american consumers and helps peopel who have those jobs oversees- it does hurt those who had the jobs in America, but as the economic growth numbers that I posted here show, they are getting jobs anyway. Even if those jobs arent as good- a world in which a starving person in India can work a job and feed themselves while a person in America has a slightly worse job is a better world than one in which the person in america gets to keep his manufactoring job, while the person in India dies… plus in the world where the starving person in India gets to work, the goods poor Americans need to buy cost less, and thus they have a better standard of living.

tax code for the rich? the top 1% make about 17% of our nation’s income while paying about 33% of our nation’s taxes- under the BUSH tax plan. You may not think that is “progessive” enough, but that is hardly a system for the rich- its one for the poor. There are numerous loopholes that some people can use to get out of paying their taxes (otherwise the number would be much higher than 33%), but that just means we need to go to a flat tax with absolutely no loop holes- which is a great idea which will never happen because there are too many special interests who have bought too many politicians that will never allow their tax loop holes to go away.

Greg- that statement was based upon the view that medicines, just like all other products, are improving. People live longer than ever today and thus need more medical care- which of course leads to higher costs.

as for budget deficiets, i said:
“Meanwhile, this economic recovery is saving the Bush administration from some of its irresponsible spending policies by increased tax revenues and significantly cutting into the projected deficits down a much more manageable, although still not acceptable, $477 billion. “

notice the use of the words “irresponsible” and “not acceptable” and you can see where I stand on Bush’s spending policy. I still think we need a balanced budget amendment, because as the Bush administration has once again proven, when politicians have money to spend, they will spend it.

Polls currently show less than 40% of the people think the country is headed in the right direction economically.

That couldn’t have anything to do with democrats playing up bad economic news and playing down good economic news to hurt the President could it?

(This has to be my shortest post ever.)

Martin, if you read my last response to Misha, you would see from the Jobs report that unemployment has been statistically flat since Dec. and wage increases from the report show they are not keeping up with the inflationary pressures which have caught Greenspan’s eye in the areas of food, fuel, and health care - i.e. staples. Last month also saw a very large increase in consumer debt reflecting the difference in part of wages not keeping up with prices.

So, to answer your question, when the earnings per hour worked reach the levels they were at the end of the Clinton Admin., then the economy will truly be improved. But with the debt and deficits putting huge tax increase pressures on future earnings, inflationary pressures increasing, and wages not keeping pace, we are only transitioning from one kind of economic trouble to another kind. Hence, as Greenspan implies, though in the short run economic indicators for GDP are improving nicely, the economy is not stablilizing. He warns we are trading recession for increased taxation, increased inflation, increased bankruptcies, and reduced domestic consumer spending - while at the same time increasing export markets, sales, and jobs.

The Fed also warns Americans have lost their consumer cushion - namely refinancing of mortgages to lower rates increasing monthly disposable income. As the national debt rises, and subsequent interest rates go up, consumers will no longer have the option available to maintain spending through the next recession as they did through this one.

So the bottom line is, if the Republican Congress and the Republican President cannot exercise a great deal more fiscal responsibility to keep interest rates from escalating, the next recessionary period could be immensely worse than this last one, especially in light of the very small gains being made in purchasing power per hour worked, and the abominable savings rates that has become almost a constant in our economy regardless of cycle.

Eric, NO IT DOESN’T. It has to do with job security which increasing millions of Americans are paying attention to. ALso, it has to do with food and gas prices rising faster than annual pay increases. People are working as many hours but able to buy less for those hours worked.

It has nothing to do with News. Most people who are polled on such matters pay only a passing glance to news about economics, and understand little of what they glance at. But, they do know when they are feeling pinched at a time when the Administration is weekly saying the economy is improving, the economy is the best shape it has been in years. They know their own reality and it doesn’t match what Bush is saying. That is why the polls show less than 40% believe the country is headed in the right direction.

You really should read that gallop poll, it is very revealing - about the same number indicate only about 40% believe the war in Iraq is going the way it should be. You know as well as I, the general public watches the news that matches their bias. There is another poll showing that 4 out 10 Republicans are now considering not voting for Bush in November if the economy does not improve for them and, or, we are not out of Iraq by November.

Republicans have a lot to worry about from that poll. If even 5% of that 4 out of 10 don’t show up to vote for Bush, Kerry does not have to much but plod along and avoid and scandal to win given the even split between Dem’s and Rep’s in the country, and the very high motivation of Democrats to turn out in November.

Misha,

I did sort of run roughshod over your piece, but my comments were aimed at so much that I’ve heard within conservative media circles(Fox/Rush/Newsmax/free republic/etc.).

You are right in Bush having “little” to do with it (as in Bush playing a minor to Greenspan’s major) but the stimulus monies and the war did stir part of the turn-around too.

But the jobs aren’t here because we are reliant on foreign countries to make so many of our parts and the rise in fuel costs that have caused lay-offs.

You do have validity in your claims that outsourcing is to some extent overblown as a problem. To outsource manufacturing is really a micromanaging hat-trick that few if any companies want to take up, from what I’ve read.

And as for telemarketers and computer & technology support phone handlers overseas that really isn’t a big bite out of our labor market, a bite yes, but a big one, no. That’s a Lou Dobbs myth that outsourcing is the fall of civilization and his assertion that trade deficits no matter how well managed are problematic. It’s sensationalism.

We need parts from overseas and retail needs goods from overseas and when you jack up those costs there are obvious labor ramifications, lay-offs.

See that’s Bush’s glitch all the stimulus packages aren’t creating jobs when we have a definite reliance on our trade for goods overseas. It inflates cost and the lower interest rates are utilized for the most part to cope with those changes not add on new workers. The jobs are coming in some sectors as we open ourselves to trade overseas through the inflation of our dollar but the lay-offs numbers-wise outweigh that. One step forward after we’ve taken two steps back. Massive lay-offs(2 steps) then new trade(1 step forward).

But the lower dollar after Greenspan’s flood has had a reaction on oil prices/the less our dollar is worth the less oil it purchases hence more of our currency per gallon at the pump. That oil hike will cause more lay-offs and unemployment as costs rise for transportation which effects agribusiness and retail and will inflate costs there. We are already feeling the pinch as costs of goods rise. yes there is more competition to survive in such a climate but we need to recognize that we are an import economy too and the dollar should reflect that.

What may be good for Nasdaq isn’t always good for consumers or labor. And a good many of those companies are multinationals with no job creation here in the US.

MISHA, Quick note:

The “irresponsible” and “Not acceptable” spending policy Bush has taken is the stimulus I was talking about. It thrusts monies into various sectors and I agree that some of it ill-spent. I don’t agree with the largely ineffectual policy but that was Bush covering his bases, I think.

And (sidenote) I love to goad those to the right of me, so don’t take my comments personally.

2;>D)

Skunkbud, your comments and analysis is well laid out and makes sense. I believe however, that you are underappreciating years of trade deficits and their effect. Trade deficit = we import 2$ of goods and export 1$ to make the argument simple. This means we pay out to foreigners $2 for everyone 1 dollar which is returned. Now, put 100’s of billions on the end of those numbers and one can readily see this is not good year after year after year. Ultimately, the money we are earning in America is leaving America and not returning, shortening our money supply which has many effects.

First, it means less money each year is recirculating in our economy. The consumer buys a $100 item but only $99 remains to fuel jobs, the economy, government revenues, etc. Lou Dobs refers quite correctly to this phenomena as the bankrupting (albeit slowly but incessantly) of America.

Shortage of money supply ultimately (it the situation is not turned around) results in printing money to replace what isn’t coming back which in turn becomes inflationary by devaluing the dollar and consumers buying power.

Now for a little perspective - The United States registered a record $489.4 billion trade deficit for 2003. That is almost 1/2 Trillion dollars in one year. Clearly, Bush’s free-trade policies are not having the intended effect. Nor did his devaluing of the dollar have much effect. Reason, Bush’s advisors do not understand the root causes of the deficit and therefore are applying the wrong and ineffective solutions. And remember, that is only 1 year.

2002 was only somewhat smaller. And the deficits have been growing for the last decade, but most phenomenally during the Bush administration. The frightening aspsect is not the deficits of yesteryear which have grown to a level of concern (despite Friedman economists arguing giving our money away is a sign of a healthy economoy - think about that for a minute) - but the portending deficits out as far as the eye can see. In order to balance it, we need to invest in schools, technology, brains, and innovative products to market in the future. Except for health care technology - which we are not exporting much of except in pharmaceuticals- we are being out produced, out brained and out technologized as we speak, an in just a decade, we may have nothing but pharmaceuticals to export.

Startling! Hypocritical!

The effusive praise of the economy in the above article lby Misha eaves out more than a few salient facts.

1. The number of jobs created in the last couple of months are in construction - remember the highway bills passed a couple of months ago. The rest are of the part time WALMART and Burger flipping variety. WALMART last year was chastized as one of the lowest paying employers, who unbeknownst to their employees or families, were buying “Janitor Life Insuraqnce” on them so when they died the money would go to WALMART. Would the author like to elaborate - specific point by specific point how this compensates for the loss of 3 million white collar and manufacturing jobs under Bush’s watch?

2. On CNN. While the choas of torture and Iraq dead fill the news wires, BUSH’s department of commerce has quietly been going state to state to have governors sign over the states rights to negotiate prices with foreign companies. More profits for the companies who send our jobs over seas! And of course a major effort to stop those “pesky seniors” from going to Canada to buy their durgs at more reasonable prices. Example: I have to take Advair for Asthma (cazsed by corporate polluants)- Cost $169/per month in the US. In Canada that same medicine in the same purple case with the same name “Advair” sells for $59/per month. Nothing like keeping the public focused on other issues, or the wrong ones, to slip in the sleazy efforts to further curb any consumer efforts. Yeah the tax cuts are working great for corporations and the Adminstration helps them further erode any potential effort by consumers to balance the playing field.

3. Even Alan Greeenspan feels the deficit has reached out of control magnitude. Risking his chance to be re-nominated by Bush as Chairman of the Federal Reserve in June, Greenspan has begun to speak out. Now higher interest rates will impact those Americans fortuante enough to have a decent job - thus further decimating the middle class and eroding incomes. Effect on large corporations? - NIL- They get tax cuts for moving overseas and have access to lower interest overseas markets.

4. Oil now over $40 abarrel and California again headed towaqrd balckouts and energy deficits. This administration spends thousands of tax payer dollars to malign Martha Stewart over a $44,000 misbegotten profit. Yet Ken Lay, who destroyed the California economy and stole Billions of $$$ from peoples retirement funds, has not even been indicted. Now the energy companies are at it again - and there is only silence and neglect from Washington. Is this because of the campaign contributions they make to BUSH??

Mihsa are you employed by the RNC or its affiliates to again try and snow the rest of us? How can you claim the higher moral ground by deliberately obfuscating facts in a manner delieberately designed to mislead your fellow Americans? Is this the newest definition of the much maligned “patriotic Ferver” prevalent among the conservatives.

Very interesting commentary everyone. I think at a certain level we need to pull our heads out of this statistical war and just take a look around us. Politicians are very adept at quoting statistics to have us believe that reality is one thing or another but sometimes it pays to turn off the weather channel and just look out the window.

I don’t know about all of you but the economy I see out there is not only dismal it is down right scary. The people I work with are very insecure about their jobs, have watched their benefits dwindle, and are concerned that at any moment an Enron-like event could wipe out their retirement accounts. My co-workers and I have had to actually participate in training people from India to do our jobs. It sort of feels like digging your own grave. These observations don’t end with my company as I see it in my customers and I hear the same stories from all my friends. Whatever jobs this economy seems to be producing they are a mere shadow of the jobs being lost. I’m not going to link you to a statistic on this one because it is just what I have observed. I would love to hear everyone else’s personal experiences.

Statistics are a wonderful thing but there is an old country saying that goes, “Don’t piddle down my back and tell me it’s raining”. I see a lot of piddling from the Bush administration and not much else.

A quick point on the record 477 billion dollar deficit. This is being touted as a sign of improvement since estimates from the Bush administration had put it much higher. This is an old corporate trick. Let’s say your company is going to post a record $5 loss per share the next quarter. As the CEO the first thing you do is put out an estimate for a $10 a share loss. Now when the $5 a share loss is reported you can crow about how you have turned the company around and averted disaster. It’s a neat trick however the $10 a share loss is a myth conjured up to make the $5 a share loss seem acceptable. The corporate culture currently in the White House is more involved in statistical manipulation than actual benefit to the country.

Maureen, your facts are just plain wrong. In fact you seem to be reading from a two month old Kerry campaign script (using the “construction jobs” line, which most experts believed false then and everybody knows is false now).

The greatest job gains have been in the service sector—at the lower end, resturants or temp firms, at the higher end management and technical consulting services, esp. architectural and engineering consulting. The promising thing about the type of jobs created in March-April is that they point to additional growth—use of engineering and architectural consulting being a first step to a company’s expansion. 21,000 of the new jobs were in manufacturing. And your attack on Wal-Mart, as though Wal-Mart has hired a half-million people in the last two months, again demonstrates that your source of economic information appears to be the campaign slogans of Democratic candidates. If you’re not willing to discuss the actual facts, don’t ask the author for elaborate point by point refutations of what amounts to propaganda.

Martin, I commend you on pulling your facts from the recent jobs report and even your interpretation of what the architectural and engineering increases portend. But, Maureen is not wrong. There is a larger picture and context than just that one piece of data from the jobs report. Read my facts also directly from the jobs report above in response to Misha. Maureen is addressing the larger picture and has facts from the jobs report to support her position as well.

We all have a right to our selective criteria to support our positions, or to be limited by our own faculties thus making us all equally non-omniscient.

DAVID,I totally concur-balance trade.

But we need to at the same time have a lower inflation, as this won’t hurt companies that want to maintain competitiveness and open themselves up to trade overseas. Inflation does makedomestic oil(AND ETHANOL) marketable but taking OUR DOLLAR that low would be a disaster.

*But with tradedeficits understand that they are a by product of our need and reliance on outside sources for goods.

Personally I prefer to get my economic data from a source other than a government bureaucracy and an administration (republican or democrat) with a vested interest in massaging the numbers.

They were doing all right until about three months ago. Now Stocks, bonds and gold are all trending neutral or biased downward. The data seems more indicative of an economic hover or stall than a recovery.

This is a nice link for gold prices: http://www.kitco.com/charts/livegold.html

Skunkbud, regarding “needed revenue for states”, do you think it’s an efficient system for the federal government to tax and then turn the revenue over to the states to spend? Or would it be more efficient for the states to tax their own revenue? Do extra bureaucrats make for “efficiency” in your view?

In the argument over quantity of jobs versus quality of jobs, it sort of reminds me of the perverse djini that grants wishes in a slanted way to trick the wisher. The Democrats droned endlessly “where are the jobs”? So the corporate establishment creates millions of new “name tag and hair net” jobs and says “aqui tiene su trabajo senor!”

It is indeed an economic reality that manufacturing and white-collar jobs are disappearing, and they would no matter who is President because they are economic realities outside the realm of political control. When people are starving and their government has the foresight to educate them in high-tech fields, DON’T act all surprised that those people cease to starve and start to “take jobs” from those who had accumulated a high sticker price out of not having to compete previously with those markets. The flipside of the economic reality is that the flow is not permanent: in areas where they aren’t slave labor, wage inflation will hit them just as much as it did in America, and the flow will become more two-way.

The big concern is slave labor. There’s no competing with “zero”. That drives not just trade deficits, but proliferates very very bad juju throughout the world.

Misha,

When my 401 (K) stops hemorrhaging cash, I can manage to get a raise, my sixteen year old daughter finally lands a summer job interview, American companies start employing people full-time, factory orders remain upbeat for more then a month or two, and the unemployment rate continues to fall, then and only then will I believe the recovery is real.

What good is an economic recovery if real wages continue to fall, the jobs that are created are without benefits, the standard of living is not improved, and high paying American jobs continue to flow overseas (just last week Unisys announced that it was transferring as many as 1200 American high tech jobs to India)? And locally Bank One (my bank) is laying of some 500 workers.

I think we have to face facts, America will never again enjoy an economic boom like it saw in the eights; the only real growth area in the economy is bio-tech and even that is being stifled by right wing politics that are allowing other countries to pull ahead of us in this critical area. No, unless we reverse the slide, our economy will begin to shrink…

I’m going to try to profess doom and gloom with a straight face, but it might not completely fly. My daughter is employed, her college is taken care of, my retirement stash is steadily growing, and apart from some personal issues my sister is having with her divorce that money can’t really fix, life is good with not just myself but all the people around me. Gas prices are painful but they should be. That’s Mother Nature telling us Oil Isn’t Forever, the law of OIF. When you need to refinance your home to drive an SUV to work, maybe my numb-skull neighbors might get a clue about that. I’ll be the one in the Prius getting the last laugh.

Ciggy,

Thefalling dollar is inflation, with inflation gas prices hike and hence,food, goods,and eventually tourism, travel, restaurants,businesses reliant on outside commerce dry to some degree.

As a reaction in many red states and this is researchable, feel free to look up stats, in contrast to jobsloss due to precipitating dollar on travel/oil and on slowed economic forces readjusting as we are now in the midst of. Red states need to do something to counteract the recession and what they do is release populations from prison which effects all sorts of problems in the state which will inevitably cost more in the long run to fix.

Would I suggest taxation to spending three to four times as much to compensate for a faultering economy?

I am always against becoming a third world country. I don’t feel that shovelling sh*t downhill is really a solution,no. To deny it has consequences it may make politicians unpopular but it actually is dealing with the problem prior to it’s widening.

>>> secondly to turn it over to states to spend?cities and states are budgetted things. We need roads, we need money set aside for various programs, we need money for health and humanservices, we need money in law enforcement, we need money in the justice system and in housing criminals that we don’t want on the streets. We need moneyto put on the books laws passed on capital hill. State expenditures aren’t bad things without them you are living in a third world country.

Without expenditures by the state,we all live in Nicaragua where there isn’t anything. Why do republicans want that? A workforce living in hovels with no minimum wage,would a country like Brazil be more to republican liking? If you don’t want progress and civilization then hop the border try Paraguay they have no human services or law enforcement to speak of. Look at what you republicans have donewith the south and the midwest. You stink at governing, why are the republicans involved, move to Peru, it’s ready made for republican tastes.

You can get any firearm, there are no corporate laws, there is no “Liberal media” no boobies on your TV, great hunting everyday without laws on poaching, you can cut as many trees down as you people want, There’s no political correctness, Have allthe Christianization in your public life you want. It’s everything republicans want right there. Void of progress, perfect right?

That’s actually pretty good, skunkbud. I’ve wondered about that myself while pondering how I’ll support my parents when Social Security and Medicare go bust.

Is that really what Republicans want? Or do they draw the line somewhere? If so, where?

Bob, a timely comment on your part regarding commodities like gold.

I just a little while ago finished watching AEI’s discussion of the jobs and economy situtation on C-Span. Remember, AEI is a very conservative think tank from the 1940’s platformed similarly to the 2000 Republican Platform (www.aie.org).

Anyway, they went on at length through the program arguing how great the economy uptrend is and how rosy the jobs picture is. Then, right at the end, they took questions from the audience, and it was discovered that the AIE panelists could not refute the fact that the employment data is meaningless except for the fact that the economy appears poised to actually start creating jobs.

This came about via two audience members questioning the validity of the jobs measurements. They agreed the data both indicates 0 job growth since 2000 or 1.9 million new jobs since 2000 depending on which measure you use, the establishment measures or the payroll/wage measures. And they agreed, there can be no reconciliation between the measures, therefore, the real jobs growth if there is any will be confirmed only by a lower fiscal deficit than predicted for 2004. Increased tax revenues and the subsequent lowering of the deficit is the only real world measure we will have as to whether we are in fact creating new net jobs.

Will have to wait and see, eh? It was an eye opener to see conservatives deal with facts and truth and real numbers for a change. I have a renewed respect for AEI for hosting panelists whose first commitment is to the data and truth rather than Bush’s reelection. I wonder of liberal think tanks statisticians are equally pliable when pressed to talk straight about their numbers.

One very interesting fact came out also. That is that the real Unemployment rate is 8.4% when folks who are discouraged from looking for jobs but would take one if they thought one could be found, are included in the polling. The trend line for unemployment whether it be narrowly or broadly defined is improving, that was agreed.

We were losing jobs from 2000 to 2003, and since that loss rate has stopped for the time being, and may possibly actually be producing new net jobs. But, 8.4% unemployment does still provide real support for the claim that we are still experiencing a relative jobless recovery - even if net jobs produced are in the positive range.

The official rate by O.M.B. is 5.6%; makes a more electable number for the Pres. to run on.

Skunkbud,
“Thefalling dollar is inflation”

And also a dampening factor on imports and a motivating factor on exports, exactly what our economy needs. If we continue to import, wantonly, our dollar is still too high.

“Without expenditures by the state,we all live in Nicaragua where there isn’t anything. Why do republicans want that?”

Not to speak for Republicans because I’m not one, but it appears that Bush’s problem is excessive spending, not the reverse. In fact, that’s the big Republican bait-and-switch. “Fiscal discipline” gets preached on the campaign trail, and then they blow the lunch money to look at rocks on Mars or some similar “necessity” once they have the election handed over by the SCOTUS. Nasty, nasty deeds.

“You can get any firearm, there are no corporate laws, there is no “Liberal media” no boobies on your TV, great hunting everyday without laws on poaching, you can cut as many trees down as you people want, There’s no political correctness, Have allthe Christianization in your public life you want. It’s everything republicans want right there. Void of progress, perfect right?”

That’s quite a little rant, and makes even Ed Schultz look rational, but let me see if I can disassemble it from a Centrist point of view, as a contrast to the way a Republican would:

1. Any firearm you want. Insipid lie, to call a spade a spade. There are illegal firearms, and the ATF is busily tracking them down. The sale of said illegal firearms was what got the Branch Davidians burnt to a crisp, in case you have selective memory here.

2. No corporate laws. I think a better way to express this is that corporate America is out of control, in a bad way. I agree with the spirit of this part of your rant, but not the letter.

3. No “liberal media”. Both sides lie about this. They think the mere existence of SOME media outlets that disagree with their viewpoint amounts to the entire industry being dominated by their political foes. Neither complaint from neither side can be called anywhere near fair. Lean left? Read it in print or watch Peter Jennings bleat for a while. Lean right? Watch O’Reilly and listen to Laura Ingram. Everyone has their flavor choice out there and available. The media outlets leaning leftward will call themselves “news” and generally the ones on the right honestly call themselves “opinion”, but there are exceptions like Fox on the right and Al Franken on the left. That all comes out in the wash. And if you want your centrist, anti-partisan jabs going in both directions (but without any guarantee of ‘balance’), you’ve got the Daily Show, which bills itself as “fake news”, a more honest term for what Peter Jennings ought to call his rants. ;)

4. No boobies on TV. I neither lose sleep over the apocalyptic threat to the nation posed by Janet Jackson’s breast, as John Ashcroft may have felt, nor do I see the requirement for bikini tops at a minimum when children are watching, to be a vast destruction of the right to Free Speech. Both sides of this need to lighten up. I’m sure some reasonable compromise can be reached between civil libertarians and the social conservative/feminist alliance against all things fun.

5. No hunting laws. There are laws, and the denial thereof is more insipid lies disguised as hyperbole, but I’m lukewarm here, too. Sweeping prohibitions on all hunting, removing man’s status as one of the predatory forces out there, is just as upsetting to an ecosystem as genocidal and indiscriminate hunting. Bag limits are there for a reason, and if you think they should be upped or lowered, contact your state’s Fish and Wildlife division, and vent your froth to the bureaucrat who will give it the consideration it deserves.

6. Cut as many trees down as you want. It makes no business sense to clear-cut forest without replanting, so this is an environmental straw man. The argument appears to be the deified status of older trees and the demonization of newer growth, and when wildfires wipe out people’s lives and livelihoods, environmentalists actually snicker in victory. That alone gives me a knee-jerk against their side of the tree age argument.

7. No political correctness. That was only ever an issue on college campuses, in spite of Rush’s dire warnings of America being overrun by PC censorship and such. And the college campuses are still PC, and that PCness is still just as irrelevant as ever. Kids will be kids, and they are just exploring their sensitive side, and not yet in touch with their true inner Denis Leary. All it takes for that is for them to confront the real world.

8. Christianization of public life. I’m an agnostic, myself, and I’ve yet to feel pressured into a Christian way of life on entering public property. Perhaps I just haven’t sought out Christian things the way you have, for discovery? Was there some sort of a bible preacher hiding in the OTHER wing of the courthouse, that I just didn’t happen to see?

9. Void of progress. I suppose a good measure of progress would be for you to switch to decaf.

CIGGY & LEE,

My above comment was the result of one Budweiser too many.

But what I meant was we have cities and states to run and they can’t fulfill obligations without monies to do so. I am an establishmentarian in many regards and I do believe that many of these people in government do a responsible job in their positions and act responsibly (although require public watchdogging).

The Paraguay thing is reaction to the Libertarian and mainstream republican views of doing away with all the trappings that make us a civilized people. Anti-trust laws, corporate responsibility, taxation, social services, regulation in various industries, not funding education which is what no property taxes produce (unless we find another way around the problem). If our dollar weren’t so devalued we could do more with it.

Just like (CIP) with some republicans saying that we need to do away with the UN entirely. The UN is a tool for capitulation and international issue resolve yes frought with problems but it is a forum that we need to have improved for future generations. We need a means by which we can work diplomatically and create bonds that further the goal of democratization. This is a big can o’ worms but the doing away instead of improving is harmful.

To flippantly want to remove these things instead of working within to improve these things says to me, move somewhere were you don’t have to deal with it, rather than squeeky-wheel a society that is working within these structures trying to improve them on a daily basis.

Aaand I’m not aiming those comments directly at you Ciggy.

Ahh, Budweiser. You know, every country has a Budweiser. In Australia, it’s Victoria Bitter. In Singapore, it’s Tiger beer. I still prefer a Bud when I can find it.

[Must hide now before the Ozzies and the Ah Beng’s kill me for comparing their beer to Bud. National insult, you know.]

Keep drinkin’, skunkbud. You’re right. If the Republicans don’t always take action on their rhetoric, as Ciggy points out, they still spew it. :)

Ahh, Budweiser. You know, every country has it’s Budweiser. In Australia, it’s Victoria Bitter. In Singapore, it’s Tiger beer. But I still prefer a Bud when I can find one.

[Must hide now before the Ozzies and Ah Beng’s kill me for comparing their beer to Bud. It’s a national insult.]

Keep drinkin’, skunkbud. The Republicans may not always follow through on their rhetoric, as Ciggy points out, but they still spew it. :)

Skunkbud:
“But what I meant was we have cities and states to run and they can’t fulfill obligations without monies to do so.”

A truism. Republican demands for tax cuts at the state level lose some of their savor when they translate to releasing sex offenders out on early parole, or for schools to start holding classes at football arenas to handle the class size.

I don’t always knee-jerk to tax cuts and I don’t always glom onto the anecdotal disasters of wasteful spending. But I do think we all owe it to ourselves to prioritize, to pare off that which is less essential in order to fully fund that which is. A $1 billion train that runs about three miles from a mall to the downtown area (as the “Light Rail” so-called “system” in Minneapolis, which is neither light nor a system), not essential. I could ride a bicycle that far, thank you very much, and get the bike for about $100. Some people go absolutely insane with spending projects when they’re doing it with other people’s money.

Some things are actually wise investments and not everyone sees the wisdom of them, to our discredit as an electorate. Concrete roads are more expensive up-front, than asphalt, but in the maintenance savings down the road they pay off big-time. So what do we use? Asphalt, of course.

Another very wasteful spending project: drug enforcement. The prison bed space is needed for real dangers to the community, thank you very much.

“If our dollar weren’t so devalued we could do more with it.”

History has shown that when the dollar is increased in value, the first thing people do is import goods and services (often by way of tourist spending abroad). That helps us not a single farthing.

Speaking of imports—Lee, tell your Ozzie friends that Foster’s is #1 on my beer choice list every time. And if there’s none of that, and no Grolsch, I probably won’t drink beer at all. In desperation sometimes a Heineken or a Beck’s.