DescentBB

http://www.delawareonline.com/story/mon ... /30558787/


say what you will about undeemployment, folks out of the workforce, you can't whine about 'takers' in our society, or the economy under President Obama and ignore the above. A 42 year low? Can you fathom how much the workforce has grown in those 42 years?

Interesting that just a year after electing a strong majority opposition in the Senate, the economy is showing big signs of recovery.

Did no one notice that the economic boom actually correlates best to Taylor Swift hits?

Correlations of political elections to economic movement (whether the President or Congress) are really weak. Comparisons to actual legislation, on the other hand...

Good point Foil, and I haven't seen the Legislative Branch do diddly-squat over the past year, which is par-for-the-course. I will say that anecdotally I have no unemployed friends, which is refreshing, but an unnerving number of them are making less money that they did 10 years ago and working harder than ever (including myself, unfortunately). This of course has nothing to do with the President and everything to do with American business ethos.

vision wrote:I haven't seen the Legislative Branch do diddly-squat over the past year

Bingo.

"Doing stuff" generally means "changing the rules". Stability is good for the economy. Several years back I read an article on CNN based on interviews with small business owners who were asked what Obama should do to help their businesses get back to hiring, and the most common answer (~40%) was "stop talking". Basically, as long as they were worried about potentially expensive changes, they had to hold back from hiring. As long as they were worried about Obamacare and the minimum wage and changes to "full time" vs "part time" classification and changes to rules regarding hiring/firing and so on, they had to protect their businesses by minimizing exposure.

It doesn't surprise me in the slightest that many of the biggest economic booms and recoveries in this nation's history have been at times when the Legislative and Executive branches have been in opposition to each other. And many of the biggest collapses have been when the President had a relatively compliant Congress.

Lothar wrote:Interesting that just a year after electing a strong majority opposition in the Senate, the economy is showing big signs of recovery.

um, the trajectory has remained the same for the past 4 years

and, as I've been saying all along, despite the love for 'blaming' Obama for this and that, politicians can do very little to boost a short-term economy, their job is mainly not to get in the way of a recovery. The only part I'd really CREDIT Obama and his team for is averting far worse economic collapse at the outset, and staying focused on not passing legislation or enacting policies that would feck the recovery up. They've done quite well at both of those tasks, and I shudder to think where we'd be if the John and Sarah show had prevailed in 2008.

callmeslick wrote:

Lothar wrote:Interesting that just a year after electing a strong majority opposition in the Senate, the economy is showing big signs of recovery.

um, the trajectory has remained the same for the past 4 years

From one of the worst peaks EVER in 2009, the number of new claims has steadily decreased. The number of new claims has still been moderate to high through most of that time period, just not as high as the peak (see http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united- ... ess-claims ). Citing a "trend" in this way is meaningless (much like saying the unemployment rate was "down" in 2013 -- yeah, it was below the 2010 peak, but still above the highest level in either the W or Clinton presidencies.)

What's interesting now is that the number of new claims has actually dropped well below "moderate" and into "very low" territory. The other most recent times the number of new claims has been below 300k/week: late 1999-early 2000 (Republican Congress, Clinton as president), and 2006-2007 (when Democrats were in the process of taking a Congressional majority, with Bush as president). The economy seems to do best when Congress and the President are opposite parties and are only able to accomplish things through deep compromise. Politicians' "job is mainly not to get in the way of a recovery", and they do the best at staying out of the way when the other party is blocking them and vice versa.

“Can you fathom how much the workforce has grown in those 42 years?”

“The proportion of Americans working or looking for work fell to a 38-year low.”

I understand the math, but I'm saying that the proportion working, since the overall pool is much larger, is pretty impressive for a modern global economy. As I said, I really don't credit Obama with much beyond not fouling up a recovery trajectory. Still, when I daily hear how Obama has killed our nations economy, is responsible for increased poverty, etc,etc, it is sort of worth looking at how well our economy IS doing. Every measure, from unemployment claims up through strength of the currency and stock market valuation, indicates real strength. Likewise, I don't really blame Bush for the collapse. That is an example of where politicians, while unable to effect short term economic change, can set in motion problems down the road in the long term. The crash of 2008 was a bipartisan one, and the only fault I can put on the Bush crew was that they didn't put measures in place to cool the economy down when an obvious bubble started forming in 2005. Everyone I know saw that coming, most all of us bailed from heavy stockholding positions by the end of 2007. Bush's people should have seen as much and taken some short term preventive measures, even given the limits upon such measures.

of course, there is another untapped pool of labor:

And there are 3 million more children in poverty than there were in 2009. Child labor indeed. Perhaps I should find some pics of corporations that are Obama and Democrat contributors that use child sweat shops. Your attempt at smearing is sad. Of course you don't mind selling baby parts so I guess you have to come up with a photo with a catchy tag line.

woodchip wrote:And there are 3 million more children in poverty than there were in 2009.

that also has been the trajectory of the past 30 years. We are pushing a MASSIVE segment of our population into poverty, not stagnant wages, but true poverty. Since many studies have proven that being born in poverty vastly increases the likelihood of adulthood of poverty, we are creating a monster.

Child labor indeed. Perhaps I should find some pics of corporations that are Obama and Democrat contributors that use child sweat shops. Your attempt at smearing is sad. Of course you don't mind selling baby parts so I guess you have to come up with a photo with a catchy tag line.

of course you'd say that after 2 days of failing to prove that ANYONE is selling body parts, let alone advocating for it.

this thread wasn't too bad until about 3 posts ago.

The sad thing is…

I was watching the NewsHour the other night, and they had an interview with Rick Santorum, and he was asked about this problem, he mentioned that most children in poverty are from single parent homes, then they had these two liberal talking heads, and asked the same questions…not one word about the single parent homes…just a bunch of stuff about “programs” and the usual crap.

Nothing is ever going to improve while politics is driving the discussion.

Spidey wrote:The sad thing is…

I was watching the NewsHour the other night, and they had an interview with Rick Santorum, and he was asked about this problem, he mentioned that most children in poverty are from single parent homes, then they had these two liberal talking heads, and asked the same questions…not one word about the single parent homes…just a bunch of stuff about “programs” and the usual crap.

Nothing is ever going to improve while politics is driving the discussion.

well, some politics, at any rate. If we don't address income dispartity, and stop with the union-bashing that has been in vogue in some circles, we WILL be back to child labor in 30 years or so.