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Skipjack
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Post by Skipjack »

The miscalculation is his. He adopted and endorsed it as the correct one, and made corrections based on it he said would correct matters.
Actually no, the estimated extent of the economic decline was made by others before the election. IIRC, the same estimates were used by McCain (and everybody else) as well.

palladin9479
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Post by palladin9479 »

Skipjack wrote:
The miscalculation is his. He adopted and endorsed it as the correct one, and made corrections based on it he said would correct matters.
Actually no, the estimated extent of the economic decline was made by others before the election. IIRC, the same estimates were used by McCain (and everybody else) as well.
Blasphemy!! Heretic!! Pagan worshiper!!

How dare you bring truth and rational into this church meeting. We brothers are gathered here to practice our religion of conservatism and we shall not tolerate anyone interrupting that. According to the book of Bush, chapter 4, verse 23,
Obama's the devil, and he being the devil shall destroy your world,
thus you must sacrifice all, even thy countrymen
to ensure only one term he has.

jnaujok
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Post by jnaujok »

Skipjack wrote: Actually no, the estimated extent of the economic decline was made by others before the election. IIRC, the same estimates were used by McCain (and everybody else) as well.
Lying to cover Obama's lie doesn't suit the discussion.

A) The "8%" number comes from a 14 page report written by Obama's economic team, and released on January 9th, 2009.

B) The majority of the jobs lost (3.6 million) came between January and December of 2008. The steepest job losses occurred between August and December. Everyone knew by January what the worst of the recession was going to be and how steep and deep the recession was.

C) Obama stood by the 8% number for months and only abandoned it when it became clear that the "stimulus" was having no effect whatsoever.

D) The stimulus was never a stimulus in the first place. It was a slush fund to pay off donors and buy elections. Over 75% of the programs in the stimulus didn't even start to pay money out until six months before election day of 2010.

E) Something like $80B of the "we have to have this now or the economy will collapse" stimulus still remains unspent.

F) The same economist who led the team that said, "unemployment will not go over 8%" is now saying that, "unemployment will never again go below 8%." Several democratic administration officials have been quoted as saying 7-9% unemployment is, "the new normal."

Now, I was pretty young when Carter was president, but I remember his "malaise" speeches, and I remember being told, I was "the first generation that can not expect to do better than their parents." I called Obama "Carter's Second Term" in 2008, and it's more true now than it was then. If anything, this guy is making Carter look like an optimistic financial genius.

The only sad thing is that Romney is no Ronald Reagan.

Skipjack
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Post by Skipjack »

The claim is rooted in a report called "The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan" from Christina Romer, then chairwoman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, and Jared Bernstein, the vice president's top economic adviser. It was issued on Jan. 9, 2009, before President Barack Obama took office.

The report projected that Obama’s proposed stimulus plan would create 3 million to 4 million jobs by the end of 2010. The report also predicted unemployment rates with and without the stimulus. A chart in the report shows that without the stimulus (the baseline), unemployment was projected to hit about 8.5 percent in 2009 and then continue rising to a peak of about 9 percent in 2010. With the stimulus, they predicted the unemployment rate would peak at just under 8 percent in 2009.

"It should be understood that all of the estimates presented in this memo are subject to significant margins of error," the report states. "There is the more fundamental uncertainty that comes with any estimate of the effects of a program. Our estimates of economic relationships and rules of thumb are derived from historical experience and so will not apply exactly in any given episode. Furthermore, the uncertainty is surely higher than normal now because the current recession is unusual both in its fundamental causes and its severity."

There's also a footnote with the chart that states: "Forecasts of the unemployment rate without the recovery plan vary substantially. Some private forecasters anticipate unemployment rates as high as 11 percent in the absence of action."

The administration acknowledged its projections were wrong.

In a July 2, 2009, interview, Romer said on Fox: "None of us had a crystal ball back in December and January. I think almost every private forecaster realized that there were other things going on in the economy. It was worse than we anticipated."

Indeed, in January 2009, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected the unemployment rate would climb to 8.3 percent in 2009 and peak at 9 percent in 2010. By February, the prediction was even higher — 9 percent in 2009 without the stimulus, and 7.7 to 8.5 percent with a stimulus.

In a White House news conference on June 8, 2009, Bernstein said the projections made in January were off because economic numbers for fourth-quarter 2008 weren't yet available. When they were released, they revealed the economy was in worse shape than economists realized, losing 600,000 to 800,000 jobs a month. Bernstein maintained in that news conference that the stimulus was working, and that the unemployment rate would be even worse without it.

GIThruster
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Post by GIThruster »

Skippy, it's irrelevant that the report was issued 11 days before OBama took office. He had already been elected and Christina Romer was working for Obama, not Bush.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

Skipjack
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Post by Skipjack »

Skippy, it's irrelevant that the report was issued 11 days before OBama took office. He had already been elected and Christina Romer was working for Obama, not Bush.
Yes, but the numbers for the 4th quarter 2008 were not available yet at the time. These showed that the situation was way worse than ANYONE had anticipated.

jnaujok
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Post by jnaujok »

Skipjack wrote: Yes, but the numbers for the 4th quarter 2008 were not available yet at the time. These showed that the situation was way worse than ANYONE had anticipated.
Once again, semantics. The numbers on unemployment and economic numbers are released 1-2 weeks after each month ends. The fact that they weren't compiled into quarterly numbers until late January is irrelevant. And the fact that Obama and his administration stuck to their numbers until at least June of 2009 is also unjustifiable. Or have you forgotten Biden announcing "Recovery Summer" in 2009?

Skipjack
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Post by Skipjack »

Once again:
The unemployment rate peaked at almost 10% by the end of 2009, before the stimulus had any time to take effect! That is much higher than the original predictions were!
Since then the unemployment rate has continuously gone down. That is a fact. Of course you can always twist and bend everything the way it fits you best. I am not even a big fan of Obama myself. I would e.g. never have bailed out the banks (though some of that was already set into motion by the Bush administration, IIRC).
Also worth mentioning that by the end of his first term, GW Bush had lost some 1.5 million jobs...
He still got reelected...
Obama created 2.5 million jobs and everyone cries foul...
I call that weird.
Oh and lastly, employment numbers would have looked better, hadnt it been for several hundred thousand jobs in the government that were cut during Obamas term in order to save money.

DeltaV
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Post by DeltaV »

Skipjack wrote:Obama created 2.5 million jobs and everyone cries foul...
I call that weird.
Burger-flipping jobs.

The trick these days is to find a job that combines burger-flipping with high tech.
viewtopic.php?p=86580&highlight=#86580

Skipjack
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Post by Skipjack »

The trick these days is to find a job that combines burger-flipping with high tech.
Hehehe ;)

krenshala
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Post by krenshala »

Skipjack wrote:
The trick these days is to find a job that combines burger-flipping with high tech.
Hehehe ;)
Hmmm ... I wonder if I can get the big bosses to have a grill installed here in the NOC? :D

jnaujok
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Post by jnaujok »

Skipjack wrote:Once again:
The unemployment rate peaked at almost 10% by the end of 2009, before the stimulus had any time to take effect! That is much higher than the original predictions were!
Since then the unemployment rate has continuously gone down. That is a fact. Of course you can always twist and bend everything the way it fits you best. I am not even a big fan of Obama myself. I would e.g. never have bailed out the banks (though some of that was already set into motion by the Bush administration, IIRC).
Obama was a Senator who voted for TARP, and has been more than happy to harp on and on about saving the financial institutions. However, TARP was a one-time expenditure, while his "one-time stimulus plan" was actually rolled into baseline budgeting, which is why he has had four straight years of $1.2T deficits as opposed to Bush's 3 years of $400B, and one year of $1.2T ($400B + $800B of TARP). That means that he has now spent, not $787B on stimulus, but nearly $3.2T on stimulus. And for what? Let's take your 2.5M job number. That means *EACH JOB* is costing over $1M to create. That's an abomination, especially when those jobs are minimum wage burger flippers.

The real fact is, the number of professional jobs (white collar) jobs in this nation has plummeted, while the number of low-income jobs has skyrocketed. Swapping a $80,000 a year job in IT for a $15,000 a year job at Burger King is not equivalent, yet the "2.5 million jobs" number treats it that way.
Skipjack wrote: Also worth mentioning that by the end of his first term, GW Bush had lost some 1.5 million jobs...
Wow. Are you really claiming it was Bush's economic plan that caused the job losses? Really? My brother's company had $25M of pending contracts in August 2001, yet in October of 2001, he had $0 of contracts and had to shut down six months later. Remind me again of any event that occurred in the month between that might have had some effect on the economy.

I posted the graph of recession recoveries. The 2001 recession was over by the time Bush hit 2004. We had recovered to the same employment. Go back and look, I'll wait.
Skipjack wrote: Obama created 2.5 million jobs and everyone cries foul...
I call that weird.
Obama has never claimed to have "created" 2.5 million jobs. He's claimed to have "created or saved" -- some of the biggest weasel words you could ever find. How do you prove you saved a job?

As of today, the BLS claims 84,000 jobs were created last month, but that's only if you include their "Birth and Death" factor which is an estimation of corporate creation and collapse, a number they claim is 120,000. Do your math, the actual on-paper numbers is that nearly 40,000 jobs were lost in June. Oh, and the B/D formula has been vastly overestimating for the last 12 months. No one is starting a new business in America today. They just had to adjust the April numbers down 10,000 jobs, but no one notices, because that's not today's news. The average length of unemployment is now nearly 30 months. TWO AND A HALF YEARS without a job.

The Labor force when Obama took office was 154,236,000. As of today, it's only risen to 155,163,000. An increase of less than 1 million people. Compartively, the labor force grew over 6,200,000 from Jan 2005 to June of 2008.

In January of 2009, the employed labor force was 142,187,000. As of today's numbers, it is 142,415,000 - an increase of a little over 200,000 jobs, while the labor force has grown by over a million -- and should have grown over 6 million.

That means 12,748,000 people in this country are now unemployed, compared to 12,049,000 when he took office. That doesn't look like 2.5 million jobs created.

It's just math. And if we were being fair and adding the additional 5,000,000 new workers to the numbers, the math would look even worse for Obama.

All numbers come directly from Obama's own Bureau of Labor Statistics. You can go find the same ones -- and probably ignore what they're telling you just like you have been.

Still, Obama has managed to avoid being the first president to have fewer people employed at the end of their term than at the beginning.
Skipjack wrote: Oh and lastly, employment numbers would have looked better, hadnt it been for several hundred thousand jobs in the government that were cut during Obamas term in order to save money.
Much like Clinton, Obama has cut the government workforce -- namely the military. Our forces are no longer capable of facing a two-front war. We can no longer protect both our eastern and western seaboard at the same time. What savings.

On top of that, it's still bullshit. If we had the same workforce participation rate today that we had in December of 2008, then unemployment today would be 10.9%. The U6 unemployment is 14.9% right now -- that includes those people with part-time jobs who want full-time or people with PhD's working in burger joints. Those are comparable to the numbers of the great depression.

How has Obama lowered the Unemployment rate 2%? Simple, he's decreased the labor participation rate of the nation by over 2%. From the Bureau of Labor Statistics' site:

Image

He hasn't improved employment -- he's cut the workforce. Driving people to despair -- driving them to give up even looking for a job. That's the real truth that you don't want to hear.

As of right now, the unemployment rate for blacks has jumped to 14.4%. Hispanics face an 11.0% unemployment rate. Teens are looking at over a 55% unemployment rate, and there are 780,000 more women unemployed today than the day Obama took office.
Obama wrote:This is a step in the right direction.
And this is the party of women and minorities?

hanelyp
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Post by hanelyp »

The unemployment figures over the last 3 years are cooked. Take a look at the labor market size figures over that time. Unemployment figures over that time are based on a shrinking number of people looking for work. The latest scam appears to be people who should be counted as unemployed going on disability.

jnaujok
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Post by jnaujok »

Skipjack wrote:Oh and lastly, employment numbers would have looked better, hadnt it been for several hundred thousand jobs in the government that were cut during Obamas term in order to save money.
By the way (2010 is the last year for which numbers are available):

Federal Government Employees in 2008: 2,768,886
Federal Government Employees in 2010: 3,007,938

...several hundred thousand jobs in the government that were cut...

Payroll March 2008: $15,471,672,417
Payroll March 2010: $16,238,227,775

..to save money...


Must be that new math.

(All numbers are from the Census Bureau)

WizWom
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Post by WizWom »

Skipjack wrote:Once again:
The unemployment rate peaked at almost 10% by the end of 2009, before the stimulus had any time to take effect! That is much higher than the original predictions were!
Since then the unemployment rate has continuously gone down. That is a fact. Of course you can always twist and bend everything the way it fits you best. I am not even a big fan of Obama myself. I would e.g. never have bailed out the banks (though some of that was already set into motion by the Bush administration, IIRC).
Also worth mentioning that by the end of his first term, GW Bush had lost some 1.5 million jobs...
He still got reelected...
Obama created 2.5 million jobs and everyone cries foul...
I call that weird.
Oh and lastly, employment numbers would have looked better, hadnt it been for several hundred thousand jobs in the government that were cut during Obamas term in order to save money.
Employed persons dropped until Dec 2009, as you say... to 137,968,000 - out of 153,091,000 employable.
We now stand at 142,415,000 employed out of 155,163,000 employable. Slow gains, not even back to Dec 2008 levels - we're finally above Sep 2005 - when the workforce was only 149,954,000.
Obama hasn't "created" a single job - businesses have re-hired 4.5 million people DESPITE the Demoncrats, not because of them.
Wandering Kernel of Happiness

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