I do see it starting to come around, but I believe that another president would have lost fewer jobs and would have added new ones more quickly. In addition, another president would not have run deficits the size of Bush's, would not have pursued an unjustified, costly war in Iraq, and would not have given the super-wealthy a dividend for being rich. Bush will go down as one of the worst presidents in modern history for many, many reasons and IMO, the economy can't even be completely blamed on Bush. His other foibles are his biggest downsides, the economy is cyclical and can only be nudged by presidential policy.
I get it. If there's been an improved economy, that means the war was justifed, there are WMDs, the POWs were an isolated incident, and Plume never happened, among other things. I agree that there is a call for selective vision going on, but in which direction? " It is the duty of every citizen in a responsible society to question the authority of it's government...unless they're at war, or might be at war, or have an improving economy...or can't prove a negative...or are supporters of the opposing party ( whther because of the administration's actions or prior to same.)' Basically, the only people who have any justifiable right to complain and expect to be taken seriously are those who have no complaint." Thomas Jefferson, edited.
Delusions of Triumph By PAUL KRUGMAN (NY Times Op-Ed) Republicans, we hear, are frustrated by polls showing that the public has a poor opinion of George Bush's economic leadership. In their view, the good news about Mr. Bush's economic triumphs is being drowned out by the bad news from Iraq. A recent article in The New York Times, citing concerns of "Republican elected officials, pollsters and strategists," put it this way: "The creation of nearly 900,000 new jobs in the last four months — a development that might otherwise have redefined the race in Mr. Bush's favor — has been largely crowded out of the electorate's psyche by images from Iraq." Funny, isn't it? In 2002, Republican strategists used the impending Iraq war to distract the public from the miserable economic news. Now they're complaining that Iraq is taking voters' focus off the economy. But is the economic news really that good? No. While the recent economic performance is better than in the administration's first three years, it isn't at all exceptional by historical standards. And after those three terrible years, the economy has a lot of ground to make up. Let's start with the "nearly 900,000 new jobs" created in the last four months. Is that exceptional? Well, during the first four months of 2000, the last presidential election year, the economy created 1.1 million new jobs. An e-mail message to Bush's supporters from Ken Mehlman, his campaign manager, takes a longer view, boasting of 1.1 million jobs created since last August (when job growth finally turned positive). But in April 2000, payroll employment was 2.3 million higher than in August 1999. And that was after seven years of sustained employment growth; rapid job growth is hard to achieve when the economy is already close to full employment. To find a year comparable to 2004, we need to look back to 1994, when the economy was still recovering from the first Bush recession. In the first four months of that year, the economy added almost 1.3 million jobs. The experience of 1994 also gives us some indication of how likely job growth is to "redefine" an election. Between December 1993 and November 1994 the economy gained 3.6 million jobs, a number beyond the Bush administration's fondest dreams. Yet voters, convinced that Bill Clinton was leading the country astray, gave his party a severe defeat in that year's midterm elections. So it's interesting that a new CBS News poll finds that 65 percent of Americans believe that the country is headed in the wrong direction — a level not seen since 1994. If you want to convince yourself that I'm not playing games with dates, go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Web site at stats.bls.gov. Click on "U.S. economy at a glance," then on the green dinosaur next to "Change in payroll employment" for a 10-year chart of monthly job gains and losses. The chart reveals that for 37 months, from January 2001 to February 2004, the Bush administration presided over dismal job numbers: employment for each month fell, or grew far more slowly than the norm during the Clinton years. March and April were much better, but they still weren't exceptional by 1990's standards. And a mere return to Clinton-era job growth isn't enough: after all those years of poor job performance, we need extra-rapid growth to make up for lost time. Here's one way to look at it. The job forecast in the 2002 Economic Report of the President assumed that by 2004 the economy would have fully recovered from the 2001 recession. That recovery, according to the official projection, would lead to average payroll employment of 138 million this year — 7 million more than the actual number. So we have a gap of 7 million jobs to make up. And employment is chasing a moving target: it must rise by about 140,000 a month just to keep up with a growing population. In April, the economy added 288,000 jobs. If you do the math, you discover that President Bush needs about four years of job growth at last month's rate to reach what his own economists consider full employment. The bottom line, then, is that Mr. Bush's supporters have no right to complain about the public's failure to appreciate his economic leadership. Three years of lousy performance, followed by two months of good but not great job growth, is not a record to be proud of.
My firm is hiring and I've been getting tons of calls from headhunters lately. Seems like the jobs are definitely becoming available and things are turning around pretty well. What's the problem?
As Krugman said: "Three years of lousy performance, followed by two months of good but not great job growth, is not a record to be proud of."
Okay, that's fine. Tell me about Bush's fiscal policy decisions and the implications of those decisions. And since it appears that your assertion is that everything he did was wrong, tell me what he should have done. Of course it's helpful to keep in mind what caused the economic climate in the first place. You may want to start by looking at the status of the capital markets over the last 6 years and the implications on business investment.
First - Don't bankrupt the country by giving huge tax breaks to the richest people in the country. Second - Extend unemployment benefits for people adversely affected by the recession, 9/11 fallout, etc. Third - Reward companies with tax breaks for creating jobs. Fourth - Help people in obsolete industries by extending Pell-like grants for job retraining. That would have been my direction. That, along with not starting the war, would probably have seen a much shallower recession that would have recovered much more quickly. In addition, we would not have generated over a trillion dollars in new debt over three years.
What this news reflects is a country that is beginning to show some optimism --- A country that is finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel --- A country that knows a new President we can all be proud of will be voted into office this November. Happy days are just around the corner.
I don't know. I got one right out of college in the worst part of the recession. My group has hired 5 people since I was hired. Rather than wondering where a job was...I went out and got one.
Do you honestly believe that all the unemployed don't have jobs because they are spending more time wondering where they are instead of looking?
I had similar situation, got my job just before the recession. Guess I was just lucky. But I took a huge paycut and had to work overtime to keep my job during the recession. It was just terrible for last three years no matter how you spin it. Economy definitely improved, it is so significant because the economy performance record under Bush's admin was so poor . I still have my doubt about the job growth because of the raise of the productivity and job outsourcing, but I am thinking of looking for a new job right now. Will Kerry do better? I don't know, I think Bush did a very poor job on economy (actually on everything IMO), but who knows if Kerry is not worse? What's his plan?
1.) Tax breaks went to everyone. The goal was to increase the disposable income of Americans and spur consumer spending despite the job losses that were going on. Consumer spending stayed pretty strong throughout the downturn. So I think that was effective. 2.) I may be wrong on this, but I honestly thought unemployment benefits were extended for people. Was I totally dreaming? 3.) Jobs are created when corporations expand. In order to expand, corporations need capital, which can either come from internal cash flows or external investors. The capital markets SUCKED the last few years. The credit market was painfully tight as banks tried to clean up the problem loans of their balance sheets. The HY and equity market was in the sh!tter because so many HY and equity investors got burned on the crappy tech deals spawned in the mid-to-late 90s. Capital was not available for companies to expand and jobs were lost rather than created. There are corporate incentives out there, but with the capital markets in that sort of a state, they didn't do any good. Well, it did allow certain politicians to whine about corporate welfare, but it had no constructuve benefit. 4.) I like that idea. There are tax benefits out there to help people educate themselves, but expanding retraining incentives would have been great. I would build upon your 4th concept by making the labor market more flexible. One of the most difficult issues for corporations to deal with is labor unions. Unqualified, unecessary workers are still employed, sucking away money that could be better spent somewhere else. Break the unions!!! Of course, that would be like assking to be shot in American politics. Did Bush miss some opportunities? Sure, but every president does. He put tons of money in the economy through tax cuts and government spending in hopes of spurring a recovery. He allowed and encouraged the SEC to crack down on the corporate crap of the 90s, helping to restrore some faith in financial reporting. He tried to find ways to lower the costs of fuel, thereby potentially increasing the profitability of companies (and their ability to exapnd and create jobs). He did some good things and messed up on others. The big point, though, was my last statement of my prior post. Why did the economy struggle in the first place. It was due to improper capital allocation and a loss of faith in corporations. It was a correction from a bubble that was created in the mid 90s. 9-11 exacerbated it, but was not the cause (at least for most industries outside of travel & leisure). Disagree with Bush on Iraq, diplomacy, whatever else, but he took a lot of the right steps for the economy. Most of it, though, was out of his control.
i'm still amazed that people think the president exerts so much control over the economy. that legislation enacted 3 years ago would have caused an economic turn that started 3 years ago. i recognize that's the perception...and i recognize that people vote as if that is reality. but it's just not.
That's always been my perspective. Well, sort of. Mine is that there may be a correlation between a President's actions and the immediate economy, but that there are so many variables, so mayn layers of factors in between that it's practically impossible to make definitive short term connections. And to pre-empt another Cohen error ( ), yes, I said this when the economy was doing terrible as well.
It seems that the economy can grow based on whatever different set of principles are put into place. The economy's growing now. The economy was booming under GWB. But there's a big bill gonna come due on these jacked-up tax cuts, not to mention how states are squeezing on programs because of the trickle-down effect.
well bush could have really created a boom for our economy if he had been allowed to drill in an extremely small area of the ANWR. we would get over 10 BILLION barrels out of it. thats around 1.4 million barrels a day for 20 years. our foreign oil dependence would be decreased significantly. hell in 20 years we would probably have fuel cells in the mainstream and our need for oil would be significantly decreased. but no drilling...all for what? to save a few caribou that were predicted to die? oh wait...the last time those doom and gloom scenarios were predicted for a huge oil project in alaska was with the alaskan pipeline when the environmentalists were dead wrong and the caribou population actually grew 7 fold in the area. sorry just complaining because of the gas prices...on the other hand bush could have also dipped in the the emergency oil supply, but he didnt do that either. but drilling in ANWR would have had us set with very little environment impact to the ANWR. not being allowed to drill on 2000 acres of land out of 19 million cost america a lot.
Yes from my perspective he made a huge mess. You know I didn't really like all the pay raises and promotions I recieved while he was president. In fact, I was ecstatic when GWB was elected and was told that I was going on a pay freeze (which lasted 3 years.) It was even better to watch 300 of my co-workers have their jobs sent to Malaysia.
