Where are the Jobs, Mr. President

COL Gene

Join Date 09/2004

Where are the Jobs, Mr. President

Do you have one?

President Bush tells us the economy has created almost 1.5 million jobs since August 2003. That means we are only about 1 million below the number when he took office. What the president does not tell the American people is that over the past 3 3/4 years since he took office, about 5 million new workers have tried to enter the job market. For us to remain just even, the economy must create about 120,000 new jobs each month to keep up with our population growth. The economic policies of George W. have not produced the 6 million jobs we needed to stay even.

Mr. Bush is telling us the unemployemnt rate is down to 5.4% which is about where it was in the 1990's. What President Bush is not telling the American People is that during the economic downturn of the past four years, workers have been unemployed so long, that many are no longer counted as unemployed even though they are not working. When you include the long term unemployed, the REAL unemployemt rate is above 7%.

President Bush also does not address the quality of the 1.5 million jobs he claims were created since August 2003. The truth is many of these jobs do not pay a living wage and have few if any benefits. Thus, the real impact on the jobs picture that is faced by American Workers and the picture painted by George W. are as different as night and day! The impact on workers in America has never been worse since Herbert Hoover at the time of Great Depression. Every day Lou Dobbs provides an update on the lost jobs to other countries. He has a list of over 1,000 companies that are exporting American jobs. President Bush has done nothing to stem this loss and his Secretary of Commerce has said it is " good for America to export American jobs". George Bush can pass tax cuts to the wealthy that is being paid foy by adding to the national debt but he can not work with congress to level the playing field for American workers. Add to all this that about 5 million workers, that still have jobs, have lost their health benefits since George W. became President and the JOBS PICTURE IS COMPLTET. Great work, Mr. President!

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...and yet we have a Clinton-era unemployment rate... funny that....

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The percentage of the labor force without work and actively seeking work yields the unemployment rate.
nces.ed.gov/pubs/esn/n99u.html

So the rate can appear to be constant if enough people have been looking for work long enough that they are not considered active. A few months back the job hire numbers went up, but the unemployment rate also went up due to a number of people returning to "actively seeking" status.

I would think in a boom, unemployment would be closer to the actual jobless rate because less people without a job would be considered "discouraged" since more people would feel they could get a job and would be actively looking. In a recession, the opposite would probably be true as it becomes harder to find a job it would be easier to have "discouraged" workers and thus the unemployment rate would not grow as rapidly as expected. And of course everything in between a recession and boom would fall in between.

Unemployment rate last 10 years from department of labor:

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hmmm...I don't think the image showed up so here is the link....
Link

Note that from 1/1994-12/2000, the rate dropped steadily from 6.6% to 3.9%
From 1/2001-current we had a low of 4.2% (1/2001) to a high of 6.3% in 6/2003 to a current 5.4% (it's been fairly flat for 2004).

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Reply #24 By: COL Gene - 10/8/2004 7:41:33 AM
Again the job growth in Sept is below the number needed to accomodate population growrh. The messege is clear, the Bush economic and tax policies are not stimulating economic growth to create the number of jobs required to keep up with our population growth!

Here is something that directly bears on this Col:

December 04, 2003

According to democrats and their willing accomplices in the press, President Bush is single-handedly responsible for the worst economy since the ice ages. This inference suggests that the Constitution vests the office of the president with some level of authority over the economy. If the American people were more constitutionally astute, and the press was doing its job, the democrats could never get away with such a shameless distortion of the Constitution because there is not a single provision in the document that grants the President any general authority over the economy.

From a constitutional standpoint, the President is merely the head of one of the 3 branches of the federal government. He is not the ruler or president of a single nation because the Constitution only established a partial union between the several States. Under our constitutional system of government, the powers of the President are more fiction than fact because they are not as extensive as many believe.

The Constitution vests the President with twelve powers and duties. Since the document established a federal government of limited enumerated powers, the only powers and duties a President can lawfully exercise are those specifically granted by the Constitution. The constitutional powers and duties of the President are:

1) Signs or rejects all legislative bills submitted to him by Congress. Art. I., Sec. 7., Cl. 2.

2) Becomes the Commander and Chief of the military forces of the United States (After a declaration of War by Congress or an act of war against the United States by a foreign power) and the Militia of the several States when called into the actual service of the United States. (By Congress) Art. II., Sec. 2., Cl. 1.

3) Requests opinions, in writing, from the principal officer of any Executive Department of the federal government concerning their duties. Art. II., Sec. 2., Cl. 1.

4) Can grant Reprieves or Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment. Art. II., Sec. 2., Cl. 1.

5) Makes Treaties with the Advice and Consent of the Senate. (Only by a vote of two-thirds of those Senators present). Art. II., Sec. 2., Cl. 2.

6) Nominates for appointment, with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, Ambassadors, public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States. Congress can, by law, vest the President with the power to appoint inferior Officers, i.e., Courts of Law, or Heads of Departments. Art. II., Sec. 2., Cl. 2.

7) Can fill Vacancies which occur when the Senate is in Recess and unavailable to confirm an appointment. Art. II., Sec. 2., Cl. 3.

8) Gives Congress from time to time Information on the State of the Union, and recommends to Congress for its Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient. Art. II., Sec. 3.

9) Can convene both Houses of Congress on extraordinary Occasions. Art. II., Sec. 3.

10) Receives Ambassadors and other public Ministers. Art. II., Sec. 3.

11) Takes care that (federal) laws are faithfully executed. Art. II., Sec. 3.

12) Commissions all the Officers of the United States. Art. II., Sec. 3.

As shown above, none of the powers vested in the office of the president have anything to do with the so-called economy. How can the President control the destiny of the economy of a nation when he doesn’t even have the power to enact legislation on his own? All legislative powers granted to the federal government by the Constitution are vested in the Congress. This means Congress writes the laws, not the President. The President merely signs or rejects legislation submitted to him by Congress. So how can a president be held responsible for the performance of the economy?

The democratic candidates for the 2004 presidential election are falling over each other in an effort to pander to the American people concerning the economy. If one candidate promises to add 600,000 jobs, another promises 700,000 plus a Snickers bar. President Bush will do the same when the election rolls around next year.

Since the Constitution does not grant the President any general authority over the economy, these grandiose promises are nothing but shameless lies and distortions. These individuals will say anything to curry favor with the people. And to add insult to injury, the American people are such dupes that they are willing to give these clowns money so they can spout their carefully crafted propaganda.

There is no hope of preserving liberty unless the American people educate themselves and quit falling for these political fairy tales. The next time a presidential candidate asks for your vote in exchange for creating jobs and reducing unemployment, stand-up and scream―The President doesn’t have any constitutional authority over the economy, stupid!

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I argue that COL Gene and others are using factually incorrect arguments because they are.

FACT - most of the Bush tax cuts HAVE NOT GONE INTO EFFECT yet. The biggest parts of the tax cuts that have hit so far don't come close to the totals that will hit over time. Because Congress wanted to spread the potential loss of revenue over time, they delayed many parts of the cuts, and put in sunset periods for others.

Congress *just* extended some of those cuts, but again, the most of the parts they extended were the SAME PARTS THAT JOHN KERRY and the rest of his friends have said they want to have BROADENED - the middle class tax cuts, marriage penalty relief, child tax credits, etc.

FACT - looking over various sources for statistics on wages shows little or no change in real income levels. Granted, we have not seen INFLATIONARY INCREASES in wages, but we've not seen the big cuts in wages that the scare mongers from the left want us to believe are there.

FACT - Bill Clinton benefited from the largest single anamoly that will ever impact the U.S. economy, at least for another 8000 years - the Y2K boom. Any idiot could open up a news paper and find a job in the last half of the 90's. Hell, companies were fighting each other to employ people that had absolutely ZERO experience and had nothing but a long line of student loans in their history. It was putting INFLATIONARY PRESSURE on the economy as we had gone past FULL EMPLOYMENT (which is traditonally seen as somewhere in the 4% unemployment range) to a point where there were too many jobs and not enough workers that were qualified for the jobs.

FACT - There was a post January 1, 2000 scaling back of the economy. Companies were finding that they were not seeing the record setting levels of orders for goods and services that had been there only weeks or months before. As the economy started cooling off (thanks also in part to the rate increases that Alan -- I really fear inflation -- Greenspan was putting into effect) and continued to cool off slowly on the way to the "soft landing" that Greenspan was hoping for, we rolled into 2001 and smacked into, or were smacked into by, 9/11/2001.

FACT - 9/11/2001 and it's aftermath impacted the economy in severe ways. People stopped travelling. They stopped travelling for business, they stopped travelling for pleasure, and generally they stayed near home for fear for self and family. It took literally near a month to get planes back into the air, and even then, only at 1/2 to 2/3 the level of business as had been previous. Hotels saw massive cancellations of business. Those employees at the hotels and restaurants and resorts and theme parks saw their incomes decrease and/or saw their jobs lost. In turn, they lost money they could spend to pay for their cars, their cable TV, their gasoline, their health care, their food, and anything else. Those lost dollars left the economy even as the initial checks from the first round of the Bush tax cuts -- which again, came in the form of REBATE CHECKS that were the bright ideas of liberals in congress who wanted the money OUT and into the hands of the tax payers as soon as possible -- were hitting the public.

So, with the loss of revenues for pretty much all sectors of the economy, we were left with a need to get more people to work in more jobs -- ANY JOBS -- that would get money back into the system.

Now, FACT, we have whiners that cry that the jobs that are out there now aren't as good as the ones that were lost. Truth - yes, there are no companies tripping over each other to hand bonuses to new-hires so they can lock in those employees before someone else does. Truth - we are paying something closer to reasonable wages for burger flippers. And further truth, there are those like Gideon that are trying to find work that will cover their needs and expenses and still aren't quite able to find the work they need in locations that are suitable to live or won't break the banks to pull off the switch for.

I understand and really sympathize with people that are having trouble adjusting to the 'new' new-economy. It's not easy, and if people lost their retirement because of scandals like Enron, MCI Worldcom, Sprint, and other companies that saw their stock values sink like rocks, it's even tougher. But again, much of the "scandal" happened on Clinton's watch, when the economy wasn't really booming, but companies were cooking their books to make it look it was.

I'd love to see the government do more to help the citizens out here that need jobs or need better jobs, but there is only so much that the government CAN DO. Unless we socialize more of the market, the government only has limited tools at it's disposal that can be used to help grow the economy and create new jobs. One of the most important tools they have is the ability to cut taxes and/or offer credit to employers that make more jobs available. They can also leave more money in the hands of the citizens that can be used for purchasing goods and services which in turn create more work for potential employees in the system.

FACT - the system was broken between approximately 1997 and 2001, and Greenspan saw it (as documented above). He warned of the bubble and the need to not speculate, to live within means, etc., but in applying his fix, he put on blinders to the fact that the fix was going to result in the loss of jobs as the economy slowed down more quickly than he desired (once it really started slowing) and just about went into a deflationary cycle (I would argue that the supposed loss of job income is proof we were in a deflationary cycle, but that's a different argument).

Anyway, what I see COL Gene post again and again is nothing but scare mongering or resulting reactions to prior scare mongering that comes out of the left. Look beyond the surface and ignore the hatred that is out there and you might be able to argue more effectively. Instead, the argument is shrill to the point of leaving readers little choice but to ignore the message along with the messenger.

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