WP: Economic News Isn't Helping Bush

[Pirate Smile]

Economic News Isn't Helping Bush
Job Growth Up Sharply in July, but Polls Show Dissatisfaction

By Jonathan Weisman and Nell Henderson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, August 6, 2005; Page D01

U.S. job growth jumped last month and the unemployment rate held steady at 5 percent, the government reported yesterday, the latest economic data to show the economy picking up steam.

Yet President Bush's economic approval ratings remain low, weighed down by anger over Iraq and concerns about lackluster wage increases and stubbornly high gasoline prices.

"I feel the economy is just not as good as it should be," said Adam Judis, 40, a Pasadena, Calif., computer consultant and political independent. "We're spending too many lives, resources and money on Iraq. There has to be a point where we say we can't help everybody. We need to help ourselves."

-snip-
Yet a CBS News poll released this week found that 52 percent of respondents disapproved of Bush's handling of the economy, while 42 percent approved. Those numbers were worse than his overall approval rating, which split with 46 percent disapproving and 45 percent approving. Just 20 percent of those polled said the economy is improving; 32 percent said it is getting worse.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/05/AR2005080501632.html

[idlisambar]

1. There is a disconnect

The disconnect between the government produced statistics and the on the ground reality is becoming too great.

[Jackpine Radical]

2. The chocolate ration has been increased to 19 grams this month.

Immanuel Goldberg has been cornered in the Hindu Kush mountains and will soon be captured.

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

30. I have GOT to read that book yet again.

I've read it a couple of times, the last time about 15 years ago.

That and the Handmaid's Tale. MKJ

[niallmac]

47. I'm a moron. I admit it. What book?

[Jackpine Radical]

48. Orwell, 1984.

[niallmac]

51. 1984? Right. Time to read it again. I do love that book.

DU is a never ending source of interesting knowledge. I never heard of Emmanuel Goldberg. I googled him and am reading about him now. Fascinating. Thanks.

[WCGreen]

35. Give me the oily Victory Gin any day..........

[vogonjiltz]

3. Yep, not too much "steam" on my end of things.

[Donailin]

4. ok, since you've expressed my thoughts

can you please tell me: can the dept. of labor fudge the numbers? How many times have the numbers been revised in the following months this year alone? At least twice that I can recall.

I don't trust one peice of information that comes out of this WH. not one. in fact, everything they report or opine on, I turn it around 180 degrees.

[finecraft]

7. Yes, by using the Household Survey numbers

which basically entails the Department of Labor calling up households and asking the person that answers the phone how many people are working in the household- it doesn't matter if the person is self employed, legally employed, part-time or full time....just working. These are factored in to the overall employment numbers.
This adds a shit load of people to the official number of people considered "employed". They could cut grass once a week and consider themselves "regularly employed" and they count.

They also use what the call new business birth/death models. It is just a guess of the number of new businesses that started during the reporting period that are not yet registered in the bureau's statistics, and the number of businesses that closed during the same time that have not yet had their closure officially registered.
This number is purely a guess. My guess is they wildly over inflate the "birth" numbers to add even more people to the number of those considered employed.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

32. ROFL... did you do the cat's butt?

too funny

[finecraft]

44. Sure Did! I have become a photoshop junkie

I want to make the butts into a t-shirt and bumper sticker. Life's too short to not have a weird sense of humor....and annoy as many people as you can in the process :)

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

53. Man, I agree

and nothing pisses them off more than something they don't understand, like photo manipulation.

[FloridaPat]

10. At this point the jobs report is worthless. They've been seasonally

adjusted just about every month since * has been in the WH. It's a combination of 3-4 reports and they take the best numbers. It's also not made on actual SS employment numbers but a bunch of "this should happen" numbers.

GDP is anothr fake number. It includes defense spending as part of the economy. So the economic numbers get a bid increase that makes them look good, but a lot of the money is disappearing in Iraq.

[Erika]

5. Manufacturing jobs continue to decline

Those were the good paying jobs. The prices of gas and energy are killing us and we are sliding into that third world economy.

He and his stats just want to hide the truth as long as possible to reap as much profit as possible as long as possible.

[Leilani]

6. Lou Dobbs Show looked behind the numbers

High paying jobs continue to disappear.

Service & retail jobs, the lowest paid, continue to grow.

[Joebert]

8. I work in an outsourcing heavy industry

We keep tossing jobs out of the country.

When/if the people whacked during the outsourcing find jobs, it's as contractors, no benefits, etc.

And because of how things are going, they're happy to get jobs that are semi-related to what they used to do, so they can maintain/increase skills.

What is disgusting, and they're all doing it, is this:

US Company:

US Job > outsourced to Canada > offshored to Indian subsidiary of original company.

The US Company gets to report that they created jobs on their payroll, that the jobs were outsourced, and now they're company jobs.

I want to vomit when I read my email some mornings.

[Skittles]

9. OMG JOEBERT I KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN

it's bad enough they're screwing us royally but then they have the nerve to PEP-TALK US WHILE THEY'RE DOING IT :puke:

[joemurphy]

15. I'm into mistrust anymore.

They lied about the effects the tax cut would have. They lied about the need to invade Iraq. They lied about the science behind global warming. They lied about the effects of pollution. Why then should I believe their economic numbers?

I really can't trust anything they say anymore. We always find out, long after the fact, that the figures were fudged, skewed, or omitted for the sake of positive spin or to misrepresent the merits of something nefarious they want to do. Now, as I watch the budget spin out of control,the price of gasoline skyrocket, the national debt soar to record proportions and the billion dollar a day War in Iraq go humming along as usual, I'm supposed to believe that everything's just hunky-dory. Sorry. Not any more. Their credibility's just gone for me.

[cliss]

24. You're right.

I don't trust their figures at all. Elaine Chao is the Secretary of Labor. She's also a big Bush supporter. I think he appointed her.

Her figures are about as slippery as her boss.

[Joebert]

16. I work in tech support.

How many times does a tech support agent have to be told

"I know that there aren't as many people here as there used to be, but don't let that affect the customer's experience..."

or

"Improve the customer satisfaction..."

Well, telling us that every year, after every layoff gets REALLY old. To us, it doesn't look like anybody actually was tabulating anything, it was just a canned speech.

Our agents have to put up with customers now that won't even talk to them. They assume it's an outsourcer, the customer just yells and says get me to 2nd tier, or you don't know anything, just get somebody who does to call me back. Of course, the person they're yelling at knows more about the product than the people left designing them. But it's OUR fault that outsourcing exists.

Ack! vent vent vent...

[Skittles]

21. I am sick of hearing of the "global ecomomy"

this "global" bullshit means NOTHING to me because I CANNOT COMPETE WITH PEOPLE IN INDIA AND BRAZIL AND EGYPT FOR A JOB because THEY LIVE ON WAGES I CANNOT LIVE ON. *AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA*

[Joebert]

25. But just think...

With the jobs going overseas, it gives you an excellent opportunity to join the military, see exciting places, and blow them up.

They won't need a draft, it'll be the only employer.

[Skittles]

29. I'm a veteran

past the age limit too now, thank goodness :o

[fearnobush]

26. I know what you mean - tech support internal

we have to create - temp workstations - hundreds of them - so that the Co. doesn't have to hire new people, just temps, over and over, no health bennies, no 401k, no raises for us, but they do give hope that keeps them there only to be fired after 3 months. God Bless American Capitalism.

[Joebert]

27. We haven't hired in years.

In fact, the last time we added a single person to the building, we made a customer pay for it outright.

We charged them X and got contractors. Not employees, just temps, billed straight back to the customer.

Hey, they need a new computer.

Build one from the lab.

Um, we need that for seeing what customers have.

You have books, don't you?

[sandnsea]

52. mushbrain here

Try that last bit again. I'm not quite following. Indian jobs are somehow reported as new US jobs???????

[TahitiNut]

11. "Job Growth Up Sharply in July" to be 'revised' down sharply in September

Every reported month is 'revised' in the subsequent two reporting months. Every one of Smirk's BLS numbers has been revised DOWN in both of the following months.

It's a really nice scam. Nobody in the general pays attention to prior month revisions ... but the downward revision sure helps make THIS month look better. :eyes:

[catzies]

41. Exactly! Everyone reacts on the initial news & when the revisions come out

no one notices. By then they're reacting to something else.

Everything they publish is revised later.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

12. Maybe folks are starting to realize that

An $11.00 per hour Home Despot job isn't much of a replacement for the $40,000 a year corporate tech they lost when their company outsourced to India.

[Erika]

13. I hold utter contempt for freeper types who go along with this

They, also are selling out their country.

[Gronk Groks]

14. I work for a Travelocity Company...

...all internet and phone work is now done in Calcutta.

Question: What percentage of a workforce has to work in the U.S. to be considered an "American" company. Just the board of Directors ??

[Joebert]

17. American ownership only comes from where the mail goes.

My company?

- Taxes based in one state
- Paychecks from another
- HR in another
- etc.

[Gronk Groks]

19. Does that mean when the economy goes sour...

...that they could just change their mailing address to say the Cayman Islands and walk away???

[Joebert]

Why not?

Halliburton had a post office box. No employees, no desks, nothing. A post office box.

Maybe it was KBR. I saw it on 60 Minutes a few years ago. I'll have to dig.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

33. Happened to me. They split owing me 30k in salary and

expenses. They were based in St. Louis, but all the employees were telecomuters from all over.
Just disappeared.
Poof.
No recourse for the amount of money owed.

[wli]

18. I work in some really arcane computer programming stuff

I've yet to be hit by a layoff (and my field is actually one where the talent pool really is too small compared to the workload), but the companies I work for tend to have diverse programming businesses.

And the layoffs are brutal. Tens of thousands offshored by every company every year. There's no clear notion of anyone being left in the US besides the very very few in specialties such as mine (most of whom are imported -- that's right, flown in from other countries -- from around the world, with no particular attention to India or China).

[Buns_of_Fire]

20. "Will the last employee in the US please turn out the light.

Thank you.

Management


P.S. So long, suckers!"

[daleo]

22. Why bother turning out the lights?

The utilities will be cut off anyway.

[Joebert]

23. Funny you say lights...

My site, a call center, has been experiencing power outages recently.

It's not that we're not paying our bills, but it's not exactly a priority to fix the problem.

The city isn't having the problem.

The site hasn't been having the problem.

My BUILDING has been having the problem. The only building on campus that does 24x7 tech support. We're not overdrawing. That's impossible, considering we're down to 20-40% of where we were a few years ago.

We get the feeling that they *could* fix it, but it's cheaper to wait until they get rid of the rest of us.

[norml]

28. Plenty of jobs like mine

$6.50 per hour plus tips, no paid vacation days, no paid sick days, no health insurance, no days off, and no possibility of a raise.

I'm now working every day of the week and closing on most days.

[booksenkatz]

31. ...because God knows that our collective goal is to HELP Junior

just as Poppy and Poppy's friends have done throughout Junior's entire miserable life. So get with the program: the purpose of the U.S. economy is to HELP G.W. Bush, mm-kay? We must make him look good. Are you doing your part?
:puke:

[Mountainman]

34. The real world is what people live in, not the statistical world.

If you get no incease in income and the cost of living goes up, you have bad economic conditions. The price of gas keeps rising, the cost of medical insurance keeps rising, the cost of utilities and food keeps rising, the cost of housing keeps rising, miminum paymnents on debt keeps rising yet no increase in pay. That means in the real world the economy is not good.

Now if you are corporate America or one of Bush's wealthy constituents the costs go up also but the income goes up even more. Instead of one hummer you can now get two. Shops on Rodeo drive are doing quite well. The tax cuts and goverment spending have really helped the economy. The economy of the wealthy.

The repukes have created the world where the income gap is widening and the reports of good ecomomy have no real meaning to most people.

Also, I constantly see stories that tell us the unemployment number they use is meaningless. It does not take into account those who stopped looking for work but would work if there was work available.

[suegeo]

36. There has to be a point where we say we can't help everybody.

So the guy quoted in the article says: There has to be a point where we say we can't help everybody.

Who are we helping? The Iraqis? That's news to me. Bush and his toadies keep saying that we're fighting them (not helping them) over there, so we don't have to fight them here.

Are we fighting them or are we helping them? To me it simply seems like we're armed robbing them.

[Mountainman]

37. We are helping the war profiteers that's all

People still don't get the fact that war is Bushco's supporters business. They don't make money unless there is war. Halliburton is getting rich, oil companies will get the natural resources of Iraq, Iran and Syria and most likely Saudi Arabia and the people of Iraq will get killed and our children will die killing them.

There is nothing truthful in the idea that we are helping Iraqis or that we are fighting terrorists.

Sometimes it frightens me that people in this country are so gullible.

[PassingFair]

54. Thank you, Mountainman! A very truthful and succinct post.

Now PLEASE go and drop it into the middle of about 4 different threads around here where it will do further good.
Salute!

[Barkley]

38. Adam Judis makes me proud to be from Pasadena, Calif.

"... computer consultant and political independent. "We're spending too many lives, resources and money on Iraq. There has to be a point where we say we can't help everybody. We need to help ourselves."

-Adam Judis, 40, a Pasadena, Calif.

[BiggJawn]

39. Why, on his Radio Address....

...He says it the Enronomy is just going swimmingly!

[area51]

40. "Job Growth Up Sharply"

I just love it when I see idiot announcements out of this nazi administration that "job growth {is} up sharply". They are using statistical models to guess at job creation (which other posters have mentioned); they're not holding copies of W-2 forms in their twisted, monstrous hands.

Anyone who's lost their job in this dying economy is well aware that it's as hard to get a job now as it was during the 1st Great Depression. What we have is a Depression economy.

[ignatius 2]

42. That is because with a 0% savings rate, people using home equity loans

like ATM cards, there is a sense of "something just ain't right" in America.

[The_Casual_Observer]

43. The only jobs worth taking anymore are with the government

local, county, state,federal or defense. These are the jobs that pay benefits and have any security. Face it, the whole motherfucker has been reduced to a soviet style shit pot.

[lovuian]

45. 46 + 45 = 91 wheres the other 8% ???

these pollsters are really having to stretch these to make Bush even plausible as a President!!!

[Demeter]

46. Can't Lie Yourself to a Healthy Economy

Perhaps a con man can better his own state by lying to the rubes (until they catch on), but neither science, economics, or warfare can be "marketed" (or lied into compliance with one's wishes).

These corporate crooks that own the GOP think that Reality is a piece of paper, and that they can Enronize anything. They got another think coming. It's going to be a big one, and it's going to blow. When it doesn we have to make sure that the rules a re-written to preclude anyone ever doing this to us again.

[GOPBasher]

49. Are people starting to wake up? n/t

[DuaneBidoux]

50. Jobs gained mostly suck. Jobs lost are good ones. The only people

doing well are the well to do. It still feels like shit to be a "ground troop" (both here and in Iraq).

[Barkley]

55. Bush doesn't deserve credit since the Fed manages the bus. cycle

Its really interest rates that are responsible for a lot of the new consumer spending on cars and homes; people aren't buying and spending because they got a tax cut.

Even though the rates are going up they are still relatively low.

One puzzling issues is the stock market which typically leads in an economic boom.

My guess is that real estate investments are turing higher expected profits than private business stocks.