March 01, 2004
Conservative counter part...
IT'S ALL RELATIVEOk, so its clear that this guy thinks bush is god and dog, but let me put his data into context (remember kids, context IS important, regardless of what conservatives will tell you about the bible or anything else).
When Clinton took office in '92 unemployment was at 8% or so... When he left office it was at 4.X% so in '96 5.6% was low... Very low. Clinton's economy continued to push the unemployment down until Bush took office. You will see this in the graph below both the yearly only and monthly values decreased the whole time clinton was in office. Fluke right... just the right time to get elected, same would have happened to Dole or Bush... Well, it didn't happen to Bush Jr. When he got elected unemployment went back up. Almost as sharply as when his father was in office. So, given this context, when Clinton had a 5.6% it was low, compared to the mess the first Bush and Reganomics left us. Now, 5.6 is high, given that Clinton left at at 4.0.
Yearly unemployment rates:
Gif graph is courtesy BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics)
Monthly unemployment rates:
Gif graph is courtesy BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics)
Data (again from BLS):
let's also not forget that people get dropped from the "unemployed" category after a certain amount of time (i think 6 months, but unsure). if anything, those numbers are lower than they actually are in the "real world."
Posted by: honeyfields at March 2, 2004 10:35 AMWhat honeyfields said... "unemployed" means you're actively searching for a job. I guess they assume that if you're unemployed for a couple years you haven't been looking hard enough. blah.
And, uh, not to be a trouble-maker, but it looks like unemployment dropped while Reagan was president, too. I mean, it shot up, but then it dropped to below it's original rate. Now, I always thought his economic policies (which Bush is now mimicking) were sort of retarded... so how to explain that?
Posted by: meta at March 2, 2004 02:48 PMExplain it... Easy, reganomics sort of does work. It wasn't that different from what the Russians were doing at the same time. But then the Russians are a perfect example of over spending your "tax" income. Eventually it collapses. But by overspending in the correct ways (creating government jobs or spending in private industry) you do create jobs. Bush isn't doing this. He is spending money on current generation weapons and troop deployment expeses (Regan spent on weapon R&D) and giving huge tax cuts to corporations and the rich. Regan's government wasn't spending on troop deployments he only did surgical work. Regan spent money on bases and new weapons. This creates jobs. Any Russian will tell you that.
Posted by: pqbon at March 2, 2004 05:11 PM>weapon R&D
That should keep Ken and his SRI cohorts among the ranks of the employed. :)
Whatever happened to that missile defense system? I never thought it would actually work, but it could employ lots of people trying.
Posted by: meta at March 3, 2004 05:02 PMIf you are talking abou the "Star Wars" system, then I can tell you that it will never work. Physics alone will tell you that. Also a country wouldn't be stupid enough to shoot a missle at us, because we could easily detect where it came from. But, if a terrorists was able to we would be confused and not know which missle to shoot at, because of the drones that was also shot. It is a waste of time and money and we should be going back to FDR's policy. All Reagan taught us was that you can not trust the intelligence of the American Public, I include myself in that statement. That is why we have an indirect democracy.
Posted by: Patrick at June 5, 2004 04:33 PM