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The Jobs Crunch
randall_burns writes "Neither major party is accurately describing or combatting the Jobs Crunch that Americans are facing. Bad immigration policy-and bad trade deals are combining to decimate the middle class in America."
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What about the state sponsored outsourcing? The US government is actively supporting outsourcing, examples here, here, and
got sig?
I am one of the folks who is unemployed but not counted. I get sporadic work, so I forego even bothering with unemployment during the gaps. This whole situation sucks, there's no way out, and I'm depressed.
> And I don't remember Bush ever saying that these are good times
The economy is strong, it's getting stronger
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
> I am not sure how it's measured in Europe but I would bet it's different. You may be comparing oranges and apples.
There is a common measure of unemployment across Europe, the Labour Force Survey. The survey seeks information on respondents' personal circumstances and their labour market status during a specific reference period, normally a period of one week or four weeks (depending on the topic) immediately prior to the interview.
The LFS is carried out under a European Union Directive and uses internationally agreed concepts and definitions. It is the source of the internationally comparable (International Labour Organisation) measure known as 'ILO unemployment'.
On this measure the UK jobless rate is just under 5%, with France, Germany and Italy all at around the 9% mark.
If you've been unemployed for more than 6 months, you drop off the charts because you're considered a lost cause.
That's not actually correct. It's been repeated a lot, but it's false. The Bureau of Labor Statistics uses a number of methods to determine the nationwide unemployment figure, not just unemployment insurance claims. They also use something called the CPS, the current population survey. It's a statistical sample in which respondents are divided up into three groups. If you've got a job, you're employed. If you don't have a job but are available to take one and actively seeking one, you're unemployed. If you don't have a job and you aren't unemployed, you're out of the work force.
The 5.4% number, which is the one we're talking about here, does not come from unemployment insurance claims. It comes from the CPS, which means it counts people as unemployed for as long as they are looking for work.
The BLS has a web site, and on that site they publish the monthly employment report, a document called the "Employment Situation Summary." It's got the percentages (5.4% unemployment, employment-population ratio of 62.4%, etc.) but it also has all the raw data you could possibly want. Go look it up sometime. It's pretty interesting.
I write in my journal
They don't count people who're no longer collecting unemployment and have simply given up.
That's not correct. From http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/unemploy.htm
Although this belief is widespread and has at times been reported as factual in the mainstream media, the truth of the matter is that unemployment statistics are gathered through a process of sampling a representative number of households; they are not arrived by counting the number of unemployment insurance claims made during a particular month. Data collected in the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly survey of over 60,000 households, is used for this purpose. From this data, an extrapolation is made about the unemployment status of the country as a whole.
Here is his "official" policy in PDF format from his website.
Lots of big, simple, promises. I don't like those. Mind you, I can not imagine anyone doing a worse job with our economy than GW has. So I don't know what to think.
"He not only turned a routine recession into the great depression, he instituted the practice of the federal government taxing the wages of each and every worker in the country."
In 1933...
When FDR entered office the unemployment rate was 25%, with an underemployment rate of 50%. He had to close the banks to stop from them from failing. Germany that year would appoint an austrian named Adolf Hitler as their leader. Veterans the previous year had rioted in washington. If you want to make the argument that FDR had prolonged the depression through bad policies...you can make that argument but calling the economy of 1933 "a routine recession" is idiocy.
Second of all the relocation camps didnt happen until TEN YEARS LATER in the middle of a little conflict called "world war II".
Other than not knowing anything about history, economics, or politics the author of this comment seems relatively well informed.
--
Simon
A depression is when you lose yours.
Yeah, good saying.
Let me add what Reagan said in 1980: "A recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his." (sorry, I'm really a Democrat.)
But just so you know, there is actually a big difference. In a recession, the value of the dollar in your pocket goes DOWN. In a depression, the value of the dollar in your pocket goes UP. It's astounding how few [people|economists] know this.
You think inflation is bad? Try deflation, the oppostite, when prices go down.
Loans are defaulted, because people suddenly owe more, and can't pay. Interest rates go up, since cash itself is more likely to increase in value than an investment. You're used to getting raises, to keep up with inflation... how would you like it if your boss gave you a timely drop in salary, to keep up with the drop in the cost of living? That's deflation, and it happened during the last US depression in the 30s. There has not been a depressed economy since then (possibly excepting New Zealand and Finland.)
A recession is not a small depression.
yo.
I can guarantee you if a Democrat gets in again you'll be sliding deeper and deeper.
Almost four years later you're still trying to blame Clinton? And what are we sliding deeper into? When Clinton was president the economy was booming, people had jobs, we had a budget surplus. America was a lot stronger under Clinton than it is under Bush. If Clinton was running against Bush then dubya wouldn't have a chance.
I will say this, though. This time around we can blame the supreme court. But if Americans actually elect that idiot, then we deserve what we get the next four years.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
That's deflation, and it happened during the last US depression in the 30s. There has not been a depressed economy since then (possibly excepting New Zealand and Finland.)
Japan was depressed economy just a few years ago. Here is a brief of Japan's economy from the economist:
Japan's economic slump began with a stockmarket crash in 1989; persistent deflation then lowered wages and discouraged investment. For years the Bank of Japan took a passive approach before aggressively boosting the money supply to keep the yen weak in February 2003. That, combined with cost-cutting by Japanese exporters, has led to a rise in business profits and in the stockmarket. The government now believes it can halt deflation by 2006 (the OECD disagrees). Some companies have been able to clean up their debt, banks are looking healthier, and there are even signs that consumer spending, low during the slump, might rise again.
In the long run, however, Japan needs reforms: an ageing population will shrink productivity, raise health-care costs and further burden the costly public pension system (though some economists have argued that Japan's public debt--161% of GDP in 2003--is not as crippling as it looks). Junichiro Koizumi, the prime minister, promised painful economic reforms in 2001, but his efforts have been half-hearted. Reformed and galvanised, Japan's unproductive service industries could take up the slack of future economic slowdowns and lessen the burden on export-led manufacturing.
FDR wasn't quite the saint that many portray him to be. Perhaphs a little research on FDR and his tenure as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under Woodrow Wilson may dissuade you of that notion...
Basically President Woodrow Wilson "decided" that Haiti would be a strategic port in case of war, and pretty much directed the US to take over the country. FDR lead the occupation of that country and was effectively the "administrator of Haiti" during that occupation. By many accounts, it was a boondogle of Iraq proportions (prison abuse scandels, contract skimming scandels, etc.) At one time he tried a "gore-ism" claiming that he single handedly wrote the Haiti constitution.
As president FDR, during the London Economic Conference in 1933 which called to coordinate efforts stabilize the world wide economy, he pretty much unilaterally pulled out angering and alienating all the European delegates and eventually leading to the breakdown of the conference. Some historians feel that this breakdown of this conference contributed to prolonging the recession/depression in europe and led to the rise of dictators in some countries which eventually led to WWII.
As part of the "good neigbor" policy of the FDR administration, he helped to push through the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934, which tried to increase export trade and decrease tariffs into the United States with central and south american countries. I'm sure some of the "job protectionist anti-wto democrats" would take great issue with that type of stance today.
Later on in his tenure as president (after he broke the 2-term "tradition"), FDR had quite a few run-ups with the supreme court and was probably the only president with enough gall to try to stack the court (by trying to simply appoint new justices instead of waiting for them to retire and maintaining the "traditional number"). Not really the spirit of the law type person (I guess since he never got to practice law, he wasn't too concerned about all this law stuff).
History has a mixed report on FDR, certainly the US was in need of a change during that time to shake things up, but it's hard to know if any of his policies were really effective since the general consensous is that it was really the WWII that had the bigger impact on the state of the country at that time than anything FDR did.
By the way, one of FDR's biggest legacies is the Federal Income Tax (instead of a traditional property tax or wealth tax). Although originally targetted only at the wealthy, has since become essentially a tax on the middle class. Of course the wealthy get to defer their income by purchasing property which goes up in value w/o being taxed, and since the relative tax burden of income vs property has shifted, they in fact get a defacto tax break. Yeah, that morgage interest deduction is a token that gets thrown the middle class's way, but if you look at the percentage of wealth of individuals and the percentage of federal income tax collected from those individuals, you can easily see how the Federal Income tax has slowly but surely become the tax on the middle class that keeps the poor from entering the middle class and the middle class from becoming more wealthy (by introducing an artificial economic class structure in its progressive rate structure).
The truth on H-1B is that the US Government begain for the first time enforcing the law in mid March of 2004! Not before. Before that it was wide open. The visa totals were as much as 100,000 higher than the law allowed. For about 2 months they enforced this law and those were the best two months of job creation in the Bush Presidency. Then they started cheating. They issued over 200,000 renewals and wavers on J-1 which leads to H-1B allowing people to stay here and look for work when out of status on J-1. They also opened the Illegal Immigration by stopping enforcement.
Currently US Illegal Immigration is running at a level 3 times that of 2001! The Bush Administration is cheating H-1B and L-1 etc by bargaining numbers into the FTA's (Free trade agreements) they are having with about 50 nations. This is opening the barn doors wide open.
The USA in the 911 report noted that in January 2001 The Bush team discussing terrorism noted that there was no way any measures would be effective against terrorism unless America's porous border situation was brought into check. Translation it means that nothing is of any value in the War on Terror unless we fix illegal immigration by stopping it. The Bush team is claiming to be fighting a war on terror that they know that they are not even fighting.
As to prosperity. The foundation of prosperity is a Secure Nation.
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
Yes, Then Tell John Kerry to bring back some of the jobs that Heinz has exported. Let's see. Almost all of their factories are located outside of the United States. Thank you John Kerry. I'm sure you'll lead by example.
What the f*ck is John Kerry supposed to do about a company that he does not own, that his wife does not own, and that she has no control over? Teresa Heinz Kerry does not own the H.J. Heinz Company and she has no involvement whatsoever with the management or operations of it. She owns less than 4% of the company's stock, which she acquired through her inheritance of the Heinz family trust. The trust sold most of its shares of Heinz stock back in 1995.
Asshole.
You are the asshole -- and an ignorant one at that, as you have just proven.
I love how in TFA, they say (under " Professional "Guest Workers.""):
"Since the employer pays a token fee for a guest worker visa, the employer is essentially using the public resource of immigration rights as a partial compensation--a practice even pro-business economists like Milton Friedman admit is a de facto corporate "subsidy"."
Friedman is *not* a "pro-business" economist. He is a pro-free-market economist -- and there is a difference. Pro-business economists prefer policy that explicitly favors businesses. Pro-free-market economists favor policy (or more-often, a deliberate lack of policy) that favors a freer, more-open marketplace, or the elimination of policies which oppose the goal of a free-market -- even if that more-open marketplace comes at the expense of the desires of some businesses.
Friedman would support fewer regulations on the financial industry, for instance. Yet, having worked in a big financial firm myself (which shall remain nameless), some of these companies actually support increased regulation -- because they know it benefits their cause of making a profit. In this way, Friedman could be alternately described as anti-business -- or, more-correctly, a neutral onlooker who prefers a free-market to outright pro-business policies.
Not that I would expect the illiterates of free-market economics (i.e. "progressives" or "socialists" or "Greens" or whatever they're calling themselves this week) to actually understand the difference between "markets" and "business"...
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
That's right. If there is any rick of failure, don't even think about doing it.
That seems to be George Bush's thoughts on stem cell research. But, again, I ask for someone to show me profitable businesses that are started in two days that employ people.
Prove that Bill O'Reilly is a liar.
That's easy. Here's one: O'Reilly Lied About Canada Being Bankrupt
"Canada can't help us anyway. They have no military to speak of. And the socialistic system they have there has nearly bankrupted them. So Chretien is history. A new administration is upcoming. We should be trying to work things out with Canada."
Quote from the Bill O'Reilly's December 11, 2003 factor talking points memo.
From the Canadian Broadcasting Company website.
Budget surplus
Justin Thompson, CBC News Online | October 22, 2003
Finance Minister John Manley announced that Canada's budget surplus for the fiscal year 2002-2003 was a whopping $7 billion. The entire amount, he said, will go toward paying down the national debt - keeping it to a projected $510.6 billion by the end of the fiscal year. A noble decision, indeed.
On the other hand, this is Canada's sixth straight budget surplus, and debt payments aren't the most exciting way to spend $7 billion.
And as for Rush, why don't you say the same thing about your Hollywood heroes and sports heroes; ever heard of Daryl Strawberry? And I hear that Ted Kennedy has had a drink or two.
Because Daryly Strawberry was not calling for imprisoning drug users. Neither was Ted Kennedy. They, unlike Rush Limbaugh, are not hypocrites.
Whiner = liberal
Mama's boy = liberal
Say it to my face, coward.