Bush's Campaign Platform...

Off Topic
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Indeed there may be a gradual increase in hiring over the next year, but the fact is that there has been a loss of 2.7 million jobs since 2001.

Alot of the growth has been in non-skilled service industry labor, which really does nothing. I’m sure you’ve come across articles on this Barrister.

This is not due to Bush and his action as an individual, that would be like saying its Mickey Mouse’s fault when Disney falters,

but the huge handouts and a willingness to look the other way as to the exporting of jobs has not helped.

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OK, here comes some political stuff from Staley!

Finding a job is YOUR responsibility, not the government’s. AND, even if that statement is not completely true, you’ll have a better chance of finding employment if you think that way.

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Words of wisdom, CS!

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Staley? Who’s this Staley?

Oh yeah, that guy I hate. You made driving a car painful for me. But EDT rocks.

Unfortunately (getting back on subject,) too many people expect others to do it for them. How many unemployed people could work at McDonalds? So the pay sucks, better then nothing.

Many don’t realize that having a job is a fairly recent concept. Most people who are successful work for themselves, and yet everybody seems to say that starting a business is the worst thing to do.

And as far as jobs going overseas, and only “unskilled” jobs being created, crap. Yup, complete and total crap. The unemployment rate fluctuates more for unskilled labor then for people with degrees. More and more jobs are requiring a degree of some sort, and some business will giver preferences to people with degrees, sometimes regardless of what degree the person has.

The jobs going overseas are often not the jobs you want. The biggest reason is because taxes and other rules are just too expensive. But every time a job goes overseas, there is another person making more money. As wealth appears in the masses in other countries, these countries find it harder and harder to take advantage of their workers.

Now how many skilled jobs are being sent to third world countries? Not many. It is mostly the low paying unskilled jobs that are moving out of America.

And as far as these “low paying” service jobs, there are many decent paying service jobs, and many that require a degree. I know a person who mows lawns and moves snow in the winter. He does fine mowing, and he makes more in one night of moving snow then he makes in a month of mowing. This is all service. Interestingly the guy still works a second job at night 6 days a week. Not because he needs the money, but to help finance his intended early retirement.

People here keep making fun of the fat people who say, “I can’t do it.” While never exercising and going on the worst diets. Being fat is a result of choices. Finances are the exact same thing. I have taken some financial hits myself, but I know that things would have been so much easier if I had not made some bad decisions in the past.

Boston Barrister, you said:

“The unemployment phenomenon of this recovery is an interesting thing. The economy has been growing, slowly but steadily, for almost a year and a half now. It’s not often that you see growth in both the economy and unemployment. It seems a paradox.”

Actually this is fairly normal. After a recession comes the recovery. During this time the economy is back to positive growth, but the unemployment does not improve. Once the unemployment rate begins dropping it means the recovery is over, and we are in expansion. The funny thing is the second it is announced that we are in a recession, it is often over. Too often we don’t know what is going on until it is over. Sometimes an increase in unemployment means that the economy is about to rebound.

Now with the economic indicators starting to really improve, I wonder if everyone who blamed the slow economy on Bush are going to give him credit as it improves?

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Mage:

I was mixing my terms – I was thinking in terms of an expansion. Silly me. Still, though, it seems that most do not comprehend why there could be economic growth and rising unemployment coincidently.

You also mentioned the problem with unemployment in the unskilled labor market. This is very true – and it is often caused, at least in part, by the mass importation of unskilled labor via legal and illegal immigration. When the supply of this labor is increased, the price goes down – and this leads to greater unemployment as some native unskilled laborers drop out of the job market as they see diminishing marginal returns for working vs. welfare or some other choice (and also, if the rate of growth in available workers exceeds that of jobs, you will obviously have more unemployment – this is more of a factor as governments push to add illegals to the welfare/benefits rolls).

Vegita:

Don’t forget that exporting jobs to countries that enjoy a Pareto Efficiency in terms of production costs for the goods in question helps Americans too – it does so by helping consumers afford more goods, as it lowers the price of said goods. (And helps workers and the economy, after an adjustment period, as it allows labor resources to be redeployed more efficiently).

CS:

Your pithy wisdom is always on target. Being a lawyer, I sometimes run on, but you cut the Gordian knot and got to the gist of the matter.

Kuri:

See Mage’s answer above. I’ll not add anything at present.

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My earlier post- “oh and by the way, now you can buy that product for 50% less than you would have before thanks to that African deal.”- I think this is what you were referring to.
Like I said before there is no policy that helps 100% of all humans in the world. with the exception of natural birth rights. Every decision has an upside and a downside. It is easy to sit back and point out all the down sides of a persons decisions and come to the conclusion that they are making bad decisions. you really need to step back and look at the whole picture. If a politician or a president can make the whole picture a little better then I think that he or she was successful. I don’t really care if they are a democrat of a republican even though I tend to agree more with the GOP. They still have flaws. every one does. What people need to start doing (politicians that is) is do some really great things and campaign about them, don’t campain with he didn’t do this or she failed at that. I hate mud slingers! they are useless to our country. we need leaders who can work around problems and advance our cause as a nation. not stick to their idealogical guns and throw a wrench in our governmental systems. sorry for the long rant, I just think we are long overdue for a system overhaul, mainly by electing people who can do the job not these career fucks who just screw it up.

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Hey Serg,

Goldberg and Ant. are more polite than I am. I think you are just stupid. Under achivers always have an excuse. You may be worth one reply but not two.

Me Solomon Grundy

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Goldberg, just because you have skills doesn’t guarantee you’ll get a job. I got a degree in Business Admin., major Marketing. It took me a number of years to realize this degree was worthless. I finally decied to change careers and went into computers. And last year, 7 years out of college, was the first year I made more than 20K.

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Jeff I made over 20k while still in college delivering beer. Sure it was a hellish job but it pay’d the bills. I also worked on a bee farm for four years, yea that sucked too but the guy payed me under the table and payed pretty damn good. sure it may be hard to find a high paying, low responsibility, cake desk job that falls within your major, But there are surely jobs out there and they can be had by anyone with the proper attitude and work ethic. I beleive the harder it is to stay on welfare the more people will try to get off it. sure there are some people who’s pride won’t let them stay on welfare, but there are many people who do only the bare minimum to stay on it, ie. apply for jobs that they know they will never get, or when they have an interview will act like they don’t really wan’t the job. I know a few people who do this and they actually tell people they do it on purpouse. It is bullshit.

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How Employment and Unemployment can be Going Down Simultaneously

by Jerry Bowyer

Mark Twain once said, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” I doubt whether Mr. Twain would approve of our use of his quote for the purposes of defending supply-side economics, but on the other hand, he didn’t believe in the afterlife, so no harm done.

There is something odd that’s been occurring in the national statistics regarding employment and unemployment in America — and one half of that oddity has been reported. The press has spent a great deal of time and energy informing us about the decrease in employment in America since George W. Bush became president, and even in the past year while the economy has been in mild recovery. What they have neglected to report with as mush vigor is that at the same time, paradoxically, unemployment has been decreasing as well.

We say “paradoxically” for a very specific reason. Someone once said that a contradiction is an attempt to hold two irreconcilable ideas in the same mind at the same time. On the other hand, a paradox is the attempt to hold two seemingly irreconcilable ideas in the same mind at the same time. Thinking about a contradiction is a waste of time: thinking about a paradox is a way to a deeper understanding of the subject matter being considered. The question is: What can we learn from thinking about the seeming paradox of a simultaneous decrease in employment and unemployment?

The answer has been identified by supply-side economist Brian Wesbury, the chief economist for Griffin, Kubic, Stevens and Thompson. While there are some differences between what the unemployment and employment statistics are measuring, the most important difference between them is how the information is procured in the first place.

Employment statistics are based on surveys of established employers — in essence, the good folks at the Bureau of Labor Statistics call up their contacts among employers and ask them how many people they are hiring currently and how many people they are laying off. The difference between those two numbers is the net increase or decrease in employment. This is called an “establishment survey.” When the economists are trying to ascertain the level of unemployment, on the other hand, they do so by surveying households rather than employers. In other words, they call the homes of individual Americans, and ask them whether they are employed or unemployed.

What this seems to mean is that many people are employed who are not on the official payrolls of established businesses — at least not on the pay rolls of businesses that are sufficiently established as to be on the list of businesses that economists survey. In other words, the employment growth that is occurring in the economy is occurring “below the radar screen.” That includes businesses that are not sufficiently large enough to appear in the establishment survey, new business start-ups run by self-employed individuals, or even micro-entrepreneurial ventures or “free agent” work (like the new breed of white-collar professionals who juggle multiple consulting arrangements and are often based at home).

This is to be expected. Recently we interviewed some executives with SCORE (the Service Corps of Retired Executives), an organization that offers free consulting to owners of small businesses. They told us that the number of requests for information on how to start a new business always goes up toward the end of recessions, and that over the past two years they have seen record numbers of people contacting them for help on business start-ups or attending seminars dedicated to the same.

This is to be expected following a deflationary recession that hit large businesses with unionized work forces and heavy debt service more harshly than it did other industries. This is to be expected at a time when information technology has dramatically lowered the barriers to entry for small entrepreneurs.

It will be some time before we know with certainty — that is to say, with statistical evidence — whether this boom of entrepreneurism has occurred beneath the radar screen; and of course, like most government statistics on the economy, the evidence will arrive long after it is of much use to investors and entrepreneurs.

However, a good deal of early, tangible evidence is now available, and most of it portends good things for the United States economy. It appears that the industrial and telecommunications recession of 2000-01 has “hived off” a new generation of small entrepreneurs. Many of them will of course fail. But some of them will show spectacular growth and in so doing, eventually drive the employment and economic growth of the country.

— Jerry Bowyer is a radio and television talk show host and the author of the up-coming book, The Bush Boom: What the Data Says About Our Mis-Underestimated Economy. He can be reached through www.BowyerMedia.com.