“The best 12 months” for job creation “in the post-war period”, reports economist Danielle Hall, “were September 1983 to August 1984 when 4.9 million jobs were added.” In September 1983 alone, “the US economy under President Reagan created 1.1 million jobs.” Keep that figure in mind when you hear the media trumpet the latest employment figures. In the past five months, the US economy under President Obama created fewer jobs than the economy under Ronald Reagan did in the ninth month of the third year of his presidency.
That said, the employment numbers are reasonably good, if not enough to keep pace with the administration’s projections in promoting the “stimulus” or to keep pace with a population growth. (That link via Instapundit.)
That stimulus, in fact, has helped push our our debt and deficit to all time highs. (Last link also via Insta.) Yesterday, Jim Geraghty reported that, “The total U.S. public debt will probably hit $15.5 trillion today“, finding further that it increased by $4,872,146,580,769.36 since Barack Obama took office. “For comparison,” he noted, “the national debt increased $4.9 trillion — $4,899,100,310,608.44, to be precise — during the eight-year presidency of George W. Bush”:
In other words, when the debt increases another $27 billion — $26,953,729,839.08 — Obama will have run up as much debt in three years and a couple of months as Bush ran up in eight years. Obama will reach that milestone in a few days. (Back in August, I predicted Obama would hit this milestone on the Ides of March.)
On that score, he was more prescient that yours truly who contended we would reach that milestone well before Memorial Day, now more than two months hence.
The way to shut up the Obama halfwits on this one is to show them the math.
Barack Obama and his cultists insist that he has created 4 million jobs since entering office.
To do that, he has run up a deficit of about $1.2 trillion dollars on average per year.
$1.2 trillion divided by 4 million jobs is a cost of $300,000 per job to the taxpayers.
Per year.
You read that right. Even if you accept his laughably fictional figures about how many jobs he’s “created or saved”, he has done so at an annual cost of $300,000 per job – almost six times the median family income — to taxpayers.
I think the salient figure is the net full-time private sector jobs created, and how that figure compares to an average year. Also, other factors such as state laws must be taken into account, and perhaps also the average wage of such jobs and how it compares to an average year.
NDT, exactly. Give me $300,000 per year of *new* debt to spend, and I can create a job too. Of course, now the country is in a Ponzi scheme of expanding debt and that job is going to have to die – and take others with it – when the Ponzi scheme collapses.
Likewise with GDP: I think the salient figure is net private sector income, or at the very least, national income net of new government debt.
I like how you’re suddenly interested in the debt, but not so much when Bush was racking it up, and not so much when Clinton was paying it down while enduring character assasination from your party.
FYI: We need to spend now to stave off a depression, the result of your party’s discredited policies under Bush. I think you actually want to cause a depression, in order to watch the poor suffer.
Wilberforce, bear in mind that conservatives were criticizing W on spending. And that Clinton didn’t balance the budget until he had a Republican Congress to do it for him.
And if spending staved off a depression, how come the Great Depression lasted until 1940 following 10 years of increased government spending?
Am eager to hear your responses to my points and that question. Thanks!
Ah, I see. Spending is poison, so we need more of it.
Poison as food, poison as antidote, as ILC says.
Meanwhile, silly Wilberforce, your Obama Party’s policies have caused unemployment, poverty, people on food stamps, and the like at exponentially-higher rates than during the Bush administration.
Thus, since you insist that all of these things are proof that the poor are suffering, what we can show is that your Obama Party and your Obama Party policies that you have put in place are making the poor suffer more.
The reason you want spending, Wilberforce, is simple: you are a moocher who wants to use government to force other people to pay your bills for you rather than you having to work. Furthermore, you clearly don’t care about “the poor”, given how you demand taxpayer dollars that could be spent on them be used instead for multimillionaires to have private jet travel and fancy food at taxpayer expense, or for some of the world’s richest people to throw expensive theme parties for them and their cronies on the government’s dime.
Why do you hate the poor, Wilberforce? Better yet, why do you take money you promise to use to help the poor and then spend it on yourself?
If I recall correctly, the economic crisis was caused primarily by the housing bubble, which cannot be entirely blamed upon policies enacted during the Bush administration, or by Republicans. They may not have addressed the issue, but they aren’t entirely responsible for it.
RS, the crisis was/is caused by 50 years of accumulating debt in the developed countries, led by governments trying to make themselves ever bigger and more important; governments that stimulate artificial booms with debt (i.e. credit inflation), and then try to re-stimulate them with even more of the same, as they refuse to accept the busts that are necessary to clean up the effects of their fake booms.
You’re right that the housing bubble is the latest bubble and so the most recent “cause” of economic malaise. I’m just saying, it was part of deeper and longer pattern which is therefore the true cause.
Wilberforce is, of course, full of it: many of us (including yours truly) were indeed concerned by the debt as Bush was racking it up, and criticized Bush for it at the time.
And theoretically if we hadn’t… well, so what? Obama is “Bush times three”. That means yes, he deserves three times the criticism. A housewife is not at fault if she tolerated (with some concern) her husband having two drinks a night, then complained sharply when he jacked it up to six a night.
Yes, I’m convinced that the best solution to all economic/budget problems is to sharply reduce the size of the government to its bare necessity. I simply cannot understand the mindset of people like Wilberforce who want to increase spending and, therefore, the size of government; it creates so many additional problems because the government must micromanage everything, which multiplies the amount of bureaucrats (and other sources of overhead) and therefore reduces its efficiency and increases the costs associated with its operation (and it also has the potential of creating issues of ethics and constitutionality). And that is only the tip of the iceberg.
I have never seen a remotely persuasive argument for Keynesianism or for a big government in general.
Speaking of big government…
I’m calling the thought police because you failed to use a same-sex couple in your hypothetical situation. This reference to an opposite-sex couple (ewwwww) contributes to an atmosphere of fear and oppression for homosexuals (oops… sorry, queers) and is insufficiently inclusive. You should be ashamed of yourself for your hatemongering, sir.
Heh 🙂
There’s an easy way to understand it, Rattlesnake:
1) Wilberforce and its ilk intend to be the micromanagers
2) Wilberforce and its ilk intend to exempt themselves from having to follow the rules
Once you look at that, their mindset is perfectly understandable. We represent the sole blockade from them imposing what they think will be utopia.
Long story short: what we call the “Great Depression” was simply called the Depression in Europe during the same time period, and they recovered from it MUCH MORE QUICKLY. Hint: They didn’t spend beyond their means in pursuit of a Keynesian miracle cure.