The US Economy

That would be a good thing though. One of America's major problems is rising inequality, and a shift of employment from yuppies to Wal-Mart greeters and the like would reduce inequality. But I'd expect the media to convey a different image, because the average yuppie is more likely to be shown on TV than the average Wal-Mart greeter is. This effect can easily make a good thing look bad.

What you say may be true to some extent, but people with college degrees or special skills should still be paid higher wages than the Wal-Mart greeter. I'm all for reducing inequality, but by increasing the wages of Wal-Mart greeters, and not by reducing the wages of people with special skills.

Well, CI, given a level of total national income, the extra income for the Wal-Mart greeters has to come from someone, doesn't it? A shift of demand from high-wage workers to low-wage workers redistibutes income from the latter to the former, and this is, other things being equal, a good thing. Especially since it stops way before greeters make more money than college professors.

It should come from the over-paid CEOs - working for the same company.
Also, the Walton family is one of the richest in this world; they should share some of that wealth with their employees.

Here's a little more of that bone of contention for us all to knaw on.

I went to a barbecue/fundraiser for Congressman Nick Lampson this weekend, who used the following statistic:

The average wage of the jobs lost during the Bush tenure is $47K; the average wage of the jobs created during the same period is $28K.

So not only will Bush be the first President since Hoover to show a net loss in employment, but whatever gains managed and trumpeted by the administration and their lackies is still going to leave the workers of America's incomes short about 40%.

Which means that they really need two jobs in order to replace the one they lost during the past three and a half years. (I don't think we mentioned anything about the healthcare benefits comparison between the jobs lost and the ones created either, did we?)

While I am happy to accept revisions to the numbers by those of you more knowledgeable (not to mention willing to do the digging), I believe this points to the biggest problem Bush is going to have come November (a lousy war, obese deficits, and all the lies aside, naturally).

Yep, gotta agree with ol' timber; things sure seem to be going swimmingly for the GOP. They have no idea that all that splashing is the sound of the water swirling the drain.

PDid, Now that 53 percent of Americans think this war in Iraq was unjustified, and the good number of people are without jobs or are getting paid less, I wonder how that will translate at the polls come November? It was too close to call in 2000, but with all the problems created by this administration, I wonder how many are still Bush supporters (other than McG, timber, Sofia, Ican, and some others)?

That red herring means very little in terms of "The Average Wage Earner", who comprises the overall pool of The American Employed, to whom the following applies:

Avg Weekly Wage, Q1 '04: $523.95

Avg Workweek, Hrs, Q1 '04: 33.7

$523.95/33.7 = $15.55 Average Hourly Wage

$523.95/Wk X 52 Wks/Yr = $27,245.40 Avg Yearly Wage Q1 '04


Avg Weekly Wage, Q4 '00: $474.03

Avg Workweek, Hrs, Q1 '04: 34.4

$474.03/34.4 = $13.78 Average Hourly Wage

$474.03/Wk X 52 Wks/Yr = $24,649.56 Avg Yearly Wage, Q4 2000

Now, given the figures you cite may well be accurate, they clearly are representative of a fractional subset of the sample universe of Americans Employed, a population which has increased both in size and earnings over the sample period. Your argument fails the test of relevancy no matter how applicable that argument may be to a subset. More people are employed in The US today than was the case at the beginning of The Current Administration, and, as individuals, those people are earning more money than were their comparison counterparts, across all segments of employment, across the entire US Economy.

One may may adjust by whatever inflation over the term one feels appropriate, but the situation remains that more people are employed, making more money now than was the case at the end of 2000. Job growth, and wage growth, have been lackluster compared to the hight of the immediate previous boom years, but there has been net expansion across the board. The current unemployment rate. while higher than the nearly historic lows reached in the waning days of the previous decade nonetheless is lower than the average unemployment rate of the entire post-WWII period. Among the folks affected are the former $47K/Yr worker now making $28K, of course. Also affected are the folks now making $28K/Yr who a year ago, or three years and more ago, were making nothing. Those folks are a fractionally small subset of the sampled population as well, likewise not representative of the aggregate.

Overall, rhetoric, partisanship, and agenda aside, The American Worker is, in the aggregate, better off today than ever the American Worker has been. Some, a small portion, are substantially less well off than they had been, and some, again a small portion, are substantially better off; that's the way averages work. Overall, on the average, the average wage earner is somewhat better off than previously. Certainly things could be better. Things ain't bad, though, and things in fact are getting better day by day, report by report, and the overall improvement shows every sign of being broadbased, deepseated, and sustainable.

Like it or not, apart from "I want more and I want it faster", the criticisms from The Left of the current economy mean and say nothing. Even The Deficit, though larger in overall dollar figures than ever in history, is by percentage of GDP well below recently demonstrated supportable levels, is in fact tracking the average percentage of GDP over the past century, and is, while growing, growing at a slower rate than even the most optimistic forecasts of as recently as a year ago.

I expect nothing other from The Left than that it continue its attempts to distort the picture, to downplay and even dismiss the facts and figures inconvenient to its argument. That's politics, after all. I further expect nothing other form The Electorate than that it will reject, and resoundingly so, the arguments of The Left in this particular regard, among several other arguments from The Left which merit, and will recieve, no reasonable consideration.


And c.i. , regardless how many "Bush Supporters" there may be come November, there will be far more than sufficient numbers of folks who see through, and reject, the arguments of The Left to ensure continued erosion of Democratic Party Power in The US. There will of course be those who "Vote For" Kerry. However, those who will not "Vote Against" Bush the Younger will outnumber, handily, those who will vote for a replacement. The alternative proposed ny The Opposition this time around offers no demonstrable benefit to The Average Voter, period. The Current Administration will retain the incumbency not so much for persuading voters that it should, but by the failure of The Democratic Party to offer any practical betterment.

timber, I agree with you 100 percent that Kerry offers nothing to replace what he continually complains about the current administration. He will not win on complaints; he must have solutions. He'd better get on the stick, or he's gonna lose it all by himself.

I've been hoping that he will unveil his plans by the Democratic convention.

It does make sense for him to wait - peaking at the right time is important, after all. Right now he can snipe away at Bush's policies, and doesn't really have to offer many of his own, which gives the Bush crew little to attack him on besides his past. The more time they have to attack, the more they will have to paint him to be a pinko communist who is in bed with Bin Laden.

If he doesn't have anything going by convention time, I'm gonna start looking into moving to Patagonia.

Cycloptichorn

Is there room for two in Patagonia? LOL

Timber, has it come to your attention that some on the left are making different arguments than others? That some on the left are making better arguments than others -- just like some on the right are making better arguments than others on the right?

If not, I'm beginning to wonder if this discussion is worth having anymore. Why bother if your mind is already made up? You already know that "the left" is an ideological monolith, you already know that we will ignore all of your facts, and nothing we might say will ever change your opinion as well.

So why don't we just drop it?

Sounds like a rational decision to me!

Sorry if I struck a nerve, there, Thomas ... that was a rather sweeping generalization on my part. I certainly don't include you among those of The Leftist Persuasion meriting the approbation to which you so correctly objected. Yours have been uniformly reasoned, well informed, cogently presented arguments, and I apologize for any slight I dealt you.

I do, however, feel the bulk of the criticism of The Current Administration's handling of The Economy is wrong ... not that there are not valid criticisms, some of which you've brought to the discussion. Just most of the rest.

Thanks, and apology accepted


Sure. And so was the bulk of the criticism of the previous administration, and so is the bulk of the criticism of the current opposition. The fact is, the majority of internet posters regard political discussion as a combat sport, and they're in it either for the combat or for cheerleading. Policy wonks -- those who're trying to figure out rationally what works and what doesn't -- are a minority on every side of almost every political argument.

So if you point out that most people on the other side are wrong, I agree. I just don't think this tells us anything meaningful about the merits of standing on the other side. With that in mind, back to the arguments.


The dataset the Bureau of Labor Statistics website leads us to look at tells us a different story. Their website leads us to look at "national employment". The figures there are telling us that national employment stood at 132,492,000 people in February 2001, the first full month of the Bush presidency. In May 2004, the latest month for which they have data, it stood at 131,224,000 people. I don't know where you got your data, which purports to come from the BLS as well. I do know that the BLS's preferred measure of employment contradicts your sunny story.

And as I said in one of my earlier post, this 1.2 million shortfall understates the size of the problem because the working age population is growing. As a share of working age population, employment has contracted even more impressively during the Bush administration. It may well still be contracting, but I don't have the latest data. I offered to look it up if this point is controversial, but you haven't taken me up on it yet.

There is much more reason to criticize Mr. Bush's employment record than just "rhetoric, partisanship, and agenda".

Thomas, Amen!

Right HERE



Now, while Job Growth has not kept pace with Population Growth, and while there indeed was a significant employment contraction centered more or less on the effect of 9/11(troughing approximately 12/'01 - 01/'02), the record shows net growth of employment comparing the present situation to that which pertained at the beginning of The Current Administration.

Thomas, What link did you use for your numbers?

BTW, from timber's link, you can look at the unemployment numbers since 2000. It increased from 6 million to over 8.2 million during Bush's tenure.

That's not Unemployment data in my charts, c.i. , that's EMPLOYMENT data. That's how many folks, in absoloute terms, have jobs. Unemployment numbers are impacted by population growth, which has outpaced job creation. Nonetheless, more folks today have jobs than was the case in January of 2000.

Use the dropdown on the list-select page to adjust the start date and you can track back to 1948 or further for most BLS lists, BTW.

http://data.bls.gov/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet?data_tool=latest_numbers&series_id=CES0000000001&output_view=net_1mth

From there, I clicked on "other formatting options"->"original data value".

The reason I used this data set is because the BLS seems to treat it as the default choice. When you go to the home page, bls.gov, then follow "Employment & Unemployment" -> "National Employment", the first dataset they offer you in the "latest numbers" box on the right of the page is "change in payroll employment". This leads me to believe that this is the dataset the BLS deems fittest to evaluate the employment situation.

The discrepancy between Timber's dataset and mine made me curious, so I did some Googleing. It turns out there are two surveys that try to measure similar things, called the "payroll survey" and the "household survey". There is some discussion about which survey to go with, but the experts (as opposed to the pundids) seem to go with the payroll survey I quoted, not the household survey timber quoted. In particular, these experts include Alan Greenspan. Brad DeLong, a partisan but honest liberal economics professor at UC Berkeley, quotes Alan Greenspan thusly:



Greenspan is a card-carrying Republican, so has no partisan incentive to make Bush's employment record look bad. If he says it's the payroll survey you have to go with, the reason he's saying it is presumably because it's true.