How do you factor the Dot-Com Boom/Bust into these numbers? What kind of impact did that have? As I said in another thread, I factor in that the Bush economists made their projections after the dot-com bust, and thus new all about that. They still were off on their projections by a mere 5.1 million jobs, meaning: 1) They lied (2) They didn't account for obvious factors (3) They were still wrong even when accounting for the dot-com bust None of these options gives me any reason to believe their next projection or trust them to make good economic decisions.
Major, your point is truly tangential to this argument. Your point is that Bush's team of advisors miscalculated the job creation figure. Let's be clear, you can in no way use this point to prove causation of job loss. Totally separate issues. Look people, this has been rehashed ad nauseum in this forum. The President has tools to impact the economy. Fiscal policy (spending, taxation) is one tool. Working in conjuction with the Fed to dictate monetary policy is another tool (don't give me the crap about the Fed being independent, either). Bush's actions with these tools have been 100% consisent. They have provided stimulus to the economy. Without them, we would be in much much worse shape economically today. While these tools are important, they say nothing of the hundreds of millions of participants' actions in the domestic economy, nothing about the behavior of the equity and debt markets, nothing about external shocks such as OPEC's movements, terror attacks, or fraudulent corporate activity, nothing about the weather, currency fluctuations, business cycles, the actions of congress, state and local governments, the judiciary, etc. Claiming that a President is at fault for job losses that occured after a massive loss of wealth due to the equity markets' decline, a terror attack of never-before-seen proportion on American soil, and a string of the largest corporate bankruptcies ever is nothing short of LUNACY. It is partisan politics at its finest, whose intention is to divide America. It's the liberals, what do you expect? Doom and gloom for Americans is their MO. They have reduced themselves to nothing better.
I was more angling to suspend some of the credit being given to Clinton for job creation-- such generous credit being used to reflect poorly on President Bush who began his presidency in a recession which was further hammered by 9/11.
worth noting the attack hit the heart of the financial district. also worth noting that the corporate abuses of enron, tyco, etc. took place in the roaring nineties, not after W took office. Andrew Fastow made his $30M in 1999.
good article in the WSJ today on basic econ: http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107758475144137292,00.html?mod=opinion -- Low Taxes Do What? By THOMAS SOWELL Some years ago, the distinguished international-trade economist Jagdish Bhagwati was visiting Cornell University, giving a lecture to graduate students during the day and debating Ralph Nader on free trade that evening. During his lecture, Prof. Bhagwati asked how many of the graduate students would be attending that evening's debate. Not one hand went up. Amazed, he asked why. The answer was that the economics students considered it to be a waste of time. The kind of silly stuff that Ralph Nader was saying had been refuted by economists ages ago. The net result was that the audience for the debate consisted of people largely illiterate in economics and they cheered for Mr. Nader. Prof. Bhagwati was exceptional among leading economists in understanding the need to confront gross misconceptions of economics in the general public, including the so-called educated public. Nobel Laureates Milton Friedman and Gary Becker are other such exceptions in addressing a wider general audience, rather than confining what they say to technical analysis addressed to fellow economists and their students. By and large, the economics profession fails to educate the public on the basics, while devoting much time and effort to narrower and even esoteric research. The net result is that fallacies flourish in discussions of economic policy issues, while the refutations of those fallacies lie dormant in old books and academic journals gathering dust on library shelves. As former House Majority Leader Dick Armey -- an economist by trade -- put it: "Demagoguery beats data in making public policy." Sometimes the fallacies are based on something as simple as a failure to define terms accurately. Everyone has heard the claim that a high-wage country like the U.S. loses jobs to low-wage countries when there is free trade. When the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect a decade ago, there were dire predictions of "a giant sucking sound" as American jobs were drawn away, to Mexico especially. In reality, the number of jobs in the U.S. increased by millions after Nafta went into effect and the unemployment rate fell to low levels not seen in years. Behind the radically wrong predictions was a simple confusion between wage rates and labor costs. Wage rates per unit of time are not the same as labor costs per unit of output. When workers are paid twice as much per hour and produce three times as much per hour, the labor costs per unit of output are lower. That is why high-wage countries have been exporting to low-wage countries for centuries. An international study found the average productivity of workers in the modern sector of the Indian economy to be 15% of that of American workers. In other words, if you paid the average Indian worker one-fifth of what you paid the average American worker, it would cost you more to get the job done in India. In particular industries, such as computer software, Indian workers are more comparable, which is why there is so much outsourcing of computer work to India. But virtually every country has a comparative advantage in something, whether it is a high-wage country or a low-wage country. Those who complain loudly about how many jobs have been "exported" to other countries because of international free trade totally ignore all the jobs that have been imported to the American economy because of that same free trade. Siemens alone employs tens of thousands of American workers and Toyota has already produced its ten millionth car in the U.S. Management guru Peter Drucker has said that this country imports far more jobs than it exports and no one has contradicted him. Indeed, those who are loudest in denouncing the exporting of jobs totally ignore the importing of jobs. Free international trade produces both the benefits of increased productivity and the adjustment problems that all other forms of increased productivity produce -- namely, job losses in the less competitive firms and industries. The typewriter industry was devastated by the rise of the computer, as the horse and buggy industry was devastated by the rise of the automobile. Histories of the industrial revolution lament the plight of the handloom weavers when power looms were introduced. International trade has no monopoly on economic illiteracy. One of the apparently invincible fallacies of our times is the belief that President Ronald Reagan's tax cuts caused the federal budget deficits of the 1980s. In reality, the federal government collected more tax revenue in every year of the Reagan administration than had ever been collected in any year of any previous administration. But there is no amount of money that Congress cannot outspend. Here again, the confusion is due to a simple failure to define terms. What Mr. Reagan's "tax cuts for the rich" actually cut were the tax rates per dollar of income. Out of rising incomes, the country as a whole -- including the rich -- paid more total taxes than ever before. At the state and local levels, this confusion of tax rates and tax revenues has led some local politicians to see higher tax rates as the answer to budget problems, even though higher tax rates can drive businesses out of the city or state, with adverse effects on the total amount of tax revenues collected. Price controls are another area where very elementary economics is all that is needed to show what the consequences are: shortages, quality deterioration and black markets. It has happened repeatedly in countries around the world, over a period of centuries. Yet politicians keep selling the idea of price controls and voters keeping buying it. Many economic issues are complex, but sometimes a single fact will tell you all you need to know. When you know that central planners in the Soviet Union had to set 24 million prices -- and keep adjusting them, relative to one another, as conditions changed -- you realize that central planning did not just happen to fail. It had no chance of succeeding from the outset. It is a wholly different ball game when hundreds of millions of people individually keep track of the relatively few prices they need to know for their own decision-making in a market economy. Simple stuff like this is not very exciting for economists and there is no payoff in one's professional career for clarifying such things for the general public. The only reason to do it is that it very much needs to be done -- especially during an election year. Mr. Sowell, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, is the author, most recently, of "Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy, Revised and Expanded," just published by Basic Books.
T_J, are you a RepubliCAN or a RepubliCAN'T ? You are missing the whole point. The whole point is that Bush&Co. make predictions, they are wildly off, what do they do? continue to base policy on false projections and when they are shown to be false , they put in operation ignore and continue to base policy on false projections, year after year after year.. 9/11 was 2 1/2 years ago T_J...its time to put that crutch down
nice job basso, your GOP propaganda sugar daddy would be proud no where did I tell T_J to "get over it" I said to stop using it as a crutch. Next time, try to actually analyize what I've said
Because he keeps on lying about it. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A538-2004Feb23.html White House Forecasts Often Miss The Mark By Dana Milbank Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, February 24, 2004; Page A01 President Bush last week caused a stir when he declined to endorse a projection, made by his own Council of Economic Advisers, that the economy would add 2.6 million jobs this year. But that forecast, derided as wildly optimistic, was one of the more modest predictions the administration has made about the economy over the past three years. Two years ago, the administration forecast that there would be 3.4 million more jobs in 2003 than there were in 2000. And it predicted a budget deficit for fiscal 2004 of $14 billion. The economy ended up losing 1.7 million jobs over that period, and the budget deficit for this year is on course to be $521 billion. These are not isolated cases. Over three years, the administration has repeatedly and significantly overstated the government's fiscal health and the number of jobs the economy would create, but economists and politicians disagree about why. The president, though not addressing the predictions directly, regularly points to four events that altered economic expectations: the recession; the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks; the corporate governance scandals; and war in Iraq. "We've been through a lot," Bush said in an economics speech Thursday. "But we acted, here in Washington. I led." The opposition has sought to portray the economic forecasts as evidence of Bush's dishonesty, similar to the claims of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that have not materialized. "Every day, this administration's credibility gap grows wider," Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), the leading prospect to challenge Bush in November, said Friday. "They didn't tell Americans the truth about Iraq. They didn't tell Americans the truth about the economy. And now they're trying to manufacture the 2.6 million manufacturing jobs they've destroyed." Economists agree that economic forecasts are often unreliable, but they say there is at least one plausible explanation for the discrepancies of recent years: The Bush administration, like the Clinton administration before it and like most private economists, assumed that tax revenue and jobs would rise or fall with the gross domestic product in the same proportions as they had in previous recoveries. But, because of structural changes in the economy such as soaring gains in productivity, the historical patterns have not held. Job growth and tax receipts were badly underestimated in the boom of the late 1990s, and overestimated since 2000, even as the economy has begun to improve. Robert D. Reischauer, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, said that the administration has been "a little exuberant" in its forecasts but that the problem is more a statistical one. "The patterns that prevailed before don't seem to be holding in this current recovery," Reischauer said. Figures released by the White House show that its overestimate of job creation in 2003 was the largest forecast error made in at least 15 years, and its 2002 underestimate of the deficit was the largest in at least 21 years. But the statistics show that forecast errors began to increase considerably around 1997, under the Clinton administration. By contrast, the Bush administration's GDP forecasts have been relatively accurate, indicating job growth and tax receipts have shed their historical correlation to GDP growth. . . .
Ostrich Brigade, take some notes... Feb. Consumer Confidence Slumps Tue February 24, 2004 10:33 AM ET http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=4426107 By Daniel Bases NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. consumer confidence fell unexpectedly hard in February as Americans grew disenchanted with the economy, mainly because of a dearth of new jobs, a report published on Tuesday said. The Conference Board, a private research firm, said its index of consumer confidence dropped to 87.3 in February from a downwardly revised 96.4 in January. Economists had forecast a drop to 92.5. February's reading was the lowest since October. "People are not happy. The big problem is the jobs situation. The lack of jobs has people scared," said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor's in New York. "When people are scared they don't spend money, and the consumer has been the mainstay of this economy. At the same time, peoples' spending tends to be more influenced by their income than by their confidence," he added. U.S. stock indexes and the dollar fell sharply while Treasuries rallied on the grim news because it bolsters the case for the Federal Reserve to leave benchmark U.S. interest rates steady at 1 percent, their lowest level since 1958. "Consumers began the year on a high note, but their optimism has quickly given way to caution," said Lynn Franco, director of research at the Conference Board, adding "Consumers remain disheartened with current economic conditions, and at the core of their disenchantment is the labor market." The number of consumers saying jobs were hard to get rose in February to 32.1 percent, up from January's 31.6 percent. Consumers' view of the future also deteriorated, taking the expectations index down to 96.8 from 107.8, while the present situation index declined to 73.1 from 79.4. "This is disappointing given the recent rally in the equity markets and resumption of job growth in the U.S. It is quite surprising to see such a sharp pullback in confidence. Respondents are still finding increased difficulty in getting jobs and it suggests some risk to the economic outlook for the United States," said Sal Guatieri, senior economist at BMO Financial Group in Toronto. "It is possible that recent terrorism threats might be weighing on confidence," Guatieri added. Earlier on Tuesday mixed reports on weekly consumer spending habits were released. The International Council of Shopping Centers and investment firm UBS issued a joint report saying sales at U.S. chain stores dipped 0.2 percent in the week to Feb. 21, although on a year-on-year comparison, sales accelerated to their best level in nearly five years. Last year at this time U.S. consumers tightened their purse strings as war in Iraq loomed, which is a factor contributing to the favorable comparisons. However, a second report from research group Redbook said the Presidents Day holiday helped lift U.S. chain store sales, especially for department stores, by 5.6 percent on a year-over-year basis for the week to Feb. 21. February sales were up 1 percent compared with January, Redbook said. Earlier this month, the University of Michigan's preliminary February consumer sentiment survey fell sharply as American attitudes toward the economy turned cautious, most likely because of the paltry rate of job creation. The Michigan report was consistent with a drop in a consumer sentiment survey issued on Feb. 10 by Investor's Business Daily.
Thanks TJ, but I'm afraid the liberals still won't get this as they're in a trance with Kerry's Botoxed face...
You're such a welcome addition over here. You've got the Drudgereport talking points down to a science.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/Treasury secretary defends outsourcing Firms 'need to do what they need to do' to compete -- Snow Updated: 7:55 p.m. ET Feb. 24, 2004WASHINGTON - Treasury Secretary John Snow on Tuesday defended U.S. corporations' right to send U.S. jobs offshore to cheaper-labor countries, and said a more productive source for jobs might be found by breaking down global trade barriers. Snow was asked on CNBC television whether he would advise U.S. corporations to reduce the rate at which they are "outsourcing" U.S. jobs by having them performed in countries like China and India. "I think American companies need to do what they need to do to be competitive, and as they're competitive, it's good for their shareholders, it's good for their consumers and it's good for their employees," Snow said. He added: "Enterprises that don't succeed don't create many jobs." Snow was interviewed from New York, where he visited Wall Street investment houses and made multiple television appearances repeating that the economy was growing and that as it does so, "lots of jobs are going to be created." . . . Snow said that the United States, with 5 percent of the world's population, still had plenty of opportunity to pry open foreign markets. "We've got to make sure that the rest of the world is open to our farmers, our agricultural producers and out manufacturers," he said. So the administration is saying future jobs will be in farming and manufacturing? I thought farming as a job went out of style in the 1900's and outsourced manufacturing was the rule of the day.
