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The Economy is Taking Off, but Republicans Must Not Have Received the Memo

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  • jaredsxtn
    05-09-2015 04:08:14 PM
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    One thought kept popping into my mind when I saw the April jobs report showing that 223,000 jobs were added and the unemployment rate has dropped to its lowest level in seven years: why are cable commentators continuing to allow Republicans to say that the economy is in terrible shape?

    How much longer should Republicans be able to get away with saying 'The Obama Economy' as a pejorative and not a positive thing? The economy he inherited from Bush was in free fall. His policies have now brought about years of job growth and the best economy we've had since the Clinton years. Why do so many in the media continue to allow Republican's to say our economy is doing poorly and not call them out for their obvious lies?
  • Schmidt
    05-09-2015 08:49:25 PM
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    Republicans are only speaking to their base at this point in the campaign. As long as their followers remained tuned to Fox News or Rush Limbaugh, they will never know that the "Obama Economy" is anything but what they portray it as. Later on they might do some flip flopping and claim the improvements are entirely due to Congress holding the purse strings and stopping Obama's "reckless spending".
  • Dutch
    05-10-2015 12:29:31 PM
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    Schmidt Wrote: Republicans are only speaking to their base at this point in the campaign. As long as their followers remained tuned to Fox News or Rush Limbaugh, they will never know that the "Obama Economy" is anything but what they portray it as. Later on they might do some flip flopping and claim the improvements are entirely due to Congress holding the purse strings and stopping Obama's "reckless spending".
    Talking about "reckless spending" sorry to say the wasteful Pentagon is trying right now to spent more and more; the navy wants new aircraft and the air force also more new drones ( partly CIA budget?) and so on; let alone the continued upgrades for the F35 and helmets at $400K a pop as well 400 plus fixes . Of course the resupply of plenty of ammunition/weapons all used up in Iraq, Syria and plenty of other places including a fantastic live training mission in TX etc. There is no end to their wishes and "fake budget". My guess is Obama has no guts to go in against all of this continuing waste, because our 999 generals run this country; Obama, he's just a "puppet" for them. Recruiting "human robots" for their cause is in full swing; just like we don't have enough veterans yet.
    "Sieg Heil".
    As a matter of fact ISIS has won already; how much do we spent per day on them? They don't have to do nothing; we will only get "poorer' by the day.( Except of course the "warmonger 1%; they make more money than ever; just ask McCain)
  • lonely bird
    05-10-2015 10:16:42 PM
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    the economy taking off? perhaps a definition of taking off is required. oh, more jobs is always good but as we know unemployment and underemployment numbers have been skewed for decades. be that as it may Obama has done surprisingly well considering that he has to deal with a psychotic Republican Party, an electorate that is by turns speaking in tongues/snake handling religious lunes, simplistic exceptionalists, jingoistic xenophobes and scared of their own shadow/the Muslims are going to get us wimps all while lacking the arm twisting abilities of an lbj or even a Bill Clinton.

    but that aside the economy will not take off likely ever again. Creative destruction has become labor destroying and the large numbers of people who need work will continue to be funneled into the so-called service economy via de-industrialization and continued financialization. As the prc takes its traditional place as the world's largest economy the u.s. will be forced to think outside the usual political economic box to find employment for its people.
  • jaredsxtn
    05-11-2015 03:04:15 PM
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    lonely bird Wrote: the economy taking off? perhaps a definition of taking off is required.
    I think the fact that we have had 62 consecutive months of job growth that created 12.3 million private sector jobs is a pretty damn good definition of the economy taking off. Take home pay, even adjusted for inflation, is higher than it has been in years as well. Yes, there are plenty of people who are still struggling in our country, but that doesn't mean that an economic Armageddon is around the corner.

    lonely bird Wrote: but that aside the economy will not take off likely ever again. Creative destruction has become labor destroying and the large numbers of people who need work will continue to be funneled into the so-called service economy via de-industrialization and continued financialization. As the prc takes its traditional place as the world's largest economy the u.s. will be forced to think outside the usual political economic box to find employment for its people.


    This is an awfully jaded way of looking at things. It's true that crony capitalism is a bane on our society and far too many manufacturing jobs have been shipped to areas of the world that can pay their employees pennies on the dollar, but that doesn't mean that all hope is lost and nothing can be done.

    I think that the facts and the American peoples assumptions about the economy are two entirely separate things. Our government is currently incapable of tackling some major issues that we will eventually have to address, but that doesn't mean that our economy is in a free fall.
  • lonely bird
    05-11-2015 04:23:37 PM
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    jaredsxtn Wrote:
    lonely bird Wrote: the economy taking off? perhaps a definition of taking off is required.
    I think the fact that we have had 62 consecutive months of job growth that created 12.3 million private sector jobs is a pretty damn good definition of the economy taking off. Take home pay, even adjusted for inflation, is higher than it has been in years as well. Yes, there are plenty of people who are still struggling in our country, but that doesn't mean that an economic Armageddon is around the corner.
    lonely bird Wrote: but that aside the economy will not take off likely ever again. Creative destruction has become labor destroying and the large numbers of people who need work will continue to be funneled into the so-called service economy via de-industrialization and continued financialization. As the prc takes its traditional place as the world's largest economy the u.s. will be forced to think outside the usual political economic box to find employment for its people.

    This is an awfully jaded way of looking at things. It's true that crony capitalism is a bane on our society and far too many manufacturing jobs have been shipped to areas of the world that can pay their employees pennies on the dollar, but that doesn't mean that all hope is lost and nothing can be done.

    I think that the facts and the American peoples assumptions about the economy are two entirely separate things. Our government is currently incapable of tackling some major issues that we will eventually have to address, but that doesn't mean that our economy is in a free fall.
    Jaded? Maybe. I simply ascribe to James K. Galbraith and his book "the new normal." The labor destruction of automation, de-industrialization and financialization not only isn't going away, it can't go away. The service economy cannot replace the wages and thereby the consumption required to maintain the high growth rates of decades ago. Furthermore to borrow from Kenneth Boulding "the only people who think infinite growth can continue on a finite planet are madmen or economists." Which he was.
  • pr
    05-12-2015 07:03:48 AM
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    I have to agree with you, LB. fortunately for me I remember the days of so called "American exceptualism" (for white men at least)! Those days are lost forever, I fear. We have sold ourselves to the lure of cheap goods from Asia we can onl afford on our meager incomes and we shall never recover without strong protectionists laws and labor unions - something we all know the 1% oligarchy will never allow to happen.

    Everything our our so called political leaders do is nothing more than "smoke & mirrors" designed to split and divide the typical citizen while enriching the few truly in power and running things (hint - it ain't the President or Congress)!
  • Schmidt
    05-14-2015 04:09:15 PM
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    Lonely -- Yes Galbraith makes good points in his book, The End of Normal. I haven't read it, only the reviews, but I have read many other articles by Galbraith. And it should be noted that he is a Modern Monetary Theorist that believes we have too much hype about budget deficits and debt. His 2009 article, No Return to Normal, published in the Washington Monthly expands on some of his thinking. It appears he goes into much of the same stuff in his later book, but I'll extract just one paragraph from his list of solutions as we were in the midst of the Great Recession at the time he wrote it:

    "Third, we will soon need a jobs program to put the unemployed to work quickly. Infrastructure spending can help, but major building projects can take years to gear up, and they can, for the most part, provide jobs only for those who have the requisite skills. So the federal government should sponsor projects that employ people to do what they do best, including art, letters, drama, dance, music, scientific research, teaching, conservation, and the nonprofit sector, including community organizing—why not?""

    Regardless about what we may argue as the reasons for inequality in this country, (and economists have widely differing views), many of them recognize the need for government sponsored jobs programs because businesses are not going to take on that risk solely by themselves. I should add that Republicans disagree.
  • jaredsxtn
    05-14-2015 07:15:02 PM
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    Schmidt Wrote: Regardless about what we may argue as the reasons for inequality in this country, (and economists have widely differing views), many of them recognize the need for government sponsored jobs programs because businesses are not going to take on that risk solely by themselves. I should add that Republicans disagree.
    I could not agree more.

    One little discussed fact about the Great Recession was the unprecedented job losses throughout the Federal Government. Those jobs never came back when the economy started growing again. These former Federal employees were probably the hardest hit group and no one seems to talk about it.

    When will Republicans realize that some of the greatest expansions of wealth throughout our history is when the Federal Government steps in and stimulates the economy not by throwing money at banks, but by putting the American people to work building things? Their ceaseless drive to privatize the economy has brought about the catastrophic decline of our middle class.
  • jaredsxtn
    05-14-2015 07:25:43 PM
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    I figured I should post the President's recent discussion at Georgetown University concerning poverty in America. The 'news channels' only reported on his accusing Fox of pushing a false narrative about poverty, but this discussion was about far more than that. It's a little over an hour long, but I highly encourage anyone who wants to know exactly--and I mean exactly--what the President thinks about poverty and what can be done about it to take the time to watch it.

  • that guy in AZ
    08-14-2019 11:36:40 AM
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    By now, it's apparent that the economy prospered under Obama - and now Trump is taking all the credit for the "strong economy" in order to keep his base happy. Despite his many failures as a human being, his supporters will still vote for him because they think he is good for the economy. That, more than anything else, will be his undoing.

    It's the economy, stupid" is a slight variation of the phrase "The economy, stupid", which James Carville coined as a campaign strategist of Bill Clinton's successful 1992 presidential campaign against sitting president George H. W. Bush.

    Carville's original phrase was meant for the internal audience of Clinton's campaign workers as one of the three messages to focus on, the other two messages being "Change vs. more of the same" and "Don't forget health care."

    Clinton's campaign advantageously used the then-prevailing recession in the United States as one of the campaign's means to successfully unseat George H. W. Bush. In March 1991, days after the ground war in Kuwait, 90% of polled Americans approved of President Bush's job performance. Later the next year, Americans' opinions had turned sharply; 64% of polled Americans disapproved of Bush's job performance in August 1992.

    (Before you get too optimistic, it's worth remembering that Trump's DISAPPROVAL rating on 11/5/2016 was 58.5%, and his approval rating was only 37.5% - and he still got elected). Throughout Trump's entire term, his DISAPPROVAL rating has always been higher than his approval rating, and his approval rating has NEVER exceeded 45%.

    https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/trump_favorableunfavorable-5493.html

    This morning, the Washington Post reported that, for the first time since 2007, the yields on short-term U.S. bonds eclipsed those of long-term bonds. This phenomenon has preceded every recession in the last 50 years.

    In addition, Trump's trade policies have had a devastating affect on both our farmers and our allies.

    A report came out last year that U.S. farm bankruptcies are on the rise due to falling agricultural product prices as well as rising interest rates:

    The increase in Chapter 12 filings reflects low prices for corn, soybeans, milk and even beef. The situation for most farmers has worsened since June under retaliatory tariffs that have closed the Chinese market for soybeans and damaged exports of milk and pork.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/jessecolombo/2018/11/29/heres-why-more-american-farms-are-going-bankrupt/#6516eb465a72

    The largest economy in Europe is the German economy, and it depends heavily on auto exports. The German car makers Volkswagen, Daimler and BMW all earn at least a third of their revenue in China, where auto sales have been slipping after years of explosive growth. One major factor in the slide is the barrage of trade threats that have unsettled Chinese consumers, discouraging them from buying big-ticket goods.

    The Chinese, of course, are not happy either, since factory output in July fell to its slowest pace in 17 years.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/business/german-economy.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

  • Schmidt
    08-14-2019 02:18:33 PM
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    Arizona --- All good stuff that makes sense. After nine years of growth the economy is due for a recession at some point and many economic indicators saying sooner than later. It may be that Trump's tariffs are the catalyst to finally make that happen sooner. Exactly when it happens can have an effect on the 2020 election. Trump will blame the Federal Reserve interest rate policy.
  • Dutch
    08-15-2019 09:18:51 AM
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    Arizona, excellent piece again! Compliments! Yes it is always the GOP who runs this country into the ground, then when an Dem's President pops up, he has to clean up all the garbage. Obama had to suffer and get things back to "normal" and now Trump totally ruined the place again. So I wonder if we get an Dem's President if he/she is able to clean up this even bigger mess the GOP has created. The history books will tell the tale. Sorry but the voting public needs lots of education, otherwise we do the same stupid thing over and over again. But yeah "education" does not seem to have an priority here.
  • that guy in AZ
    08-15-2019 09:36:07 AM
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    Trump and his minions are doing their best to piss off the farmers. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Purdue recently made a trip to Minnesota. While there, he did this:

    *******************************************************************

    At a Farmfest listening session with farmers in Minnesota, Perdue hit back at the complaints with his joke: “What do you call two farmers in a basement? A whine cellar.”

    As he pounded the table in mirth, some of the thousands of farmers at the event laughed nervously — which was followed by boos.

    “It was definitely not an appropriate thing to say,” Minnesota Farmers Union President Gary Wertish told HuffPost. “It was very insensitive. It took everyone by surprise. He doesn’t understand what farmers are dealing with, and he’s the head of the Department of Agriculture. He’s supposed to be working for farmers.”

    **********************************************************************

    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/8/13/1878739/-Trump-s-ag-secretary-calls-farmers-whiners-after-listening-to-their-complaints-about-trade-war

    ******************************************************************

    In 2016, 75% of the voters in rural counties voted for Trump. Since farmers are the biggest victims of Trump's trade war with China, he is unlikely to get more than 40% of that voting bloc in 2020.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/08/i-wont-be-voting-for-the-president-again-says-ohio-farmer.html
  • that guy in AZ
    08-15-2019 09:48:52 AM
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    Besides farmers, the other voting bloc that is worried is Wall Street. After the Dow Jones plummeted 800 points yesterday, it rose slightly this morning, but uncertainty about future tariffs will keep markets nervous for a while.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/15/business/global-markets.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
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