Thursday, April 20, 2006

The Bush Economic Fantasyland.















There seems to be two ways of looking at the economy. First the GOP/Bush Fantasyland version from the White House:


"The tax cuts I signed left $880 billion with our nation's workers, small
business owners and families. They've used that money to fuel our economic
resurgence. Not everyone in Washington agreed with the decision to let people
keep more of their own money. On the day that Republicans in the House and
Senate were finalizing the 2003 tax cuts, one Democratic leader said these cuts
would 'do nothing to create jobs.' Facts have proven the critics wrong 5.1
million times over."
-President George W. Bush, April 7, 2006


Then there's the economy for those of us who live in the real world:


Last week the Bureau of Labor Statistics re-benchmarked the payroll jobs
data back to 2000. Thanks to Charles McMillion of MBG Information Services, I
have the adjusted data from January 2001 through January 2006. If you are
worried about terrorists, you don’t know what worry is.

Job growth over the last five years is the weakest on record. The US
economy came up more than 7 million jobs short of keeping up with population
growth. That’s one good reason for controlling immigration. An economy that
cannot keep up with population growth should not be boosting population with
heavy rates of legal and illegal immigration.

Over the past five years the US economy experienced a net job loss in
goods-producing activities. The entire job growth was in service-providing
activities--primarily credit intermediation, health care and social assistance,
waiters, waitresses and bartenders, and state and local government.


From my point of view, there's no doubt which is accurate.

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I did not mean that Conservatives are generally stupid; I meant, that stupid persons are generally Conservative. I believe that to be so obvious and undeniable a fact that I hardly think any hon. Gentleman will question it.

John Stuart Mill (May 20 1806 – May 8 1873)