Bush supporters' aftermath thread II

Thomas wrote:

dyslexia wrote:

McGentrix, I am afraid you are a moron and ignorant.

Maybe so, but then he'd be a moron who posted a pertinent and intelligent article. I can't speak to Stuart Buck, but Megan McArdle is a reality-based conservative. When she says she e-mailed the authors and they said they compared data from two different sets, I trust her.

Meanwhile, everyone is welcome to surf the Statistical Abstract of the United States to see how American incomes have developed during the Bush presidency. Judging by what I'm gleaning from the various surveys, the numbers seem to fall somewhere between Cycloptichorn's map on the one hand and Buck's and McArdle's rebuttal. And whatever statistic you prefer, the growth of median income is meager compared to the economic growth Bush presided over.

I was, of course, nor referencing any specific post by McGentrix, rqather, I was posting in reference to McGentix hisself in the same vein as Possum R FartBubble who finds that anyone with whom he/she/disagress is a moron and ignorant. I find this to be pertinent attitude to take on a2k due to its common usuage. Fuc*k pertinent and intelligent, it counts for nil here.

Call It What It Is -- Bush Wants to Torture People

by Cenk Uygur

It's so annoying to read mainstream press articles where they dance around what the real issue is on "terror suspect interrogations." They use every euphemism in the book. Bush seeks "clarity" on interrogations. Bush wants "wider leeway" in interrogations. Bush wants "tougher interrogations."

Tougher interrogations, my ass. Bush wants to torture people.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/call-it-what-it-is-bus_b_29523.html

I shouldn't have posted the map. I didn't research the methodology, and apologize for failing to do so.

Cycloptichorn

I shouldn't have posted the map. I didn't research the methodology, and apologize for failing to do so.

More surprisingly, these figures didn't match those in the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey, or CPS, which showed that median household income in the US had fallen only 2.8 percent.....

2.8% is excellent when you consider that on Bush's watch the baby boomers have started retiring in large numbers with resulting reductions in income but not necessarily reductions in wealth.

I'll express this as opinion based on reading the more non partisan economic gurus who don't have a political ax to grind. All agree that the economy is strong, growing, most Americans are doing quite well, and there are no imminent indicators of recession at this time.

Foxfyre wrote:

2.8% is excellent when you consider that on Bush's watch the baby boomers have started retiring in large numbers with resulting reductions in income but not necessarily reductions in wealth.

According to the Statistical Abstract, table 657, America's real, per-capita GDP rose from 34,759 to 36,883 dollars of 2000, for an increase of 6%. (So much "reductions in income".) Yet here we are, debating whether middle America has seen its real income decline by 6% or only by 2.8%. But that's not the interesting question. The interesting question is: why is the median American's income declining at all?

Foxfyre wrote:

I'll express this as opinion based on reading the more non partisan economic gurus who don't have a political ax to grind. All agree that the economy is strong, growing, most Americans are doing quite well, and there are no imminent indicators of recession at this time.

Would you mind quoting those experts? To establish the credibility of ones sources, showing beats telling by a long shot.

And I don't KNOW whether this is right, but I make my own meager personal investments based on this kind of information.

Foxfyre wrote:

And I don't KNOW whether this is right, but I make my own meager personal investments based on this kind of information.

In that case, and if I weren't an atheist, I'd pray for your financial well-being.

...significantly more Americans are working than there have ever been before and many of these are at entry level positions which produce significantly lower income than these people will be earning three, five, or ten years from now. ...)?

Thank you. That's very thoughtful. But then I truet Friedman and pretty much reject Krugman's pessimistic outlook. So far Friedman has been the most right.

Foxfyre wrote:

Thank you. That's very thoughtful. But then I truet Friedman and pretty much reject Krugman's pessimistic outlook. So far Friedman has been the most right.

Which Friedman? There are so many to go around. Milton? Thomas? Kinky?

Anyway, neither Friedman nor Krugman is my source on this point. The Census Bureau's Statistical Abstract of the United States is -- and the Census Bureau is neither Republican nor Democrat.

It's easy to see why the median income went down while the average income went up.

True, but the Census also doesn't really address the other factors I mentioned.

What's Really Propping Up The Economy
Since 2001, the health-care industry has added 1.7 million jobs. The rest of the private sector? None

podcast
COVER STORY PODCAST

If you really want to understand what makes the U.S. economy tick these days, don't go to Silicon Valley, Wall Street, or Washington. Just take a short trip to your local hospital. Park where you don't block the ambulances, and watch the unending flow of doctors, nurses, technicians, and support personnel. You'll have a front-row seat at the health-care economy.

For years, everyone from politicians on both sides of the aisle to corporate execs to your Aunt Tilly have justifiably bemoaned American health care -- the out-of-control costs, the vast inefficiencies, the lack of access, and the often inexplicable blunders.

Slide Show >>
But the very real problems with the health-care system mask a simple fact: Without it the nation's labor market would be in a deep coma. Since 2001, 1.7 million new jobs have been added in the health-care sector, which includes related industries such as pharmaceuticals and health insurance. Meanwhile, the number of private-sector jobs outside of health care is no higher than it was five years ago.

Sure, housing has been a bonanza for homebuilders, real estate agents, and mortgage brokers. Together they have added more than 900,000 jobs since 2001. But the pressures of globalization and new technology have wreaked havoc on the rest of the labor market: Factories are still closing, retailers are shrinking, and the finance and insurance sector, outside of real estate lending and health insurers, has generated few additional jobs.

Perhaps most surprising, information technology, the great electronic promise of the 1990s, has turned into one of the biggest job-growth disappointments of all time. Despite the splashy success of companies such as Google (GOOG ) and Yahoo! (YHOO ), businesses at the core of the information economy -- software, semiconductors, telecom, and the whole gamut of Web companies -- have lost more than 1.1 million jobs in the past five years. Those businesses employ fewer Americans today than they did in 1998, when the Internet frenzy kicked into high gear.....

<snip>

What they're waking up to is the true underpinnings of the much vaunted American job machine. The U.S. unemployment rate is 4.7%, compared with 8.2% and 8.9%, respectively, in Germany and France. But the health-care systems of those two countries added very few jobs from 1997 to 2004, according to new data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development, while U.S. hospitals and physician offices never stopped growing. Take away health-care hiring in the U.S., and quicker than you can say cardiac bypass, the U.S. unemployment rate would be 1 to 2 percentage points higher.

Almost invisibly, health care has become the main American job program for the 21st century, replacing, at least for the moment, all the other industries that are vanishing from the landscape. With more than $2 trillion in spending -- half public, half private -- health care is propping up local job markets in the Northeast, Midwest, and South, the regions hit hardest by globalization and the collapse of manufacturing (map).

Health care is highly labor intensive, so most of that $2 trillion ends up in the pockets of workers. And at least so far, there's little leakage abroad in terms of patient care. "Health care is all home-produced," says Princeton University economist and health-care expert Uwe Reinhardt. The good news is that if the housing market falls into a deep swoon, health care could provide enough new jobs to prevent a wider recession. In August, health-services employment rose by 35,000, double the increase in construction and far outstripping any other sector.

John Maynard Keynes would nod approvingly if he were alive. Seventy years ago, the elegant British economist proposed that in tough times the government could and should spend large sums of money to create jobs and stimulate growth. His theories are out of fashion, but substitute "health care" for "government," and that's exactly what is happening today.

Make no mistake, though: The U.S. could eventually pay a big economic price for all these jobs. Ballooning government spending on health care is a major reason why Washington is running an enormous budget deficit, since federal outlays for health care totaled more than $600 billion in 2005, or roughly one quarter of the whole federal budget. Rising prices for medical care are making it harder for the average American to afford health insurance, leaving 47 million uninsured.

Moreover, as the high cost of health care lowers the competitiveness of U.S. corporations, it may accelerate the outflow of jobs in a self-reinforcing cycle. In fact, one explanation for the huge U.S. trade deficit is that the country is borrowing from overseas to fund creation of health-care jobs.

There's another enormous long-term problem: If current trends continue, 30% to 40% of all new jobs created over the next 25 years will be in health care. That sort of lopsided job creation is not the blueprint for a well-functioning economy. One solution would be to make health care less labor-intensive by investing a lot more in information technology. "Low productivity in health is mostly a product of low investment," says Harvard University economist Dale Jorgenson.

Foxfyre wrote:

True, but the Census also doesn't really address the other factors I mentioned.

Fox -- when you're in a hole, please stop digging! You mentioned that Baby Boomers are retiring. Other things being equal, census data would reflect this as an increase of retirees, a corresponding decrease of the working-age population, which in turn leads to an increase in per capita GDP. So not only would Census figures reflect the effects you're describing -- they wouldn't support your point but contradict it.

If 9/11 hurt the economy significantly -- a point I disagree with, but let's not go over this one again -- Census data would show a decrease in GDP as much well as family incomes. What 9/11 doesn't explain is the discrepancy between the two figures.

Finally, more Americans working has historically meant more Americans at every end of the wage spectrum. If, instead, this increase of employment mostly reflects a job increase in janitoomg, burger-flipping and retailing, but not in accounting and dentistry, then this recovery isn't as good as it seems. That would be a valid criticism of Bush; it doesn't redeem him.