What a Crappy Century So Far! Obama's Terrible Job Creation Stats Remind Us How Bad Bush Was!
Over at National Review's The Corner, Reason columnist and Mercatus Center economist Veronique de Rugy documents just how rotten the 21st century has been for job creation in these United States. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) is telling a whopper about how President Obama's job creation numbers are better than President Bush's.
De Rugy helpfully charts monthly job numbers for Bush and Obama and there's no question that Obama has been a disaster. But Bush looks good only by comparison. Take a gander and then doublecheck to make sure you haven't been pink-slipped during the time that it took to read this post:
De Rugy notes that there's no way to easily compare jobs under a guy in office for eight terrible years and a guy in office for less than two really terrible years. But the raw numbers tell a tale that neither president nor party should be proud of:
Under Bush, private employment shrank by 673,000 jobs, federal employment grew by 50,000 jobs, and government employment grew by 1,753,000 jobs.
Under Obama, the private sector has shed some 2.9 million jobs while the federal government has grown by 40,000 (after growing massively, the federal workforce shrank throughout the summer). Total government jobs, however, shrank by 357,000 jobs, mainly because of cuts at the state and local levels.
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I was all proud and feeling good that I haven't had a cigarette in two days and don't want to have any more. Then I read this...now I want to kill myself.
Thanks, Nick!
I understand, but cigarettes take so long to do the job!
It's so true
Keep at it, dude. The more you smoke, the more you want to smoke; the less you smoke, the less you want to smoke. Just watch out for the psychological cravings part - it can trip you up even several months after the physical cravings are gone and you think you got it beat.
If your cravings for ciagrettes go away after only a few months - and stay gone - then you are a very lucky person. At age 58, I've been off cigarettes for about 30 years now, and I still have an occasional episode of craving. Cravings usually come and go, and come and go, and come and go, pretty much forever. On average, they get weaker as time goes on and come less often. The trick is to realize that they will come from time to time and not give in to them. If you do give in, (I can smoke just one..that will be ok..I'll just smoke only one cigarette..to get me over this hump..just one.), you will find that in a very short time, your levels of both craving and smoking will return in full strength. Trust me. I quit a 2 1/2 pack a day habit of unfiltered Camels about a dozen times before I laid them down for good.
Mark Twain said it best. "I'm an expert at quitting smoking. I've done it hundreds of times." Quitting is the easy part. The hard part is not restarting.
Bush took over at the height of a bubble and left at the trough. There is no way he can look good on any economic indicator. If Obama last two terms, maybe he'll catch a bubble on his way out and get the Clinton treatment.
GHrtasuy, I think it makes more sense to blame it on Snowball. If it wasn't for him, we would of had that windmill by now.
Height of what bubble? The tech bubble? 2000/2001 was hardly the "height" of the tech bubble.
THe tech bubble was actually a low interest rate bubble. Interest rates were lower in the 90's than they had been since the 60's, on average. This fueled the tech and real estate bubble of the 90's. I think people give tech too much credit for economic growth of that decade.
GHrtasuy|10.12.10 @ 8:05PM|#
"If Obama last two terms, maybe he'll catch a bubble on his way out and get the Clinton treatment."
Your presumption is that he won't cause even further damage for the next 6 years?
I'm not sure any 'bubble', let alone just plain old prosperity is possible if he gets his way.
There is little doubt in my mind that, should there be any sort of sputtering recovery in late CY 2012 or late CY 2016 (whenever Obama is leaving office) the press will discuss the quality of the recovery and show lots and lots of graphs that mysteriously don't begin in CY 2009. How badly things have gone tits up during Obama's presidency will be flushed down the MSM memory hole.
As predicted, Obama has achieved the impossible. He's made Bush look good in comparison.
Let's all agree to aim for an Obama replacement who doesn't make his or her predecessor look good by comparison.
I suggest: Bill the Cat. This time, why not the worst?
I don't know. Wouldn't brain dead be an improvement!
Bill has been dead several times, so he has that going for him.
Well, then, Kenny for Veep.
Zombie Stalin / Zombie Hitler '12. They're dead, they're evil, you probably won't know the difference.
No. Bush led us into Iraq. Obama has yet to do anything even remotely that stupid.
Obamacare? Which will cost us more in the long run? Maybe Iraq depending on your discount rate I guess...
The "original sin" was calling the Laffer Curve Voodoo Economics. For it, the Son, Dubya, and all of us are suffering still. The Savior could be: "If wealth doesn't trickle down, poverty trickles up." Say that three times and click your heels.
The thing that sticks out on that chart for me is the fact that things have to get really bad before government payrolls fall.
The government will not lay off anyone unless there is absolutely no other alternative.
...except maybe war. Nobody wants to go to war right now, though, so I guess that's off the table for now.
"Nobody wants to go to war"?
Hate to break this to ya...
War is like Jello. There's always "room" for it.
I guess so.
I mean, the last one isn't really over yet--no sense in me pretending we're not at war now.
At wars now.
Wow! 2010-2019 is pure shit for sure!
But it hasn't happened yet!
Yet Bushy-boy couldn't muster an end result in job creation despite the housing bubble he yearned for and a buttload of top-end tax cuts!
Yeah, yeah... lives have been touched, according to the latest Obama catchphrase.
Why the fuck you give Obama a pass, when he's at least as much a fuck-up as Bush was, is proof you're a stupid shit.
Because he has been in office for 19 months - and the
Supervisory Capital Assessment Program was a work of genius - picking capitalism off the Bush-Turd lows.
He can be in office another 19 months, and it'll STILL be shit.
Your stiffy for Obama clouds your judgement, shrike.
You're an idiot on money. I helped develop PEP for banks - an EFT program 99 of the largest 100 banks adopted.
Bush destroyed capital at a record rate by dragging to the floor Net Capital rules.
Once again - this site is filled with amateur gibberish.
Ahh, the old liberal standby: "Shut the fuck up, *I* went to college".
Between you and the average conservative elitist, I don't know which is worse. Pretty much a dead heat.
no - SCAP lifted the net worth of the USA by $8 trillion this year (09-10)
shrike|10.12.10 @ 10:03PM|#
no - SCAP lifted the net worth of the USA by $8 trillion this year (09-10)
You are going around telling people how fucking great everything is and if only we understood how great we have it under Obama everything would be superfantastical? EPIC LOL!
You truly are the biggest fool on here if you think you are impressing anyone because you successfully Googled a business lexicon.
"What is PEP risk?
From an organisational perspective, the risks associated with a lack of PEP due diligence do not stop at regulatory fines for non-compliance. There is also the risk of severe reputation damage. To compound the PEP risk management challenge, a Politically Exposed Person can become compromised at any given point by just one transaction."
Oh, goody. One more ward-healer! Or were you the janitor when this was 'being developed', shiteater-boy?
Link:
http://www.world-check.com/pol.....ompliance/
Shiteater-boy is going to tell us which tin-pot dictator is, well, marginally reliable.
Or shiteater-boy is going to sweep the floors while he overhears stuff.
Fuck off.
Go to Free Republic or Red State.
shrike|10.12.10 @ 10:08PM|#
"Fuck off."
Eat shit.
You've been busted as a liar or a janitor, shiteating-boy.
I notice you never did answer my question about how you (after the fact) claimed to have timed the market and made tons on equities after you got busted for blowing your prediction on gold.
Now, janitors are specifically excluded from charges of 'insider trading' if they find stuff in a garbage can, so shiteating-boy *could* be a janitor.
Or, shiteating-boy could be a liar.
Somehow, I'm gonna go with the latter.
At what levels do political exposure cause damage to the human body... and, is there an antidote?
PEP is automated Paperless Entry Processing via checking standards adopted by all banks as a proprietary form of EFT.
(Electronic Funds Transer)
Fuck off.
Go to DemocraticUnderground or MooOn.Borg.
No, you fuck off.
My secularist/free market credentials are beyond reproach.
And if you want to molest children then you win on the "least regs" game I won't go to.
Wouldn't dream of horning in on your dating pool, shrike. I like my women older than 45.
Your loss. Molesting children is the shit.
God damn - you Bushnecks are desperate.
Impersonating little ole shrike.
Oh, so now we find you 'were involved with' a software project?
Did you keep the floors clean?
Shut up, redneck.
Stick it up your ass, brain-dead.
Notice how the liberal forgets all about his loathing of "hate speech" when it suits his ulterior motives...
You're a fucking janitor at those banks at best, you lying lefty cocksucker. How old are you shitstain, 15?
shrike|10.12.10 @ 9:10PM|#
"...Bushy-boy..."
Oh, oh! Another comment from shiteater-boy!
There was a housing bubble? I wish someone had informed Barney Frank:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW5qKYfqALE
Under Bush, private employment shrank by 673,000 jobs
That was eight years of failure!
Growing the ranks of government-union paper-pushers = your idea of success?
I am sure I was referring to Bush private sector job LOSSES!
I short post and your comprehension fails?
You can try to cover up for the job losses under Obama's watch all you want, shrike. Failure is failure.
I don't like Bush, either. I don't hate him like you do, but I sure as fuck didn't vote for him - OR Obama. And I sure as double-fuck don't give the latter any slack, especially when he doesn't deserve any.
Your turn, slick.
shrike|10.12.10 @ 9:33PM|#
"I short post and your comprehension fails?"
Shiteater-boy lies and no one agrees?
Eventually, you will all come to realize just how inferior you are compared to me.
Eventually, you'll realize you aren't worth shit.
With my patented FWC (Fecal Worth Calculator), I can PROVE my worth in shit. I'll post a link to that website soon.
In the meantime, fuck off.
Or, you might end up in the sewage treatment plant and cause passers by to think Pelosi is in town.
It's another interesting dilemma for Obama fellators because they never stop telling you how terrible the Bush years were. Well, they look good by comparison.
shrike's got that covered, though reinforcements are likely to arrive soon.
Where IS Tony, by the way? He's at least three post-lengths behind schedule.
Fuck Tony.
You simpleton Huckabee/Palin types are easy pickings enough.
Didn't vote for/don't like either of those people, shrike. Try again.
shrike|10.12.10 @ 10:18PM|#
"Fuck Tony.
You simpleton Huckabee/Palin types are easy pickings enough."{
Hey, if brain-dead shiteating-boy didn't have a stawman, what would shiteating-boy have?
Tony's busy, shrike, but I've got your back!
I quit posting here, but I came back to support my fellow traveler, shrike. Keep at it, dude!
Slurp Slurp
THERE you are, Tony. Late as usual.
Oh, you've got a little something on your cheek... no, to the left.
And this is why reason will never win in a war against wonkette. I've met toddlers with more wit than you guys.
Why does anyone even respond to shriek? It's like engaging in a conversation with a hummingbird on speed. A day-trading hummingbird that really hates...something.
It's fun watching him *act* superior.
Yes, but he is oblivious to your scorn, which makes it less fun. I mean, if you make fun of a severely retarded person who is too retarded to get that you're making fun of them, what fun is that?
Same principle applies here.
Hell, my brother is retarded, and he understands economics better than shrike does.
Is he single? I could show him a good time.
Slow the fuck down, Epi! Before shit gets meta. You're implying that we're retarded about his retardedness. That's dangerous thinking that could end the world as we know it. It would be like dividing by zero.
Well, he DID save the world with this "pep" substance he invented...
If we don't face the danger now, it will only become worse later, potentially causing a retardocalypse. And no one wants that. Except maybe shriek.
Become potentially worse, you say? Then fuck it. Let's leave it for the grandkids and blame it the collapse of civilization on them and their stupid cultural fads. Tackling this now would be ensure a wave, nay, a tsunami of stupid the likes of which may very well spell our certain doom.
You should be a politician, Naga. Because you're thinking like one.
Well I am a bartender . . .
A day-trading hummingbird
Say what you will, but shriek knows a thing or two about birdlaw in this country.
Why does anyone respond to shrike? Isn't it obvious? To do battle on the nets.
Next question.
Can one in fact do battle with an autistic day-trading hummingbird on amphetamines, Naga? Or are you just deceiving yourself that it's possible?
I'm just sayin . . . he makes it to easy. Overly aggressive(internet tuff gai), annoying, and makes wild claims about himself(he "helped" with the PEP programs dammit! Make way for this intellectual titan!). It's almost as if . . . no, it couldn't be . . . could it?
This seems relevant to your interests.
A recent post by Hillbuzz-
"Another awesome George W. Bush story you probably have never heard that makes me hate myself for ever saying anything bad about this man."
Yep, he's awful quiet these days, unlike certain other currently breathing ex-presidents.
"I helped develop PEP for banks - an EFT program 99 of the largest 100 banks adopted."
Oh, so YOU saved us from a 100%-chance of Depression, Part II. Guess I was wrong about you, shrike. You're like a goddamned superhero or something.
stick this up your ass
http://www.checkfreecorp.com/c.....;pId=44771
Oooo... shiiiny!
Great job linking to your product / website after several vulgarity-filled tirades.
I was really on the fence about it, but now I'm certain to sign up my bank as a customer. It was the "stick this up your ass" that sealed the deal for me.
Hold on one jiffy... how do we know it's HIS product/website?
I smell a ratfucker.
And shiteating-boy kept the floors clean the entire time!
Odd that he uses neither broom nor mop, though... how DOES he do it?
the WoT rating seems less than stellar for that website...
Hey shriek, what did you write it in?
shriek is a Visual Basic man all the way, dude.
I figured him for a Commodore man.
No way. I know C++ when I see it.
VB is a perfectly fine OOP language (since .NET). I'd guess that shriek writes in PHP.
"What's encapsulation?"
VB.NET is perfectly fine, as long you have a boss who learned VB in 1988 and refuses to allow you to use a language with curly braces. Since C# is just too hard for him to follow.
And shriek doesn't use php ever since he discovered Tcl/Tk.
Really? Your boss does that? Does he not understand how unbelievably easy it is to switch between C# and VB? You know, being based on the same framework and all?
Also, you could have insulted shriek much better by accusing him of using VBScript as opposed to VB.
My old boss did. Now I do mostly C++.
Have you ever used Tcl/Tk? Everything is a string. EVERYTHING.
I like how he basically stated that he had no problem selling a product to the very institutions that he likely damns every day for screwing us over.
When it's all about the Benjamins, integrity goes out the window for even the most dedicated progressive.
Now, shrike, if you don't start playing nice, I won't let you have that sleepover with my Maxie-poo.
Moooom! I can't find my Underoos!
Did someone say my name? No? Well, shit.
They're in the hamper, sweetiekins. You got your man-juice all over them... remember?
I've developed a floor cleaning solution that also gets out tough protein-based fabric stains.
Oh, and I'm a master chemist as well as a financial genius.
I'd post more of my magnificent past accomplishments, but I'm busy single-handedly saving those trapped miners down in Chile.
Is it true you gave Jim Kramer the idea for TheStreet?
If so, yet another reason to despise shriek.
"My secularist/free market credentials are beyond reproach unless you take into account how I defend the idea of the health-care mandate".
There, that's much better.
How much of this expansion/contraction was census hiring/firing?
Government jobs are just as important, if not MORE important. Paul Krugman came to my bedroom and told me that.
And pissed in your mouth. Go die in a fire asshole
Remember earlier this day, MNG accused libertarians of being smug. How about this gem from the past:
Go Lefiti!
And you Reasonoids thought I was an in your face leftist...
I shudder to say this with TAO no doubt lurking about ready to pounce on evil elitists, but I can find no mention of Amity Shales educational creds on her bio, she seems to be a financial journalist, and I hate to say this but usually very few books by journalists shake up the field of economics or provide what that field would call "overwhelming" evidence to turn accepted historical narratives on their head. Don't get me wrong, I have not read the book, maybe it's utterly convincing, and maybe she has a Phd from University of Idaho or something, but it's a bit smelly...
http://www.amityshlaes.com/bio.php
True, you could do that all day.
Maybe it's not the president's job to create jobs.
No, it's apparently the job of Congress and state governors. At least according to almost every political ad I've seen over the last few weeks.
And the story just goes on and on and on! We are all in this big circle and just keep on running, without change and without future.
We help Americans move to Asia for jobs and prosperity. Learn more at http://www.pathtoasia.com
Being an Asian myself, I can tell you that moving to Asia would be the biggest mistake for any American. The website says that they will find friendly people. Asians are not friendly - friendliness is elicited so long as there is green in the wallet.
How do you create jobs? Well, let's be clear about one thing: politicians can't do it. Now, while millions of jobs can be lost in a heartbeat during a recession, it's important to understand that the process doesn't work the same in reverse. On the contrary, job creation is an agonizingly slow process that first depends upon entrepreneurs creating new businesses, hopefully followed by their development into bigger enterprises, and with the government allowing for some wiggle room along the way. So if you hear some goofball claim that he/she has a plan to create jobs, that person is a freakin' scam artist. Once again: TAX CUTS DO NOT CREATE JOBS. They never have and never will. Risk-takers create jobs. So do the dreamers, as well as those with imagination, or who are greedy, or who are intensely competitive. They must see an opening in the marketplace and rush to fill it, thus causing them to hire others to help them carve out their financial niche. Our fault, dear Brutus, is not in our taxes but in ourselves that we have become underlings. We need people to reach for the stars and, in turn, drag our lazy butts along with them. What we need is a sharp-minded Bill Gates sort of guy to give us reasons to get excited about automobiles, or energy, or something else.
Those who are ignorant of this reality usually choose to blame their government for failing to create jobs, but these are shallow thinkers -- if in fact they can be labeled as thinkers at all. At the same time they're out promoting tax cuts for their rich friends, they neglect to tell anyone that people like Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, and Bill Gates didn't need any "tax incentive" to be goosed into action; they just wanted to see their ideas become reality and to make a buck in the process. There are also some ten-karat idiots who will argue that education is the key to full employment and they'll use a tired proverb to nail home their point, such as "teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime." Well, yeah, you can teach a man to fish, but it doesn't do any good if there aren't any fish. You can also teach a man to farm, but he'll still go hungry if a decade of drought descends. Proverbs are cute, often funny, and I've used them when they conveniently suit my argument, but they're really no substitute for common sense.
Business activity has always flowed in two directions: downward and upward, and each direction features a loose sort of chain of command. The DOWNWARD flow occurs something like this: Someone discovers a way to make cloth. A small textile company is then created to produce that cloth. Customers begin buying the cloth, after which the owner of the company must expand and hire more people to keep with that customer demand. The presence of that cloth gives birth to many other types of industries, which use that cloth in multiple ways, from which many retail stores are born, and they create an even greater demand by advertising the cloth to their potential consumers. By contrast, the UPWARD flow looks a little bit like this: People both need and want clothes that are durable and don't easily tear. The innovator, seeing this need or want, and thus sensing opportunity, creates a process that produces a fabric which answers that need. At that point, the DOWNWARD flow begins anew. In either direction, jobs are created all along the line. In the end, job creation pretty much depends upon identifying what the public WANTS and NEEDS, and then supplying it in order to make a buck.
Thus, to expect government to become a creator of permanent jobs in the marketplace is absurd. The profit motive lies directly in the lap of the business environment. If job creation is sluggish, blame it on those folks, for it's their fingers which should be resting on our pulse beat of industry and the retail markets. There is where imagination has fallen upon hard times. Instead of begging for tax breaks and less regulation, shouldn't their industrial captains be out there paving new ground and getting all of us excited about something? Consider: Today's cars are little different from Ford's old Tin Lizzie; they still use gas and travel on four tires. Cell phones are just like the phones we used in the 1940s, except we can carry them around with us and play games on them. Indeed, other than the computer and the iPod, can you name one innovation that occurred during the second half of the twentieth century which deserves being pictured on the cover of Time Magazine?
If we want or need something badly enough, a company that supplies that precious thing will start adding employees quicker than we can get the request out of our mouths. The trick is to create that WANT or that NEED, which means we need innovators and entrepreneurs who never depend upon tax breaks in order to come up with an idea. The problem is not taxes; rather, it's because we consumers don't see anything we want or need badly enough. The business community has utterly failed to tickle our imagination with some new innovation, which in turn will cause other products to be created in order to complement it.
We're more than likely in that trough where one trend ends and another is about to begin. Meanwhile, don't blame government for not lifting us out of a recession; that is the responsibility of business -- and always has been. It's their ballgame and their rules.
I completely agree with what you say. I'm going to guess that you are saying that business MUST create jobs, and they are not fulfilling that responsibility. I am going to differ on that point. Our economic model is not going to scale. We cannot keep having these see-saws of economic booms and busts. Businesses have to shrink.
There should not be corporations that employ more than a 1000 people. If there is a need for employing more people, it would seem that there is an opportunity for another business (that would employ more people), in place of the same business employing more people only to fire them or other employees in the process. We need more businesses, and not more people being part of established businesses - there will be no incentive to innovate in such enviroments.
If we were a nation of small businesses that had no multi-national ambitions, we would never have to enter wars that we don't need to fight. We would not have big oil, big banks and big pharma monopolizing not only the corporate arena, but also the political arena. These entities deliberately try to stifle innovation, using their political slaves as the means for doing so. Why have we not found a way to stop our dependence on oil from hostile countries, even though we have known about the security implications for the last 40+ years. It's because Big Oil owns the government.