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Last Pre-Election Jobs Report Released
September's jobs report notes a gain of 96,000 jobs, and a downward revision for August from 144,000 to 128,000. The unemployment rate held steady at 5.4% (about even to Nixon's and Clinton's when they were reelected), while another 236,000 jobs were added in a periodic revision to the total, leaving Bush at a deficit of 585,000 jobs from where he started. If he averages 150,000 jobs for the last four months of his term, he will net positive job growth. The effects of the recent hurricanes were not possible to determine at this point, the report said. This will surely be featured prominently in tonight's second Presidential debate (starting at 9 p.m. Eastern).
More informative context is available here.
Economists have predicted the economy will continue to get better despite who is elected.
The entire economy problem can be traced back to the Dot-Coms. There is no 'quick fix' after a bubble bursts. If you don't have an economics degree, don't start spouting crap.
Objects in the blog are closer then they ap
While 585,000 / 4 = ~150,000 that isn't the entire story. The economy needs to have about 150K jobs created per month just to keep up with population growth and the number of new people entering the job market(s). If Bush only averages 150,000 / month for the rest of the year he'll still end his first (and hopefully only) term with a net loss of over 1/2 million jobs. That would (will) make him the first President in 70 years to end a term with less jobs than when he started.
To reduce his .5 million jobs deficit Bush needs to have closer to 300,000 jobs created in each of the next four months. That's a number he hasn't been able to achieve at any point of the last 3.66 years. I doubt he can do it now, as his plan for the economy was never anything that sitmulated job growth.
If I lost my job I'd blame the president. Who's fault is it that the barrel shot up to 52$?
The Chinese. They're buying more of it than ever before.
Petrol prices aside, he's also lowering taxes the wrong way.
It makes a lot more sense if you look at it as percentages of income, not as raw dollars. For instance, if I make $200,000 a year and get a $2000 tax rebate, that's only 1%. If you make $5,000 and get a $200 tax rebate, that's 4%. Suddenly it doesn't look like the rich are getting all the money back, does it?
Of course, some real numbers are worth taking a look at. Bush only cut the Federal Income tax, which is the only part we're concerning ourselves for the purposes of this discussion. Did you know that the top 1% of the country makes 17.53% of the money in the country, but pays 33.89% of the Federal Income tax? (Note: To be in the top 1%, you must make more than $293,000 or so.) The top 50% of the country makes 86.19% of the money, but pays 96.03% of the Federal Income taxes. What are the bottom 50% of the population doing, if they're not reporting their income and paying tax on it?
"It's better to have a gun and not need it than need a gun and not have it." ~ Christian Slater, True Romance
The basic theory of how Bush is ruining the economy is that the budget deficits & the growing international disdain for America (generated by the President) are deflating the economy by discouraging international investment in America. You might not think that international investment is very important to the American economy, but you just have to consider the trade deficit to know that it is. Afer all, by definition the trade deficit means that there is net a outflow of money in the form of direct commerce. If the trade deficit alone defined the financial landscape, America would spend itself into oblivion.
Fortunatly, that is not the case, foreign investment in the United States takes many forms (not just the purchase of American hard assets, but also of American securities, and currency), and often more than offsets the trade imbalance. One of the better theories on the 90's boom was that a weak international economy (compared to the US) + international respect for the only remaining Superpower + Clinton's fiscal responsibility all mixed together to create a bonanza of investment (so much, that we ended up with a crisis of bad investments, but that's another story).
That this flow of foreign money has been greatly reduced is, no doubt related to 9/11, but many would argue that the reduction is because of how we reacted, not because of the event itself. Our response was the beginning of an internatational disillusionment that continues to this day. The high rate of exchange between the Euro and the Dollar is a quick way to see the effect. The exchange is where it's at because of the balance of people who would rather hold their investments in the Euro vs people who want to hold their investments in dollars. There's even some evidence that Bush is actually directly pushing for this imbalance because he mistakenly believes that manufacturing is the core of the economy and is trying to boost that sector. To many, it would just be another example of how he's out of touch with reality. Anyway, I'm Am Not An Economist, but I am a Democrat, so take my analysis with the usual grain of salt.
The Washington Post had an interesting article today. Here it is. It's basically a critique of Bush's tax cuts.
It all boils down to this: Bush wanted lower taxes. He lowered all the brackets that were in effect in 2000 and added a 10% bracket (details and comparisons can be found here). This ends up 'costing' the nation money, because the revenue that would have come from the additional taxes isn't going to be there. Whenever you see 'Bush's tax cut cost $X.YZ billion over 10 years', that's what it means. Also, some tax cuts are temporary. Congress passes them for a window, say 10 years, and then they have to be made permanent down the road.
Clinton presided over a ridiculous boom in the economy, one that caused the market to surge and provided us with a surplus. When I got out of school in 2000, I was coming into the job market at the tail end of the boom. People were handing out jobs like candy, and salaries were ridiculous. It's debatable what caused that surge to end, but it had to. If you look at numbers, and I don't have any handy, but looking at the numbers from the first part of 2001 on (when Bush was innaugurated), it's pretty clear that everything had slowed down and was continuing to slow down. September 11th happened, more bad news for the economy. Whenever stuff like that happens, the markets get shaken up and tend to go down.
Additionally, there is a tax loophole that allows multinational corporations to shift tax burdens around and decrease the amount of taxes they pay in this country. Some people claim this leads to outsourcing, since it's cheaper for them to pay workers in other countries, claim profits across multiple countries yet still claim expenses here. This article is a little lengthy but explains that more.
Jobs aren't really part of the job of president, but unemployment is seen as a bad thing. The president (really, him combined with congress) can only "promote" job growth by giving companies tax credits for new hires, or by reducing their tax burden or by making it more profitable to hire people here rather than other countries (ie, outsourcing). Kerry's economic plan (read it here) wants to drop that loophole above and use it to give corporations a 5% cut in corporate taxes (that's important...not all companies PAY corporate taxes, only about 8% do). He also wants to give a two-year new jobs tax credit to companies.
If you're a Kerry supporter, Bush has a net loss of jobs, is running a deficit because he cut taxes for the rich (he cut the top tax bracket from 39.5% to 35%, saying last week on O'Reilly "Nobody should pay more than 35% in taxes") and is a spendthrift on the war.
If you like Bush, a lot of this was bound to happen anyways. The war is contentious, obviously, but tax cuts are typically viewed favorably by Republicans because money back for everyone is a good thing.
That's my take on the economy. And as a caveat, I'm a Bush supporter. I don't think Kerry has the money to enact half the things he wants. If you look at his website, he wants a "Pay as you go" policy, which means that if he gives a 5% tax cut for corporations totalling $12billion over 10 years, we need to cut something or raise taxes so that it's on the books...no deficit spending. It's a great idea...it also rarely gets talked about in his speeches and, to me, sounds like a cop out so that next year he can say "The Republican Congress wouldn't reduce spending here, so I can't give you health care like I promised. Sorry."
--trb
Only healthy people can find health insurance. If you already have prior medical conditions, you don't get insurance.
The people who need health insurance cannot get health insurance.