Filed under: Politics | Tags: Cut the Spending., Free Markets / Free People, It's Not Working.
Yesterday was designed to produce bad dreams and sheer fear as the Dow dropped over 500 points through the floor. Our own nation’s refusal to get real about cutting back on spending has roiled the markets, and with Europe’s debt turmoil added in, it created a real panic.
Today, the announcement that U.S. job growth accelerated more than expected in July as private sector employers stepped up hiring, eased fears that the economy is slipping into a double-dip recession.
Nonfarm payrolls increased by 117,000, according to the Labor Department, above market expectations for an 85,000 gain.
The unemployment rate dipped to 9.1 percent from 9.2 percent in June—mostly as a result of discouraged workers who quit looking for jobs. Oh. Nevermind.
The market rallied by about 1 percent, but at least it was in the right direction.
Standard&Poors downgraded the U.S. credit rating from AAA to AA+, just like they said the would. This is a first. Obama says their calculations are wrong.
President Obama announced that he wanted to extend the elimination of the payroll tax. And he wants an Infrastructure Bank, and lots more spending on infrastructure. His views are fixed, set in concrete, and he does not change his mind.
Jobs, he believes, are created by government spending. If it didn’t work with all the “investment spending” that added more than $4 trillion to the national debt, it’s simply because he didn’t invest enough.
I don’t know how we get through to him that his convictions are wrong and his ideas don’t work. He simply doesn’t want to listen.
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As I understand it, the “jobs created” figure is a formula made up by the Dept of Labor, or something, it is not a real number based on reported hirings. Unemployment figures, like number of new unemployment applications, is a real number. That is why every few months we find out the jobs created figures have been revised downward. So I never put much stake in the “jobs created” number.
Comment by SionedL August 8, 2011 @ 11:16 amThe jobs created figure seems to be a printout from a Keynesian computer program notably used by Christina Romer, Obama’s first Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors. If you spend X amount of money, then through Keynes’ “multiplier effect” you should get Y number of new jobs.
If you remember, Nancy Pelosi said insistently that raising unemployment compensation was the best way to create more jobs. There are certain remarks that are so devoid of common sense that it simply boggles the mind — but they believe it! They have no ideas. None. They believe that cutting taxes (removing impediments for business) is simply a Republican obsession. They are sure that the most disastrous things ever done to the American economy were the Reagan tax cuts and the Bush tax cuts. They blame the Bush tax cuts for today’s economic problems, and are sure that if they just expire and they get to raise taxes—then they will have more money to spend, with its multiplier effect which will create the needed jobs.
And yes, you are right, the” jobs created” is meaningless. The unemployment numbers aren’t really helpful, for they do not include those who have quit looking for work.
Comment by The Elephant's Child August 8, 2011 @ 11:29 am