Silly thing heard during the Republican debates

[Ishmael]

You sound like Jen.

Not quite, I have facts at my finger tips. So far all you've presented is bull shit.

Ishmael

 

[Joeybagadonuts]

Not quite, I have facts at my finger tips. So far all you've presented is bull shit.

Ishmael

you called bull shit...give me your facts.

 

[cebalrai]

If you have a job, just look at it this way, some rich Republican with a rich friend created or saved your job.

FUNNY! The nonpartisan CBO says the same thing about the stimulus. Apparently this logic only works for Republican tax cuts, huh?

 

[cebalrai]

You want to know why? First of all it was an idiot question based on a false premise. The Bush tax cuts DID produce jobs. Secondly, if they were so damn bad why did Obama extend them?

The only defense against a false premise is to ignore the damn premise.

Ishmael

If it was a false premise any one of the chuckleheads on stage were free to say that. But they didn't. Probably because they have the same paucity of evidence that you have to make this assertion.

 

[Ishmael]

If it was a false premise any one of the chuckleheads on stage were free to say that. But they didn't. Probably because they have the same paucity of evidence that you have to make this assertion.

Because they too have bought into the bull shit the democrats have been peddling for the past 7 years.

This is the seasonally adjusted US unemployment rate from Jan. 2001 to today;

http://data.bls.gov/generated_files/graphics/LNS14000000_36016_1308189927412.gif

Ishmael

 

[Sonny Limatina]

Because they too have bought into the bull shit the democrats have been peddling for the past 7 years.

This is the seasonally adjusted US unemployment rate from Jan. 2001 to today;

http://data.bls.gov/generated_files/graphics/LNS14000000_36016_1308189927412.gif

Ishmael

Did you really look at that chart? In the beginning of 2007, the rate begins a two-year climb. It turns steeper in 1/08. Obama took office in 1/09. The rate continues at exactly the same rate for another 7 months, then begins to decline.

I don't want to diminish the unemployment issue, but if that chart was meant to somehow implicate Obama, it fails deeply.

 

[Ishmael]

Did you really look at that chart? In the beginning of 2007, the rate begins a two-year climb. It turns steeper in 1/08. Obama took office in 1/09. The rate continues at exactly the same rate for another 7 months, then begins to decline.

I don't want to diminish the unemployment issue, but if that chart was meant to somehow implicate Obama, it fails deeply.

Are you a congenital idiot? From that chart any idiot can follow the effects of 9-11 and the sub-prime meltdown on the economy. The question was about the Bush tax cuts and it is plain that after the tax cuts that unemployment declined until the sub-prime mess hit the fan.

There was also the assertion that the 'Fat Cats' that benefited from the Bush tax cuts didn't come through with jobs. That too is plainly some myth concocted by a demented mind. If any 'Fat Cats' benefiting from tax cuts it is plainly the Obama 'Fat Cats' that aren't coming through with the jobs.

As far as the sub-prime meltdown is concerned, grab a book named "Reckless Endangerment" co-authored by one of the business editors for the New York Times. The book names names, deals, agreements, and political agendas. You might even learn something from the reading.

Ishmael

 

[unregistered]

 

[Sonny Limatina]

It implicates the Democrat Congress.

A reminder: Republicans controlled both houses of Congress from 1999-2007 (with the slight, brief exception of Jeffries switching 'sides' during the 50/50 senate). Now look at the chart and note the rise in unemployment from 2001-2004--and the fact that that rise began before the chart does.

Now tell me if the above is the approach you really want to take.

 

[Sonny Limatina]

Are you a congenital idiot? From that chart any idiot can follow the effects of 9-11 and the sub-prime meltdown on the economy. The question was about the Bush tax cuts and it is plain that after the tax cuts that unemployment declined until the sub-prime mess hit the fan.

There was also the assertion that the 'Fat Cats' that benefited from the Bush tax cuts didn't come through with jobs. That too is plainly some myth concocted by a demented mind. If any 'Fat Cats' benefiting from tax cuts it is plainly the Obama 'Fat Cats' that aren't coming through with the jobs.

As far as the sub-prime meltdown is concerned, grab a book named "Reckless Endangerment" co-authored by one of the business editors for the New York Times. The book names names, deals, agreements, and political agendas. You might even learn something from the reading.

Ishmael

If the reading of this post is any indication, your last sentence is demonstrably wrong.

 

[unregistered]

 

[Sonny Limatina]

I'll cite your own words:

"In the beginning of 2007, the rate begins a two-year climb. It turns steeper in 1/08."

So the mere sight of all those extra democrats taking the oath of office, without having enacted a single law, was sufficient to drive the population out of their jobs and into the streets?

 

[busybody..]

So the mere sight of all those extra democrats taking the oath of office, without having enacted a single law, was sufficient to drive the population out of their jobs and into the streets?

actually

YES,

its called anticipation of egregious policy to come

tht is why the stock mkt started its collapse the WEEK of Obama becoming assured of being teh Dumoh candidate

that is why oil collapsed the DAY AFTER Bush announced DRILL EVERYWHERE

but you know that

 

[Joeybagadonuts]

Facts from Jack Rasmus

“March Jobs Numbers: A Contrarian View”
by Jack Rasmus
April 3, 2011

On Friday, April 1, the U.S. Labor Department released its numbers for jobs and unemployment for the month of March. It reported 216,000 net new jobs created in March, after 192,000 the previous month. The two months are heralded as a definite shift in the labor market and jobs in the U.S. Business pundits at the New York Times declared the results represent a solid record in job gains, kicking (job creation) into high gear. Obama and the administration are calling it clear evidence of a new momentum in job creation, bragging that about 1.3 million jobs were created in the past 14 months since January 2010. However, a closer look at the numbers reveals that continuing, and emerging, problems in the jobs market in the U.S. should be of great concern.

About 658,000 jobs were created in the past three months, since the beginning of 2011, according to the Labor Dept. But the same data show 798,000 workers left the labor force over the same period. In other words, more are giving up finding a job than are locating one. The number is ever worse when the past 14 months are considered. 1,353,000 found jobs but 2,121,000 left the labor force. A jobs market truly recovering does not experience that kind of massive number of discouraged workers leaving the labor force. Quite the opposite. A truly recovering labor market is characterized by large numbers of discouraged re-entering the labor force. Something else is going on here.
A closer look at the 1.3 million shows further interesting characteristics. First, more than 400,000 of the 1.3 million represent growth in involuntary part time and temp agency jobs, about 297,000 temp jobs and 117,000 part time jobs. These are jobs that pay 60%-70% of normal wages and virtually no benefits. Moreover, the 297,000 temp jobs reflect only temp agency hires; at minimum another 150,000 of the 1.3 million are temp workers directly hired by companies themselves. In other words, almost half of the 1.3 million are low pay, no benefit temp and part time jobs.

Another notable characteristic is that the 1.3 million private sector jobs created the past 14 months reflect a delayed recovery from the double dip in the job market that occurred last summer. From June to September the economy lost hundreds of thousands of jobs during the four months. The jobs gains since October represents a recouping of those jobs lost last summer, not a true net gain.
A breakdown view of the job growth by major sectors of the economy – Manufacturing, Construction, Government, and the Service Sector reveals another interesting fact. That is, only the Service Sector has clearly generated job creation to any significant extent. Manufacturing created a net growth of employment of only 110,000 over the past 14 months. Construction has experienced a net loss of 122,000, essentially offsetting the manufacturing growth. While the manufacturing sector experienced a small boomlet in production last year driven by exports, and produced significant profits for its companies and their investors, this boomlet has produced little in terms of employment gains. Manufacturing today only represents 7% of the entire US labor force, after decades of offshoring and outsourcing. Manufacturing may contribute significantly to total output and GDP in the US in a recovery, but it will never lead a jobs recovery from recession.

Construction today is even a worse condition. It is mired in a bona fide depression, on a par with the 1930s. New construction and housing starts are down 75% from pre-recession highs. Foreclosures are approaching 10 million (out of about 54 million mortgages). And home prices are now in their own double dip as well. 89,000 of the 122,000 job loss in construction over the past 14 months have occurred in the past three months.
Government job creation is no better. It declined by 313,000 in the last 14 months, with 93,000 of that total occurring in just the last three months. And that’s only the beginning. With States and cities planning major layoffs at mid-year and beyond, job losses totaling 500,000 this year in government are not out of the question.

Only the Service sector has actually added private sector jobs to any extent over the past 14 months and since the start of 2011. Of that sector’s 1,386,000 jobs created, however, many have occurred in the retail, hospitality-leisure and business services industries; that is, industries consist overwhelmingly of part time and temp jobs. The previously noted 500,000 plus part-time and temp jobs have been largely concentrated in this sector.

At the rate of 192,000 and 216,000 jobs created the past two months, assuming 130,000 new entrants into the labor force each month we have only a net gain of 70,000 jobs a month. At that rate, the economy will not return to its pre-recession total employment level of December 2007 for another 70.2 months. In short, that’s not until the end of 2016. And that’s using the Labor Department’s conservative U-3 unemployment rate. Using the Labor Department’s more accurate U-6 unemployment rate, a recovery to December 2007 pre-recession job levels will not occur for 188.8 months; that’s 15.6 years, or not until around 2025.

A more accurate picture of a jobs market still deep in trouble is possible by other job market indicators as well. For example, there’s what is called the JOLT measure, or job openings to labor terminations ratio. This simply compares the number of workers looking for jobs, given the number of job openings by business. Today there are five workers looking for every job offered by business. That 5 to 1 ratio is essentially unchanged since January 2010. At the start of the recession it was 1.8 to 1.
Yet another alternative measure of the condition of the job market is the Employment-Population Ratio. This reflects how well jobs are being created in relation to the growth of the population. That ratio too is unchanged the past fourteen months, from 58.4 to 58.5 today.
How many workers are long term unemployed is still another measure. There, once again, not much has changed. There were 6,133,000 long term (i.e. more than 27 weeks jobless) fourteen months ago; there are 6,122,000 today.


Future job creation prospects for the remainder of 2011 and into 2012 are not as great as optimists in the Obama administration and the business press would have us believe. The current US picture is not one of broad based, robust jobs growth. Manufacturing and construction, i.e. sectors that historically lead a recovery from a recession, show no evidence as serving as engines of continued job growth. And the government sector shows an accelerating rate of job loss, soon to approach a half million. That leaves only the Services sector, composed heavily of temp and part time job creation.
Even the modest growth in U.S. manufacturing employment shows signs of now tailing off. Manufacturing has been driven up to now by exports. However, recent sources of U.S. export sales are now slowing. China and Brazil are both slowing their economies to deal with inflation. Japan has re-entered recession, even before the Tsunami-Nuclear crisis which will reduce its consumption of U.S. exports still further. And Europe continues to teeter on financial instability. Add to that the continuing crisis in the Middle East – North Africa, the further rise in oil and commodity goods prices, and it all collectively adds up to a significant decline in global export demand and in turn US export sales, US manufacturing output, and jobs. Manufacturing will thus provide no significant source for job creation going forward.

In even worse condition, construction jobs have no light at the end of the tunnel and will decline further as that critical sector falters further and foreclosures rise while home prices fall. Congress and the Obama administration’s apparent consensus to dismantle the housing agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, will mean even less housing construction, sales, and more falling prices.

Finally, in addition to the minimum of 500,000 more jobs soon to be lost in the government sector in 2011-2012, it is estimated that 600,000 additional jobs will disappear in the private sector as well, should Congress pass in the next few weeks the Tea Party-Republican $61 billion of cuts in this year’s U.S. budget. And this precedes the even bigger 2012 budget fight about to begin in Washington after April 8, bringing unknown further budget cuts before the end of 2011. In short, even the uneven, tepid, and largely low-pay job creation in the Services sector the past 14 months will be more than offset in the coming months, as a result of forthcoming fiscal austerity and budget reductions by government at all levels.

 

[Powertone]

Ok, I understand: the only black people in New Hampshire are tokens put forth by the political parties.

I didn't expect you to be so honest about Herman Cain, but I applaud it.

Herman Cain ? Really ? Just come out and call him an Uncle Tom .
Blacks are Uncle Toms on this side of the aisle...that's the status DEMS historically have assigned them , not us

 

[phrodeau]

Herman Cain ? Really ? Just come out and call him an Uncle Tom .
Blacks are Uncle Toms on this side of the aisle...that's the status DEMS historically have assigned them , not us

Of course, by "us" you mean "white Republicans".

 

[Joeybagadonuts]

ON THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE G.W. BUSH TAX CUTS, by Jack Rasmus, June 7, 2011

Not quite, I have facts at my finger tips. So far all you've presented is bull shit.

Ishmael

This month marks the tenth year anniversary of the first of George W. Bushs three general tax cuts, passed between 2001-2003, which reduced taxes by a total of $3.4 trillion over the decade, 2001-2010. These general cuts were followed by a series of additional $1.1 trillion industry-specific tax cuts in 2004-2006 that, together with the 2001-2003 cuts, would raise the total Bush era tax cuts to approximately $4.5 trillion.

Various studies during the last decade estimated that 80% of the $3.4 trillion in general tax cuts–$2.7 trillion–were distributed to the top 20% richest households, and most of that to the wealthiest 1%. Thus, conservatively, together with the $1.1 trillion enacted specifically for businesses, a total of about $3.8 trillion in tax cut income were distributed to corporations, investors and the wealthiest households during the Bush years.

That $3.8 trillion is just about equal to the total growth under Bush in the federal government debt between 2000-2008. Bush entered office in 2001 with a federal debt of about $5.6 trillion and left it with approximately $9.5 trillion. The federal debt has since risen to $14.3 trillion, due to continuing costs of war and defense spending, falling tax revenues due to the current recession, direct bailouts, and the continuing negative impact of health care costs on Medicare and Medicaid.
So where has all that $3.8 trillion in tax cut money gone, one might ask? To expand jobs? No. Today there are fewer jobs in the U.S. than there were when Bush came into office. Workers wages? No. Real wages are lower today than a decade ago.

A good deal of it went into Hedge Funds, Private Equity Funds, and other forms of private, unregulated banking–thus stoking the fires of speculative investment during the Bush years in subprime mortgages, derivatives and other unregulated financial securities that produced the financial collapse of 2007-08 and which, in turn, provoked the current recession.
Another significant part of the trillions was redirected by corporations and wealthy investors into investing in emerging markets, like China, India and Brazil, in lieu of what might have otherwise been investing in job creating projects here in the U.S.

Still other amounts were simply diverted by institutional investors and corporations alike into offshore tax shelters. According to the investment bank, Morgan Stanley, in 2005 offshore tax shelters had increased their investible assets from only $250 billion in 1983 to more than $5 trillion by 2004. More recent estimations by the Tax Justice Network indicate tax shelters now hold more than $11 trillion. Of course those are global numbers. But a reasonable estimate is that wealthy Americans likely account for at least 40% of that total.

Exactly how much of the Bush tax cuts for the rich and their corporations was redirected offshore into tax havens is not precisely knowable, since there are around 27 offshore tax shelters, according to the IRS, in mostly sovereign nations like the Cayman Islands, the Seyschells, Isle of Man, Vanuatu and the like which have closed their tax doors and do not cooperate with IRS attempts to investigate how much wealthy US taxpayers have stuffed away in their electronic vaults. When Obama first came into office, an initial attempt was made to identify the tax avoiders. But that effort by the administration was quickly downgraded as Obama moved to court business allies more aggressively in 2010.
Like individual and institutional investors, multinational corporations also redirected a good part of their share of tax savings to their offshore subsidiaries in order to avoid paying taxes to Uncle Sam. In 2004 it was estimated about $700 billion was hidden offshore in this manner. The multinationals then blackmailed Congress, offering to repatriate some of the money if Congress reduced the 35% normal corporate tax rate to 5.25%, which it obligingly did. About half the $350 was brought back in 2005, but it wasn t used to create jobs. Instead, the overwhelming evidence is that they used the repatriated funds to buy back their stock, pay dividends, and buy competitors. The same gaming by multinationals is about to happen again; but more on that in another article.

In short, offshore shelters, offshore corporate subsidiaries, emerging markets like China, and unregulated global financial institutions like hedge funds, private equity, etc., were the recipients of the lions share of the $3.8 trillion. Little of that went to domestic investment and job creation in the U.S. Gross private domestic investment in the U.S. grew at a mere 2.25% annual rate over the eight years of George W. Bush. No wonder so little net job creation occurred in the US over the past decade while Bush tax cuts were in effect; and why that investment, and job creation, is still not forthcoming so long as those tax cuts remain and the proceeds redirected to offshore tax havens, offshore subsidiaries, emerging market investments, and financial speculation globally.
Another important legacy of Bush’s $3.8 trillion handout to corporations and the rich has been an acceleration in the shift of income and wealth to the top 1% wealthiest households and their corporations. This historic shift in income and wealth can be traced back to its origins in the Reagan period, but it accelerated severalfold under Bush during the last decade.

A series of academic studies since 2003 by economics professors Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Picketty have uncovered the true extent of this massive income shift. Based on their deep analysis of IRS taxes paid over the history of the Federal Income Tax since 1913, Saez and Picketty found that the wealthiest 1% of households in the U.S. received about 8.3% of total income in the U.S. in 1978. By 2007, however, that wealthiest 1% received 23.5% of total income generated annually in the U.S. And that includes only reported income to the IRS, excluding offshore tax sheltered income. Were offshore income stuffed away in the various tax havens included, the percent would not doubt amount to significantly more than even the 23.5%.

What that 23.5% represents more concretely is average income gains between just 2002-2007 for the top 1% wealthiest households–those earning more than $400,000 a year–of 62%. The top 0.1% households with a minimum income of $2 million a year did even better, with a gain of 94%. The next lowest 9% realized only a 13% gain from the Bush tax cuts, while the bottom 90% of households–about 104 million households in total–realized a mere 3.9% gain in income from the Bush tax cuts.
It is perhaps interesting to note that the 23.5% share of income accruing to the wealthiest 1% households represents a return to almost exactly what the top 1% wealthiest households received in 1928i.e. on the eve of the last Great Depression! Could it be that such lopsided concentration of income at the top is somehow related to the onset of severe recessions and depressions? Unfortunately, few economists today bother to explore that relationship to any extent or degree.
Unfortunately, the legacy of the Bush tax cuts remains, extended for two more years last December 2010, at a cost to the US budget of $400 billion more in addition to the original $3.8 trillion.
Last summer the US economy went into a relapse and it appeared the tepid 12 months of recovery from June 2009 was about to end. The Federal Reserve quickly pumped $600 billion into the economy in response last fall, 2010, to re-energize the economy. The Obama administration sought to supplement the Fed with whatever fiscal stimulus it could get past the new Teaparty Republican Congress. Accordingly to Democratic party policy makers, the $400 billion further extension of the Bush tax cuts was the cost for getting agreement from Republicans to further extend unemployment benefits and to pass a middle class consumption boost by lowering the payroll tax for wage earners. The unemployment benefits and payroll tax cuts amounted to barely $120 billion, compared to the $400 billion.

Since January of this year, however, 60% of the $120 billion has been eaten up by gasoline price hikes and much of the rest by other inflation in food, health care, education, and local tax hikes. The payroll tax cuts will expire in one year; the $400 billion goes on for two years, up to the eve of the 2012 general elections.

The $400 billion was passed based on the claim business tax cuts would help get jobs going again–a claim made for every year of the original Bush tax cuts back in 2001-03. In fact, every Bush tax cut bill was called a job creation bill. But the facts are that Bush’s tax cuts had little impact on job creation. Between 2001-2003 jobs consistently declined. It took 46 months of jobless recession before, in late 2004, the number of jobs lost after January 2001 was eventually recovered. It was the longest jobless recovery in US post-1945 history up to that point.

Unfortunately, today’s jobless recession is expected to last at least 72-84 months despite the recent two year extension of the Bush tax cuts last December. As for the extensions immediate effects, in the past five months a total of only 14,000 full time jobs have been created, according to the US Labor Department. Not much for an initial effect from extending the cuts another two years!
Nonetheless, we are still being smothered with the same economic nonsense by the US Chamber of Commerce and Wall St. Journal editorial page pundits, who continue to argue that the Bush tax cuts will create jobs. Meanwhile, the concentration of income at the top goes on while consumption by the bottom 80% of households still stagnates. Given that consumption accounts for 70% of the economy, that all but ensures that the US economy will not soon recover.

To sum up the legacy of the Bush tax cuts: trillions of dollars shifted to the wealthiest and corporations, a chronic and historically low growth in US based investment for 8 years and continuing, jobless recoveries and fewer jobs today than a decade ago, and stagnant or declining income for the bottom 90% 104 million middle class households earning $110,000 or less a year. Moreover, that legacy unfortunately will not soon disappear, even when the recent two year extension of the Bush cuts expires in late 2012. The Bush cuts, this writer predicts, will almost certainly be extended into the next decade when the current Congress and Obama administration will almost certainly renew the tax cuts once again on the eve of the November 2012 elections.

The Bush tax cuts thus promise to linger in the US body-economic like a chronic, debilitating disease. And instead of treating the deadly economic virus, politicians are today intent on practicing instead medieval remedies like bleeding the economic patient with deficit cutting of health care and retirement social programs–Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. But in so doing, they just may kill the patient in the process

 

[mercury14]

It implicates the Democrat Congress.

So your story is that the Democratic congress came in and trashed the economy, then Obama was elected and blocked all their policies to create a turn around?

 

[unregistered]

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

joey dog nutz assumes that government is 100% efficient and wise, and money denied the government harms the nation in material ways.

 

[Joeybagadonuts]

joey dog nutz assumes that government is 100% efficient and wise, and money denied the government harms the nation in material ways.

Hey Kojak, stfu

 

[JenAltArmy]

Because she can't articulate herself well enough to actually discuss a topic.

bla bla bla, in the end you are still a dumb ass. You never have any good points and the only thing you display is how stupid you are.

what did Jen call you, DellWannaBeJR?

why are you so afraid to show the costs associated with pension plans?

 

[JenAltArmy]

joey dog nutz assumes that government is 100% efficient and wise, and money denied the government harms the nation in material ways.

well since he, merc, and most of the other left wing nuts work for the government, they just don't know any difference. they keep on doing the same thing, day in, day out cuz they don't know any better.

they have the minds of 3 year old children