I thought that President Bush was causing more unemployment....

"Finally whle the federal government is taking in less due to the presidents tax cuts the economy is takng in more. The government is a black hole of wasted dollars and the less that goes to it the better off we all are.
When the government takes one dollar from you in taxes it creates at best 20-25 cents worth of equivalent private sector services, whereas every dollar you spend creates 3-4 dollars of usable income for the economy at large."

So when I spend dollars on taxes it creates 3-4 dollars of usable income? Is that not an expense to me? Secondly, with all the outsourcing doing on in Iraq, all the foreign companies, my tax dollars are not creating 3-4 dollars of usable income in this country, maybe in Europe, or Asia, but not here. Am I wrong?

Did the jesuits have you excommuncated before teaching you how to read?
I said that the money you pay in taxes went into a black hole the money you spend enriches the economy.
Its not that hard a concept, money go to government go bye bye, money go to businesses help all americans.
Clear enough for you?

I said that the money going to businesses in Iraq, which is a pretty good percentage of our tax money is going bye, bye. Do you agree or not?

Originally posted by elevatedone
Is there a way to find out the number of unemployed people who used to have "career" jobs or good paying jobs... etc...

are people who have never worked, disabled - handicapped, etc in the unemployment figures ?

Is there any way of really knowing the truth in unemployment numbers ?

I don't think those that never worked would be considered "unemployed" (as least not in "new unemployment" counts). The problem with any of the counts though is the revolving nature. Once you drop off eligibility for benefits or "the radar" you no longer matter.

The homeless (for example) are not considered unemployed. They neither qualify for benefits or answer polls. That's "off the radar" and never coming back. So the steady cycle of unemployment is formerly employed people to the best of my understanding.

It's just frustrating to me that half of the "gains" the past couple years are nuanced figures citing immigrants and even illegals. I have nothing against them working at all, but it's not an accurate picture to call that "recovery" IMO. It's more like a shift in a changing economy favoring untrained over trained labor.

But to directly answer your question, I don't know of any direct tracking of the job's people are replacing lost jobs with. There's plenty of anecdotal stories lke I told, but the overall figures quoted are just that salaries overall are down $9,000 of late. That's not good as prices go up and CEO salaries go up even more. The salary gap is real.

What part of, nearly all of the money you pay in taxes is wasted do you not understand?
It doesn't matter whether there is a war on or not if you give money to the government it goes bye bye. poof dissapears.
And no I dont agree the percentage of the countries money that the government is spending in Iraq when compared to total expenditures is very small.
If anything the war in Iraq has improved the economy.

Originally posted by W_HAMILTON
Do those numbers take into account people that are still unemployed, but have simply run out of unemployment benefits, hence can't file anymore?

Maybe that's why Bush didn't want to extend unemployment benefits for 6 more weeks (or whatever it is set at), something he had approved in the past

Unemployment stats do no take into account people who have been dropped off the unemployment rolls, which happens when their benefits have run out. After six months of receiving benefits, even if you are still actively looking, you are no longer consider you part of the workforce if you have not yet found a job.

There is really no accurate way to measure these people, but if you add them in, they will increase the unemployment rate significantly. In many areas where there are mass layoffs because of factories closing up and going away, whole areas are unemployed for long periods of time, but after six months, even if most of the town is out of work, according to the government statistics, the unemployment rate will be artificially low.

Not surprisingly, the number of people that drop off the rolls--called exhaustions--are not widely publicized. I think to reduce the political impact of the fact that exhaustions frequently are higher than job additions, all are smeared as people that "just don't want to work", which is not the case for everyone. I am sure that there are people that collect benefits and don't want to work anymore, but considering that in order to qualify for unemployment benefits, you have to be employed for six months and are terminated by no fault of your own, these are people that have demonstrated a willingness to work. It is not so unbelievable that it will take more than six months to find a job-- I work on Wall Street and there were mass layoffs since 9/11. Many of my friends exhausted their benefits looking for a new job--not to mention having to take positions that paid them significantly less.

If you want a dose of reality--in September, 40.6% of those who collected unemployment insurance exhausted their benefits. Do the math---if roughly 1 million to 2 million people file new UI claims per month, roughly 400,000 to 800,000 people per month (or 100,000 to 200,000 per week) are dropped off the rolls and considered to be not looking for work. That's a lot of people.

Perhaps looking at exhaustions is a more realistic indicator of the health of the job market--and an indicator of economic health, rather than look at jobless claims. To give you a historical perspective, back in the late 90's, the exhaustion rate was 30% to 35%. After 9/11, the exhaustion rate began to move up quickly and has remained above 40% since mid-2002 (and that even includes the temporary UI extension).

If the job market--and the economy--was really in solid recovery--fewer people would be exhausting their unemployment insurance.

If you want to look at the DOL data, you can run a query at:
workforcesecurity.doleta.gov...

Rant I would really like to know do you honestly believe anythng is going to stop outsourcing?

Originally posted by RANT

Originally posted by elevatedone

Originally posted by RANT
It has been revealed in a new study that half...HALF...50% of ALL JOBS CREATED UNDER BUSH...went to new immigrants. CRAP JOBS AT HALF THE RATES OF THE 90's.

And of those, half...HALF...ANOTHER 50% went to illegals.

well since 8,000 per day are coming across the border to find a job... that makes sense, they come here wanting to work, when a lot of good -ole Americans don't want to work....

That's partially true, but mostly just insulting (IMO). An educated, middle aged, trained software engineer )or trained whatever) that used to pull $70k+ now stuck with no job, no prospects, children, a mortgage, i

***CRAP JOBS AT 1/2 THE RATE OF THE 1990s***

WELL. those 'inflated' 'tech-bubble' jobs were just that...transitory positions at sky-high compensations!!!

the transitory 'surplusses': result of tax revenues of the grossly inflated 'profits' of the 'tech-bubble' market FRENZY!

together with Clinton's SURPRIZE taxing of Social Security Retirement and Disability Benefits!

H. Ross Perot, remember his tag line?...'That sucking sound you hear... is all the JOBS leaving the country!!!'

it all aint GWBs fault...the economic landscape he walks was terraformed by his predecessors, then sidetracked by the zealot-jihad-cadre of fighters

listen to your own 'inner-voice'...

"What part of, nearly all of the money you pay in taxes is wasted do you not understand? It doesn't matter whether there is a war on or not if you give money to the government it goes bye bye. poof dissapears.
And no I dont agree the percentage of the countries money that the government is spending in Iraq when compared to total expenditures is very small. If anything the war in Iraq has improved the economy. "

Used to be that the U.S. Government would supply it's forces from only U.S. companies, which intern bought only U.S. parts and supplies which intern hired more workers, produced more products, etc. Witness for this is the WWII economy which lasted until the early 90's. This just shows you that tax dollars can generate wealth, otherwise the WWII generation would not be the wealthiest generation in the history of the earth. Secondly now that our government buys from foreign sources, the dollar they spend doesn't roll down hill 3-4 times anymore, not for the U.S. citizen, but for some other countries citizens yes. Now if our government had spend our tax dollars only in this country the economy would be much better than it is.



[edit on 28-10-2004 by GrndLkNatv]

lmgnyc - and I agree with you that unemployment figures are low due to exhaustion. However Those towns you speak of where the factories packed up and left have nothing to do with Bush, Kerry, Clinton, or any other president.

Give you an example, microsoft's move to India for its customer service department has removed 2 billion dollars or so out of the US economy. Now why did microsoft move to india in the first place?
Becuase they could hire 10 well educated people in idia to do the job for the cost of 1 american worker. Now think about that. As a businessman if you can cut costs by 90% without compromising quality or quantity of service you will. And short of otlawing outsorcing completly, which can't be done, nothing is going to stop it.
Not Bush, Not Kerry, Not clinton, no one can even put a dent in it.

"And short of otlawing outsorcing completly, which can't be done, nothing is going to stop it. Not Bush, Not Kerry, Not clinton, no one can even put a dent in it. "

Actually terrorism could, by making it to dangerous to do business in India, China, etc. If there were to happen, the greedy jerks running business here that outsource there would bring those jobs back faster than the SR71.

Originally posted by mwm1331
Rant I would really like to know do you honestly believe anythng is going to stop outsourcing?

No. Not at all. Neither does Kerry. But closing the tax loopholes isn't a "scheme" ... the tax loopholes are the "scheme" for Wall Street profits IMO. (Based on your earlier comment)

And closing loopholes doesn't hurt committed US businesses given the tax cuts FOR businesses creating jobs here that Kerry seeks.

More can be done also by enforcing human rights sanctions on countries that want to trade with us. That helps raise their salaries on thier dime, and helps us compete. Everybody wins. I believe in fair trade, not free trade. When trade is that "free" US capitalism loses, because we will never be the "low bidder" on anything.

GrndLkNatv - I think you might be forgetting about the recession of the 80s, the 70s the 60s
The WW2 economy did not last untill the nineties. It barely out lasted the war itself. The 60s had a recession, so did the 70s, hell the 80 recession was immense ask anyone alive in new york at the time.
Let me give you a free economics lesson there are four phases of the economic cycle
1 expanson
2 peak
3 recession
4 trough
This cycle has existed as long as as there have been people exchanging currency for goods or services. It has always existed and will always exist. The most a government can do is to smooth out the curve.

I won't buy an american car, it's made in China or India these days and I can buy a Toyota which will out last any American brand car and employee my fellow citizens here in the U.S. where they are made.

The President of Toyota asked Bill Ford a interesting question at the international auto show last year. "How is it I make $750000.00 USD a year and produce superior cars to yours with american labor and you make $17,000,000.00 USD a year and produce a crappy car with foreign labor and foreign parts?". "I will overtake you this year as the number 2 automaker in the world". The latter has happened!

"GrndLkNatv - I think you might be forgetting about the recession of the 80s, the 70s the 60s
The WW2 economy did not last untill the nineties. It barely out lasted the war itself. The 60s had a recession, so did the 70s, hell the 80 recession was immense ask anyone alive in new york at the time.
Let me give you a free economics lesson there are four phases of the economic cycle
1 expanson
2 peak
3 recession
4 trough
This cycle has existed as long as as there have been people exchanging currency for goods or services. It has always existed and will always exist. The most a government can do is to smooth out the curve. "


Is that why Reagan told us that we were living on the post war II economy? The same economy that included the build up of arms that
lasted until the fall of the Berlin wall? Of course we have a few recessions during that time but the overall economy kept growing because of the buildup of arms during the Cold War. I think you need a economy lesson yourself. If you remember right it was Reagan who gave us the modern military we have today by spending trillions which created more jobs and
technology than ever before, actually caused the boom which we lived under during the Clinton years.

GrndLkNatv - no it really wouldn't If terrorism picked up in india then microsoft would move to romania or bulgaria or asia.
Rant - you said

And closing loopholes doesn't hurt committed US businesses given the tax cuts FOR businesses creating jobs here that Kerry seeks.

The problem with that is the types of jobs being outsourced ar never going to come back. American manufacturing for the most part is dead. Its dead because in truth it doesn't take a whole lot to train a guy with little to no education n a foreign country to do the same job factory workers used to do here. The jobs being outsourced are for the most part unskilled to semi sklled. They will never come back.
Again look at microsoft as an exmple. Now they will never return call center operations to the US because in truth its a job anyone can learn.
And if you ask those indians working for mjcrosoft they will tell you that they are considered upper middle class. So its not a human rights issue. Rant there s no type of economic model in which the US can be a low bidder on these types of jobs. Even with the most draconian sanctions in place countries like india will always be more competitive.
If you worked as a factory worker, or in a call center you had better start going to night or correspondance school because those types of jobs will never come back.

I own an IT Consulting practice. I've grown it consistently since starting it in 1993, so I had the hard part, the 'get up and running' portion under the Clinton Administrations stewardship of the American economy. No 'Monopoly money' checks were cashed to grow that practice 300% by the start of his second term.

The recession started in March 2001. The historic economic growth had plateaued in early 1999, and then started to decline during the course of that year. Now coming down from the peak of Mt.Everest to base camp still leaves you 10,000 feet above sea level; meaning, an orgasm does not last forever, we were far, far away from a recession until the Republican National Convention. Why is that important? Quite simply, we're a stock market driven economy in this century....everything is speculative & investor confidence dictates how companies allocate capital expenditures. We had a presidential candidate, as his core theme, swearing that the 'sky is falling' in order to create a division from the reality that was prosperity in the prior 4 years, to a perception of 'I am Mr. Fixit' and just the tonic needed. The goal all along was establishment of Trickle Down Economic theory: a down economy 'justifies' a corporate payola & investor class tax cut, or rounds of them. Many don't realize to obverse of Social Security privatization: it releases billions into the speculative markets; a locked in and captive investor cash load damn near void of any corporate solicitation to garner it.
Bush often told audiences that he promised during the 2000 presidential campaign that he would allow the federal budget to go into deficit in times of war, recession or national emergency. So the enabling aspect was there from the campaign trail; the implementation came next.
Back to my business after 3/2001: we saw an unprecedented decline in new projects as did the industry overall. Post 9/11/01, the NY IT market was decimated; you no longer had your departmental structures intact; meaning, people who spent their whole careers never once putting together a resume, because of professional circles & contacts, now were literally hat in hand. People who were Infrastructure Architects were taking 60% pay cuts to work a Help Desk. But that was only if they could get it � companies don�t hire grossly over qualified individuals that are more accomplished than their own supervisors.
We had massive & long-term unemployment above 10% in the NY Metro area. People easily exhausted their UE benefits AND the extensions.
There are people still not working today: many have Masters degrees or 20 years in their profession or both.
Quality of jobs is completely forsaken in this torturing of data trying to make this Fiscal Management seem competent. Too many people don�t have the support network to work the 3 jobs necessary that would equate out to their former one. Retraining and retooling is a pipedream: numerous folks have gone down that pike, but as an employer, why would I choose books smarts over practical?
Another gloss over: Americans falling below the poverty line: Bush has changed the economy by the millions each year of his presidency, but it�s things like 1.3 million American now considered poor! Bush�s America has grown the ranks of the poor to 36 million Americans. Look to the past administration, in terms of quality job creation compared to this one: Team Clinton dropped the poverty line, Bush increased , plain & simple.
Why? At the same time of Bush�s tax cut hysteria void of considering any variables, average salaries were flat and failed to match the inflation rate. How many people can attest to knowing many a person, if not themselves, who have not seen a salary increase in 3 years?
All the hype is just that, hype. When team Bush gets to the break even point of 130,000 jobs created per month that will cover new work force entries & returnees, then talk to me about creating jobs.
You can hold on to that false idea that we're safer - you're still wrong but have nebulus wiggle room, but on ALL THING ECONOMIC, Team Bush has no legs to stand on.

And agan bout time as I have said tmes are tough. My questions are
1) why do you beleve that Bush is to blame for the recesion
2) How do you think Kerry's plan would improve it in any way shape or form
3) what do you think he should have done differently.

I agree times are tough. Thats what happens in an economic contraction. However based on my knowledge experience and self education I believe that had President Bush not done what he did they would be a hell of a lot worse.

Originally posted by mwm1331
lmgnyc - and I agree with you that unemployment figures are low due to exhaustion. However Those towns you speak of where the factories packed up and left have nothing to do with Bush, Kerry, Clinton, or any other president.

Give you an example, microsoft's move to India for its customer service department has removed 2 billion dollars or so out of the US economy. Now why did microsoft move to india in the first place?
Becuase they could hire 10 well educated people in idia to do the job for the cost of 1 american worker. Now think about that. As a businessman if you can cut costs by 90% without compromising quality or quantity of service you will. And short of otlawing outsorcing completly, which can't be done, nothing is going to stop it.
Not Bush, Not Kerry, Not clinton, no one can even put a dent in it.

Welllll... I think that you are right about the fact that it is a cost issue, but I think that it is a larger concern that can be controlled via governmental policy. Up until recently, I was a senior manager in evil Corporate America, from a firm that egregiously began to indulge in outsourcing when costs had to be squeezed, I can tell you that the main reason why my firm began to do it was health insurance costs. Even for an entry-level employee, the cost of providing health insurance was so astronomical--$21,000 per year--and add another $5 to $10k to that for facillities costs, liability insurance, equipment, training, hiring costs, and his or her meager salary (and we are talking pretty meager--$45 to $50k for a Jersey City Customer Service rep), and the only way that the firm could maintain operations was to outsource to places like India, the Phillippines & Malaysia.

So is it the government's job to fix healthcare? In a nutshell, yes--mainly because the healthcare industry has proven that it is unwilling to fix itself. They have created products and services that you and I will die without, but can't afford. If it wasn't for the creation of health insurance, we would all be in pretty sad shape--but why is it necessary in the first place? What kind of industry works this way?

But you are right about a politician not being able to do it--but I think it is more of an issue of not being willing to take the drastic steps that are necessary for fear of upsetting the powerful healthcare lobbies. The entire system is broken and the health and welfare of the population is central to the health and welfare of the entire country. I think that what is driving much of the cost side of the equation, for individuals and for businesses, is the fact that we are held hostage to the healthcare industry. Something as sweeping and drastic as this has to start with a presidential commitment and a willingness to deal with a beating from extremely powerful special interest groups.

But I think that if healthcare costs are controlled, outsourcing can be stemmed--especially with additional tax incentives.

Originally posted by mwm1331
And agan bout time as I have said tmes are tough. My questions are
1) why do you beleve that Bush is to blame for the recesion
2) How do you think Kerry's plan would improve it in any way shape or form
3) what do you think he should have done differently.

I agree times are tough. Thats what happens in an economic contraction. However based on my knowledge experience and self education I believe that had President Bush not done what he did they would be a hell of a lot worse.

False. The tax cuts had negligible effect on job creation; in fact, thet were never presented by the Bush administrations as an answer to job loss. Again, basic economic knowledge looks at the actions taken as purely long term solutions.

1) Answer: inordinant focus on the investor class & corporations: I don't need a tax cut, neither does anyone else 'blessed' by the captial gains tax cut. The American consumer has propped up the economy since 2000, that's the hard fact that flys in the face of Trickle Down Theory; they postulate that money saved is immediately money back in the market. TDT does not account for 'rain barrels'.
These cuts were all pushed through during a big fall in the CCI, the Consumer Confidence Index. ( Remember the hysteria around the past 3 Christmas seasons &watching retail sales data? ).
Targeting low to middle class in pocket cash incentives would generate recession busting results. ( I know everyone remembers the WH pitch that spending money on retail was patriotic? )

2) Simple: Team Kerry will put adults back in charge again. Deficit spending, which has pissed off a myriad of staunch Conservatives, is the equivalent of losing your job on Friday, and spending the entire weekend at the mall maxing out every credit card you own. "Pay as you Go - implemented by Team Clinton, would be returned to. That's first & foremost - reigning in the "Druken Salior".
Second, by giving companies massive tax incentives to maintain jobs stateside, you create a broader consumer class. Putting taxes back on companies that have foreign registry in order to avoid US taxation, adds billions to the coffer with out effecting that same consumer class in a negative fashion.

3) Bush should have done everything differently, and that's been my point since I stopped just reading at ATS and started posting. Look back on my posts; most deal with my take on economics, especially the early stuff.
Look, having gone to business school, Ivy Leauge too, just like our first "MBA President", you learn to stop the bleeding first before you start occupational therapy ( long term strategy). Team Bush has never done that.
Add to this Billions unaccounted for & billions more to the Pentagons budget, there is zero hope of sustainability.