Where is the US economy headed?

okie wrote:

Was that a way to get the most impressive looking graph to support your bias against Bush?

If by "bias against Bush" you mean I selected the group which Bush apologists such as yourself would have the least excuses for, you are on the right track.

If I included the 16 to 18 year old age group, Bush supporters might say, "What do you expect-they're high school dropouts. Everyone knows the workforce requires people with skills-this is merely a trend which has been going on for quite awhile. The only thing wrong with this economy is that dropouts are finding it harder to find jobs".

Similar arguments can be said for 18 to 20 year olds. While many have already started families, many in this age group are doing things such as working a low wage job because they plan to start college next year, etc.

So I felt the best basis for comparison was the 25 to 54 age group. This is the age group where people are basically on their career track, their education is over or at least is now a part time activity, they are paying mortgages and supporting children, etc. And by and large, not many in this group are retiring voluntarily yet.

This age group is the heart of the serious workforce. That is why I selected it.

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kelticwizard wrote:

okie wrote:
Was that a way to get the most impressive looking graph to support your bias against Bush?

If by "bias against Bush" you mean I selected the group which Bush apologists such as yourself would have the least excuses for, you are on the right track.

If I included the 16 to 18 year old age group, Bush supporters might say, "What do you expect-they're high school dropouts. Everyone knows the workforce requires people with skills-this is merely a trend which has been going on for quite awhile. The only thing wrong with this economy is that dropouts are finding it harder to find jobs".

The Census Bureau defines "working age population" as ages 16-64, judging by a quick Google on the term at census.gov. Since you cite the Census Bureau as the source of your data, it's a fair question why you didn't use their definition. After all, the thrust of your thesis is that Bush is a much inferior president for workers than Clinton was. So why did you roll with your own definition of which workers matter rather than just relying on the Census Bureau's -- whose competence and neutrality are much better established than yours? While the suspicious undertone in okie's question may have been unnecessary, its factual part was fair. And your answer, that ages 16-18 and 54-64 aren't "seriously" part of the workforce, is unconvincing.

If you cite data as objective support for your conclusions, it's better to rely on standard terms such as "working age population", and on statistical standard definitions of those terms.

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Thomas, I am not suggesting that a 17 year old working in his first full time job is employed any less than a 35 year old with 8 years on the job.

Nor am I suggesting the Census Bureau change it's definitions, or anything like that. That is why I clearly labelled the graph as being for 25 to 54 year olds.

I might point out that the Census Burequ itself keeps statistics for various age groups, and this is one of them. So I am not going against Census Bureau groupings, in fact I am using them.

But realistically, Thomas, when somebody single and 17 can't find a job, that is normally less of a life crisis than when somebody 34, with kids and a mortgage can't find a job. And the 17 year old is probably a dropout, which will give the Bush apologists something else to try to dodge around with for a few pages.

As I stated before, and I will state again, the 25 to 54 year old age group are your "core" workers, in the sense that they have gotten their full time education behind them, they are working on the career track they plan to remain on, and they mostly have the responsibilities we associate with working people. The younger age groups mostly do not.

I am not advocating abandoning study of the younger age groups, of course. Only that in presenting the employment situation, I choose to present the age group who can be expected to have accumulated most of the education they will ever get, who have accumulated job skills, who don't have early retirement issues clouding the picture and who have the most responsibilities for people other than themselves.

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Keltic, how would your comparison if you did include the whole working age population?

In presenting the statistics you presented, you presumably tried to persuade people who might disagree with your politics. These people won't necessarily trust your cherrypicking choices. Even if you had good reasons for these choices, you won't persuade anyone by giving them. Your only shot at persuading opponents is to abstain from picking cherries, instead presenting numbers that everyone agrees are representative.

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Thomas, when you hear on the radio that a company such as Ford plans to get rid of tens of thousands of workers, the first thing which flashes in most people's mind is how those people are going to pay the mortgage and take care of their kids.

The people who have to take care of these things are mostly in the 25 to 54 year old age group.

The 17 year old who just started work six months ago can take his pink slip and decide to take off to California to see what the surfing life is like. There is likely not much preventing him from doing that. The man or woman who has a stack of bills and mortagage payments is in a different situation altogether, not to mention the necessity of getting a job with health insurance for the children.

I am comparing the population growth versus job growth for the 25 to 54 year old age group for both Presidents. That is a fair and valid comparison. The Census Bureau gives the statistics for that grouping, and I am using it. I see nothing unfair about it at all, and for the reasons given, I think it provides a most accurate picture of the employment picture in the USA.

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kelticwizard wrote:

The people who have to take care of these things are mostly in the 25 to 54 year old age group.

Yes -- just as the people who vote are mostly non-poor. If okie said the Republican push for voter IDs disenfranchizes practically no middle class Americans and therefore is just, would you stand for it? Of course not. You would dismiss it as self-serving cherry picking by a Republican. You would have been right. And Okie is right for exactly the same reason now. (For the record, I never saw Okie make that claim about disenfranchisement.)

I'm still curious how the comparison would be different if you included the whole working age population, meaning age 16-64.

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But Thomas, we are not talking about taking away a Cosntitutional right, or making it harder to exercise, are we? We are talking about a statistic, a snapshot of the economic situation.

I'm quite satisfied with my selection of the 25 to 54 year old age group because I think this group has fewer side issues than others complicating the picture. I really don't care to go over the litany of reasons in every post, but just to hit the high points, this group has gotten it's education over, (except as a part-time activity), are settled on their career path, have houses, mortgages and children to raise and obtain health insurance for. Other age groups, by and large, do not.

I really don't care to read Okie or other Bush supporters dodge around for several pages about how it's the personal responsibility of high schoolers to finish school so they can be suitable for the work force and how any inability to get started in the workforce cannot be laid to the government, etc, etc. Maybe you do, but I don't.

The 25 to 54 year old age group provides the best comparison overall for the employment situation overall. It's the largest working age group out there, and everyone passes through it at one time or another, so I felt it bears examination.

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kelticwizard wrote:

I'm quite satisfied with my selection of the 25 to 54 year old age group

Well good for you. Just don't be surprised that okie and I are not.

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Thomas:

The attention in domestic affairs generally focuses on how American families are doing. And rightfully so.

The purpose of the graph is to give to a snapshot of how those who are in the age group to raise families are doing. We rightfully concentrate on the family in other areas in public discourse, I think it is more than appropriate that we do so in the economic and employment area.

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i don't see anything wrong with kw's stats ; imo he clearly labelled it .
of course , if you think his information is wrong , i assume you would show where it is misleading a reader and what the true stats are .
i thought that was part of why we are participating on a2k ; if we find mislaeding or erroneus information being posted , we show would we think is correct .
btw i doubt that there is any poster here who hasn't done some 'cherry-picking' , as you call it .
now , if kw had mislabeled his info , that would be a different matter - but has he ?
hbg

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Point well taken, Hamburger. Far be it for Johnboy to agree with Okie on much of anything. My initial reaction was, something doesn't look right here.

Time for some sleuthing through the stats. The time frame KWiz chose was the first 68 months of each President's term. What is the specific 68 months for each that we are focusing on? As an aside, why 68 months?

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Quote:

As an aside, why 68 months?

Most likely, it's how long Bush has been in office.

Cycloptichorn

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Sorry, I knew that. So we are talking about February, 1993 through September, 1998 vs February 2001, through September, 2006?

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kelticwizard wrote:

But Thomas, we are not talking about taking away a Cosntitutional right, or making it harder to exercise, are we? We are talking about a statistic, a snapshot of the economic situation.

I'm quite satisfied with my selection of the 25 to 54 year old age group because I think this group has fewer side issues than others complicating the picture. I really don't care to go over the litany of reasons in every post, but just to hit the high points, this group has gotten it's education over, (except as a part-time activity), are settled on their career path, have houses, mortgages and children to raise and obtain health insurance for. Other age groups, by and large, do not.

I really don't care to read Okie or other Bush supporters dodge around for several pages about how it's the personal responsibility of high schoolers to finish school so they can be suitable for the work force and how any inability to get started in the workforce cannot be laid to the government, etc, etc. Maybe you do, but I don't.

The 25 to 54 year old age group provides the best comparison overall for the employment situation overall. It's the largest working age group out there, and everyone passes through it at one time or another, so I felt it bears examination.

Not much time today to read all of the posts, but this one caught my eye. Keltic, it does not surprise me that you wish to remove all personal responsibility from things like getting an education or providing proof of citizenship before voting. That is typical liberal thinking. Everything is the government's fault. There is such a thing as "citizenship" that I would remind you here that has a just a "tiny bit" of responsibility.

More on the unemployment later.

Not to change the subject, but I think one of the big reasons Democrats are not in favor of ID's for voting is it removes much support in the way of illegals votes, double voting, etc. I see no reason why a citizen can't muster at least enough smarts to have a valid ID, after all you need one for virtually everything else you do.

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okie wrote:

Keltic, it does not surprise me that you wish to remove all personal responsibility from things like getting an education.......... That is typical liberal thinking. Everything is the government's fault.

Well, Thomas, are you STILL suspicious why I chose the age group I did?

Vintage Okie. When you're nailed, try to talk about anything but the subject at hand, and make every sentence a commercial for the idea that Republicans are the party of morality, (not an easy thing to do these days).

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kelticwizard wrote:

okie wrote:
Keltic, it does not surprise me that you wish to remove all personal responsibility from things like getting an education.......... That is typical liberal thinking. Everything is the government's fault.

Well, Thomas, are you STILL suspicious why I chose the age group I did?

Vintage Okie. When you're nailed, try to talk about anything but the subject at hand, and make every sentence a commercial for the idea that Republicans are the party of morality, (not an easy thing to do these days).

I'm learning from you, keltic. When I posted historical graphs for the stock market to prove a point, you complained about the size of the graph and my posting ability and dropped the subject to instead switch to another hill to argue on, that of employment. Not only that, you cherry pick the data. The following is a simple unemployment chart, which shows Bush not doing bad, but of course I predict you will come up with all kinds of reasons why things are alot worse than it shows.

http://www.economagic.com/em-cgi/charter.exe/fedstl/unrate+1969+2006+0+0+0+400+800++0

The Republican party is not a party of morality. Neither is the Democrats. Both parties have their crooks and scumbags, which I have always asserted. And there are decent men in both parties but Democrats have a distinct edge in corruption in my opinion. At least when found out, the Republicans apologize and resign. Democrats deny, deny, deny, until some other news happens and they are forgotten. Jefferson still sits in office, keltic. Foley is gone. Clinton was impeached, lied before the grand jury, and had all kinds of other scumbag things happen, and he is still hailed as a hero to Democrats.

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okie wrote:

I'm learning from you, keltic. When I posted historical graphs for the stock market to prove a point, you complained about the size of the graph and my posting ability and dropped the subject to instead switch to another hill to argue on, that of employment.

You're darn right I complained about your huge graph making everyone else's post on the page unreadable. And during your alleged "apology" for it, you revealed that you did it purposely because you wanted to get the graph in. It's the typical, political non-apology in action, which takes the following form: "Yes I did it, I had my reasons for doing it and I would do it again, but I do think it is too bad other people had to suffer in the process". In a real apology-apparently something you are entirely unfamiliar with-you tell people that you would not do it again.

On the basis of your previous posts, I don't expect you to comprehend the difference.

A newcomer to the forum making that mistake is one thing. A person with over 2,000 posts is something else. If you can come onto this forum and use it's facilities to tell the world your view of things, you have the time to take a moment or two learning how not to abuse it with oversize
graphs which RUIN everyone else's efforts on the page!

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kelticwizard wrote:

Well, Thomas, are you STILL suspicious why I chose the age group I did?

I never suspected any evil motives behind your choice. I just thought it was an unpersuasive choice -- and I still do.

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okie wrote:

Not only that, you cherry pick the data.

Thomas wrote:

I just thought it [the selection of the 25 to 54 year old age group] was an unpersuasive choice -- and I still do.

I don't cherry pick the data. Out of the economic data available, I select the one which illustrates my point about the family raising age group.

I have already outlined numerous times the reasons I used for selecting the 25 to 54 year old age group. One of the reasons has already been illustrated by Okie himself-his interjection about how we shouldn't "blame the government" if high school dropouts have trouble finding a job. Nothing to do with economics, everything to do with trying to portray the Republican Party as the party of morality-the only reason Okie is on A2K.

The second reason I will repeat yet again. Domestic political discourse in this country centers on the family. How are faimilies doing, how can a family make it, etc etc. It is impossible to miss this, Thomas.

Yet, when I simply post a graph illustrating that job growth in the family-raising age group, (25 to 54) is not keeping up with population growth, there are complaints.

I really don't know why. My graph speaks to the ongoing issue about how hard or easy it is for families to financially make it in America. About the only point which might be raised is that it includes people in the 25 to 54 year old age group who are not raising faimilies. To which I answer, until such time as someone comes up with convincing evidence that people 25 to 54 without families are hired at a different rate from people 25 to 54 with families, it is a moot question.

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realjohnboy wrote:

Sorry, I knew that. So we are talking about February, 1993 through September, 1998 vs February 2001, through September, 2006?

Realjohnboy:

January through August of those years.

The Presideint takes office in late January, but the January figure is for the last day of the month, so I counted it.

I created the graph on September 16 for another thread and then never got around to using it. So August were the last figures available. I doubt the numbers would change much if the period was shifted a month from Feb. to Sept. Very Happy

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