Then and Now: it's the spin, stupid

What about average gas prices? That may not be the worst statistic, but it might be to people who don't pay close attention. It's in their face, everyday.

 

Yes, it's all spin. Except for the fact that the American people disagree with you...

 

It may also be about a little more than simply the # of jobs. If a bunch of people have part time low paying jobs today, they are not in nearly as good shape as they might have been in the 1990's with a full time, higher paying job. But in basso's world, it's much easier to pretend everything is great in the economy, despite the very real problems we're seeing. Same as his Iraq strategy.

 

Wow, very nice data. Once again, the libs are EXPOSED as being hypocritical whiny complainers and spin artists. No solutions just complaints -- and factually inaccurate complaints at that! I guess the lib have to stoop to those levels when the facts don't support their case.

And by the way... DAM* we've got a nice healthy labor market these days! Give credit where credit is due libs. Would it kill you to offer up a piece of positive news?

 

It gets old having to remind people repeatedly that GDP does not equal the economy, nor does employment %.

How much is the dollar worth compared to then? What has happened to home prices and equity in said homes? What are people paying to fill up their gas tanks and put food on the table?

There is no question that a large chunk of the population is doing fine, but lower income households are already struggling while holding jobs. If things don't get precipitously worse, the American standard of living will continue it's trend towards equilibrium with the rest of the world.

 

http://www.urbansurvival.com/week.htm

First the summary: Biggest losses in five years: The unemployment rate jumped more than some expected in the report out today -- up 3/10th's of one percent in March:

The unemployment rate rose from 4.8 to 5.1 percent in March, and nonfarm payroll employment continued to trend down (-80,000), the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. Over the past 3 months, payroll employment has declined by 232,000. In March, employment continued to fall in construction, manufacturing, and employment services, while health care, food services, and mining added jobs. Average hourly earnings rose by 5 cents, or 0.3 percent, over the month.

Over the month, unemployment rates rose for adult men (to 4.6 percent), adult women (4.6 percent), and Hispanics (6.9 percent). The jobless rates edged up for blacks (to 9.0 percent) and whites (4.5 percent), while the rate for teenagers (15.8 percent) was essentially unchanged. The unemployment rate for Asians was 3.6 percent, not seasonally adjusted. In March, the number of persons unemployed because they lost jobs increased by 300,000 to 4.2 million. Over the past 12 months, the number of unemployed job losers has increased by 914,000.

The civilian labor force rose to 153.8 million over the month, offsetting a decline in the prior month. The labor force participation rate was 66.0 percent in March and has remained at or near that level since last spring. Total employ- ment held at 146.0 million. The employment-population ratio was little changed over the month at 62.6 percent. The ratio was down from its most recent peak of 63.4 percent in December 2006.

The number of persons who worked part time for economic reasons, at 4.9 million in March, was little changed over the month, but has risen by 629,000 over the past 12 months. This category includes persons who indicated that they were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find full-time jobs.


Now, a nickel's worth of analysis here. First, the Labor Department let's on that there were really another 1.4 million people who were 'marginally attached' to the workforce.

"About 1.4 million persons (not seasonally adjusted) were marginally attached to the labor force in March. These individuals wanted and were available for work and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. (<--- Can you believe this??? -gu)

Among the marginally attached, there were 401,000 discouraged workers in March, about the same as a year earlier. Discouraged workers are defined as persons not currently looking for work specifically because they believed no jobs were available for them. The other 951,000 persons classified as marginally attached to the labor force in March cited reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities."

Hand me the calculator and a bottle of Jack, please? Add the admitted 7.815 million unemployed to the 1.4 million 'marginally attached that they didn't bother to count as 'unemployed' and we get 9.215 million, which on a workforce of 153.784 million pencils out to an RCH under six percent unemployment rate but it gets even worse because if you add the table A-12 (unadjusted) U6 (*Underemployed like PhD's flipping burgers) you get an unemployment or severely underemployed rate of about 15.3%.

And that's with a war going to keep the economy on life support!Welcome to the Greater/Second Depression I've been writing about... Did the linguistics or did they not say employment collapse in March? 80,000 jobs is close enough to collapse for us...

 

How about putting a spin on the spin? The current unemployment figures are cooked. Damn this liberal president! oh wait. He's a republican.

Healthy, there's nothing healthy about it. Even if 2% of the global derivatives market was at risk, 14 trillion dollars in market losses would occur. This is significantly higher than IMF estimates.

 

This article is somewhat related to the topic, but I'm going to post it anyway.

Basically if you're smart with money and make you're living via capital, you'll do well, and that's an encouraging sign. It's discouraging when you go out and mingle with the people though, there aren't that many bright people out there.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
The tax debate we need to have
A shrinking minority of Americans are paying most of Washington's bills. That's not good.
By Geoff Colvin, senior editor at large

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(Fortune Magazine) -- Here's a cold reality that none of the presidential candidates want to tell you: a shrinking number of Americans are bearing an ever bigger share of the nation's income tax burden.

Is that fair? Is it sticking the rich with what they deserve? Or is it a sign of a growing social problem? As you file your tax return, and as the candidates cite assorted half-truths about U.S. taxes, those questions are worth our attention - as long as we spurn political spin and face the surprising facts.

The first surprise for most people is the large proportion of Americans who don't pay any income tax at all. The number of people who actually get money back - not a refund, but a net payment - through the income tax system, is huge. In 2005 (the most recent year for which data is available), the bottom 40% of Americans by income had, in the aggregate, an effective tax rate that's negative: their households received more money through the income tax system, largely from the earned income tax credit, than they paid.

That means that the number of people who actually pay America's income taxes - totaling almost $1 trillion in 2005 - is surprisingly small. Of those who filed returns (themselves a subset of the population), just half accounted for 97% of the Treasury's total income tax revenue. The top half's share of total payments has been growing steadily for the past 20 years. The top 10% of taxpayers kicked in 70% of total income tax. And the famous top 1% paid almost 40% of all income tax, a proportion that has jumped dramatically since 1986.

But wait a minute. Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama rail against President Bush's "tax cuts for the rich." How does that square with the growing share of total tax paid by the wealthy? Are the richest Americans paying so much because they're actually getting clobbered with higher tax rates? No. Their effective tax rate - the total tax they pay as a percentage of their income - has declined substantially. The top 1% paid an effective tax rate of 23% in 2005, down from 27.5% in 2001.
The rich are getting richer, faster

So if the rich are paying more income tax, yet are being taxed at a lower rate, there can be only one explanation: their incomes must be growing fast, much faster than the rest of the population's. That is what's happening. Back in 1986, an income of $119,000 got you into the top 1%. By 2005 it took $365,000 to get into the club. Those numbers are unadjusted for inflation; if you correct them, it turns out the price of admission still rose by a huge 72%. By contrast, the inflation-adjusted definition of a median taxpayer - that is, someone in the 50th percentile - didn't budge.

Now consider some of the heated tax controversies of recent years. Did Bush cut taxes for the rich? Yes. But he cut taxes for the poor even more. If we look at the measure that really matters - the change in effective tax rates - the bottom 50% got a much bigger tax cut than the top 1%. Did the dollar value of Bush's tax cuts go mostly to the wealthy? Absolutely. It could hardly be otherwise. Since the well-off pay the overwhelming majority of taxes, any tax cut with a prayer of influencing the economy would have to go mostly to them. You could completely eliminate income taxes for the bottom half of the population, and the Treasury would hardly notice.

The real issues here are clear. One is having a shrinking minority of citizens pay most of Washington's bills. Social cohesion falls apart. The majority who pay nothing resent those with higher incomes; the minority who pay heavily resent those who don't pay.

More fundamental is why some people's incomes are growing so much faster than other people's incomes. That, and not taxes, is what the supposed tax debate is really about. Watch to see if the candidates make substantive proposals for dealing with the issue, including how low-income citizens can get some of the earning power now going heavily to the better educated, plus how U.S. workers in general can be worth their high cost in a global labor market. It's a lot harder than changing income tax rates. To top of page

http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/31/news/economy/tax_debate.fortune/?postversion=2008040205

 

A good number of Americans liquidated their prime source of wealth while betting that the value of their homes will rise. They aren't going to pay that back anytime soon.

What sustained the economy during the Bush years was consumer spending. As median wage prices stagnate and homes are tapped out, we're going to be forced into finding a new source of easy money to continue the spending binge in order to pull out of the recession. I think banking upon foreign consumers to buy our exports is risky and hopeful, but who knows?

 

Bail out the bankers and socialize the loss. Good idea.

You think foreign countries will bail us out? Oooh boy, you are mistaken.

Haven't you heard? UBS lost 19 billion as a result of mortgage backed securities...

They're leaving and ain't coming back.

 

Ya'll need to get mad.

 

Don't worry, the government is taking us in the right direction:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080408/ap_on_go_ot/government_credit_cards

 

Yep, the economy is definitely a winner for Repubs this fall. I'm really sorry to see that they finally realize how great we all have it and now want to enlighten us. No doubt that running hard on the economy and reminding people of how much worse things were under Clinton is the way to electoral success for Republicans up and down the ticket.

 

^^^^
That's the type of economic analysis I'd expect from a fireman. Glad you don't manage money for a living....

Obviously you can not compare the 90's to the 2000's in terms of job creation because of the stunning crises our nation faced in 2001 and now with the mortgage implosion. You just can't. Any honest analysis recognizes that.

 

i think you need to direct this post at basso

 

Yet that's exactly what the first post did... cherry-picking stats without looking at the larger picture and the systematic problems affecting the economy.

I'll also add that you can't separate capital and people and you can't scream 9-11 for everything. Look at the "Better Off" chart. That big decline in the Bush administration is years after 9-11... that chart is as much a real economic indicator as anything else posted in this thread. If you don't think so, then again, please have McCain base his campaign on how well the economy is doing. It'll be a sure winner.

 

How ridiculous.

Direct my post at basso? Are you kidding, my post only HELPS his argument, in that our economy overcame these enormous issues to get to where it's at today. And as much as you try to minimize 9-11, it had a HUGE impact on the financial system. To think otherwise is just dishonest. Sorry.

Furthermore the libs blaming high gas prices on Bush is similarly dishonest. Oil prices, like other commodities traded worldwide, have ALL undergone dramatic increases in price, associated with the worldwide demand caused by China and India's industrialization. Copper, aluminum, iron ore, gold, platinum, etc have ALL increased as a result. Oil is no different. Perhaps the libs should direct their complaints to China for that problem. The problem is, the libs just don't understand how markets work, so they will never grasp that issue. Instead of complaining about the commodity price surge, why not invest in it and benefit from it? That's what I've done and I'm laughing all the way to the bank, while most libs are heading to the check cashing store for a cash advance.

 

I guess we all pick....and bend....the stats we like.

I tend to think unemployment is the most important one for most people....and the rates have been very low. In absolute terms, and in historical terms.

Is it possible things have been pretty good....but the recent trend is lousy?

 

There you have it, to Jorge making money is more important than the financial stability of America

To financially benefit off of the economic misfortune of our nation is the height of treason.

Disgusting