Sturgis wrote:
Now, taking a giant leap and figuring you meant to say the UN-employment rate has risen to 8% let me remind you that certain companies have left New York City. Some have merely gone across the river to Jersey City where the waterfront has suffered a major overdevelopment in the past few years and some places moved to Westchester County just north of the city. Now, those moves probably did not cause unemployment levels to increase in New York City but they do show that companies left the city post-September 11 and there may well be companies which did not just re-locate locally and add to this the smaller businesses which went under completely during the following months and now years.
True, but that process is going on all the time, 911 or no 911. Why, some years ago, perhaps before Clinton's presidency even-the Dow Jones was considering moving to New Jersey. In any economic situation, thee will be businesses moving in, businesses moving out, people getting new jobs, people losing their jobs. the idea is try to keep track of the trends.
I am not saying that New York City was not affected at all by 911-it did have a spike of 1.4 percent in the unemployment rate. I am merely pointing out that New York City was surely affected many more times than the country as a whole, and all New York felt was a jump of 1.4% in the unemployment rate. Bush supporters trying to lay the jump in unemployment and all the rest of the bad economic performance of Bush's term simply cannot blame 911. If 911 was that much of an
economic disaster ovrall, I can assure you New York City, home to the WTC, would suffer much, much worse than it did.
Oh yes, the airlines suffered somewhat. I believe their business went down something like 20%. The airlines are frequencly cited by those who would portray 911 as the cause of economic disaster.
But guess what? Air transportation is only 0.6% of the GDP. Not 6%-0.6%. Six tenths of single percentage point. Even if the airlines all went out of business, it would barely affect the general economy at all, except for the secondary effect of nobody being able to get anywhere. Of course, they didn't all go out of business, they just suffered lossed of 20% of their business. Twenty percent of 0.6% isn't much, I think you will agree.
Consider this: if the WTC had burned down because of faulty electrical wiring instead of terrorism, do you think anyone would buy the notion that it was the cause of the economic mess of Bush's early term? No. But because it was terrorism, everyone is afraid to challenge anyone who blames anything on 911-even when all the economic indicators show that's hogwash.
