The final pre-election Jobs report - and a new spin?

[Nym90]

Even if some really rosy job numbers come out coincidentily *cough**cough* right before the election, there's no way that it will change the fact that the number of jobs in America has gone down under Bush (currently 900,000 in the hole), in the first Presidential loss of jobs since Hoover. Every Democratic President for 40 years (LBJ, Carter, Clinton) has had a net increase of around 10 million jobs per term. Why couldn't Bush create anywhere close to 10 million jobs, let alone break even?

Why is it that every Republican President since Eisenhower has inherited a ressession from a Democrat President?

Probably because the economy is good for most of the time that the Democrat is in, and thus is bound to eventually go down a little at some point. Thus it's technically on the downswing, but only after having gone up so far first.

Why is it that the deficit is always better when a Democrat is in office, and worse when a Republican is in office? Why is it that Democratic presidents have consistently had a better record of job creation during their tenures than Republicans for 75 years? Must just all be a huge coincidence.

[Nym90]

Even if some really rosy job numbers come out coincidentily *cough**cough* right before the election, there's no way that it will change the fact that the number of jobs in America has gone down under Bush (currently 900,000 in the hole), in the first Presidential loss of jobs since Hoover. Every Democratic President for 40 years (LBJ, Carter, Clinton) has had a net increase of around 10 million jobs per term. Why couldn't Bush create anywhere close to 10 million jobs, let alone break even?

Why is it that every Republican President since Eisenhower has inherited a ressession from a Democrat President?

Probably because the economy is good for most of the time that the Democrat is in, and thus is bound to eventually go down a little at some point. Thus it's technically on the downswing, but only after having gone up so far first.

Why is it that the deficit is always better when a Democrat is in office, and worse when a Republican is in office? Why is it that Democratic presidents have consistently had a better record of job creation during their tenures than Republicans for 75 years? Must just all be a huge coincidence.

Why is it that there is always a up-swing in economic growth during the final term of a Republican Administration and why does this trend always continue onto the first term of a Dem administration only to go down at the end?  We saw this with Carter, we saw this with Clinton, we saw this with LBJ.

Sure, there's an economic upswing near the end of the GOP term. Again, the business cycle kicks in eventually, just as it does with Democrats, causing the economy to eventually settle down after long growth.

The chart that Jfern posted doesn't lie. You can explain away an individual case here or there, but the evidence is just too much over the course of 80 years time to be that consistent.

[Nym90]

The government can't really do anything about private-sector unemployment.  But it can combat underemployment, which has been a bigger problem recently by doing, among other thing:

- Raising the minimum wage
- Increasing welfare and unemployment benefits
- Enacting universal healthcare

To do this, the government will need to raise taxes.  So yes, raising taxes can help the economy.

What makes you think that any of these things will help the economy?

They may not increase the rate of total economic growth, but this is not the big problem with our economy right.  The biggest problem is that the direction of our economy is really punishing the poor and working class, and these measures would help the people who aren't benefiting from the current economy.   Our economy can't really be considered in good shape while so make people are struggling....right now inequality is a much bigger issue than growth.

Exactly. The economy is growing, but it is mostly going into the hands of a select few. Economic growth under Democratic administrations is much more equitably distributed generally speaking. That's better for the economy in the long term, to raise the fortunes of those on the bottom more relative to those on the top.

[Nym90]

Exactly. The economy is growing, but it is mostly going into the hands of a select few. Economic growth under Democratic administrations is much more equitably distributed generally speaking. That's better for the economy in the long term, to raise the fortunes of those on the bottom more relative to those on the top.

Allow me to explain this chart




Well, you cannot really count Roosevelt because things couldn't have gotten much worse during the Depression and the war certainly created a lot of jobs.  So there is one gone.

We then go onto Truman.  Most of what Truman gained was nherited from FDR.  The Truman administration saw the worst Recession until Carter and at the end the economy was just abismal.  Can't blame Truman for this, though, it was the post-war bust.

Kennedy cut taxes!!!!!!!  A lot!!!!!!!  And put in place a lot of good reforms to keep things running.

LBJ just inherited what Kennedy did and by the end of his term we were once again in recession because of Veitnam and the Great Society.

Nixon attempted to remedy this, but rapid inflation caused by global problems and years of post-war economic bust caused problems for both he and Ford yet they still managed 3.3% jobs growth.

Carter's first two years were marked by jobs growth.  His last two were marked by the biggest recession in the 20th century.

Reagan inherited this recession, but still managed to create 20 million new jobs by the time he was out.

The Pacific Rim Market Crash ruined the first two years of the Bush 41 Presdency, but it is now a proven fact that the economy was growing during the last 8 months of his Presidency.

Clinton was in the right place at the right time.  He benefited from the lift at the end of Bush's term and also from the changing economy and new technology that gave a massive lift to the economy.

However, towards the end, the "Clinton" economy began to slow down and by Jan 2001, before G.W. took office, slipped into recession.  Jobs growth should have out paced jobs loss, but guess what?  9/11 happened.

At anyrate, the jobs are coming back and, if you believe the Democrat, these figures are insignificant anyway, because the number of jobs matters nothing, now that Bush is adding jobs, it is the quality.

Those are the per centage increase job numbers per year. You can't add Nixon and Fords numbers, that's a meaningless statistic.
FDR averaged a 5.3% increase per year over 12.1 years, which is simply amazing.  Truman still beat the average even after FDR had created so many jobs. FDR and Truman about doubled the jobs in their 20 years.  Sorry, 1968 and 1969 had good job gains, LBJ did not leave us in bad news job wise. You are right that 1980-1982 were bad for jobs, but if you think that compares to the Hoover adminstration, you're smoking crack.  Reagan/Bush averaged only 1.6% per year for their 12 years. Increase in 2000=1.5%. Increase in the last 12 months now (about the only 12 positive months for Bush)=1.3%.  And that 1.5% was by far Clinton's worst year, and in fact is the 3rd worst year of any post-WWII year under a Democratic President.

As for JFK tax cuts, he cut taxes to a top marginal rate of 70%. Do you want a top marginal rate of 70%?

Exactly. These are per year averages, so you can't spin it away by saying that LBJ had a couple bad years or Carter had a couple bad years, those are already being factored into the chart.

And likewise, you completely discount FDR's tremendous job creation. Sure, the depression left a lot of room for improvement, but who put us in that mess? Coolidge mostly, and then Hoover failed in his attempts to pull us out. You conveniently left them out of your analysis.

Adding Nixon and Ford's numbers show that you either don't understand the chart, or are trying to spin.

Yes, the war helped FDR.

But the same goes for the 9/11 effect. Yes, the attacks themselves hurt the economy, but the recovery effort and the wars that we have fought since have helped the economy. You can't have it both ways, saying that Pearl Harbor was good for the economy but 9/11 was bad for the economy.

I'm not saying that there aren't external factors in all of these that are to a certain extent beyond the President's control, but the per year average figures don't lie. They can't all be explained away as coincidence. That's spin. The cold hard facts are that Democrats create a better environment for job creation to take place.

[Nym90]

The recession started two months in. Bush's tax cuts hadn't come in then.

I'd say 9/11 prolonged the recession. The difference between 9/11 and Pearl Harbour is that Pearl Harbour damaged the US militarily, while 9/11 damaged it financially.

Of course numbers of jobs will generally increase as population increases. Such charts need to be treated with scepticism.

But this chart goes by percentage increases, and thus remains consistent throughout the years.

[Nym90]

As for this chart.  You can't really coutn FDR, Truman, or LBJ since they had wartime economies.

You can't count Carter, because the result of his policies was to creaqte high inflation, which more than offsets the disparity in job creation.

This leaves us with tax cutter Kennedy and free trader Clinton.

I'll take that.  The chart shows that free trade and low taxes creates jobs.

You forgot to mention that Clinton raised taxes. And FDR, Truman, and LBJ can't be completely discounted on the basis of the wars alone. Yes, the wars helped, but certainly did not count for all or even most of the job creation.

As you note, Clinton and Kennedy were the most economically conservative of the Democratic Presidents, and also had the lowest percentage jobs growth of any Democrat (though of course still more than any Republican).

Kennedy cut taxes down to 70% for the top income bracket. I would have agreed with those tax cuts too, 91% was too high, but a 70% rate seemed to work pretty well.

Spending on wars does create jobs, but not nearly as many as could be created if the money was spent somewhere else. It's an inefficient way to create jobs since it produces nothing of direct value to this country in terms of products and services; they have little to no long term value to the country. The defense industry benefits, but the government could spend the money more productively elsewhere if job creation truly is the goal.