"Republican water torture." I like that it. It's kind of catchy.

Of course, perhaps there is no economic explanation - perhaps people are just sort of pissed off. You know, sort of a national malaise.

Well, you answered your own question.

But for information, can anyone show me exactly how they measure inflation (I've read UScensus) and unemployment. Critical info. To me there's something incomplete in the story of both.

How can the economy be doing well when the amount of new unemployment claims filed last week was much higher than anticipated? Not to mention the mean salary of an American household has not changed since the early 90's. Maybe people think the economy is doing well, maybe these same people are not getting all the numbers.

National malaise?

Your productivity goes up, your hours go up, but you get pissed on in the pay raise. You loose your job and you find downward mobility is a reality. I'll say there is a national malaise and I know where it starts. Right at the top.

I'd say that GOP and its syncophants are really the ones who are out of touch with mainstream America.

Just shouting "culture of life!" isn't making people feel economically secure.

Last time I looked, hourly workers were 60 percent of the U.S. work force. What happened?

rank and file workers != hourly workers

I'm still waiting for the Democrat solution to America's "malaise".

Maybe the fact that a large segment of the news media simply refuses to accept the possibility of a good economy, no matter what the statistics, has something to do with this "level of discomfort."

It is almost impossible to find a news story containing positive economic statistics that does not have at least several negative qualifiers in it somewhere. Heck, in this particular article, they manage to cram a lot of them in the very first paragraph.

It is almost impossible to find a news story containing positive economic statistics that does not have at least several negative qualifiers in it somewhere.

Heh. Goose, meet gander.

This is what you get when you turn the news into he-said, she-said storylines. Up to now, the GOP has benefited from this (which is why they worked the refs so hard to get the stories presented this way). Now the shoe is on the other foot, and you're upset. Boo hoo.

And secondly, your insistence that somehow people don't understand how much money they have, how much they owe, how much their healthcare costs, what the balloon on their adjustable mortgage is going to be, unless the media tells them, is pathetic. People don't listen to Fox to know how rich they feel, they look in their checkbooks.

Shorter tbrosz: If the media would just stop reporting the bad news, the good news would make so much more sense!

Actually, since the true value of inflation is higher than reported, thanks to the highly questionable "hedonics" adjustments, the 80% not at the top have lost more than five cents.

Oh, and tbrosz, people make their judgments about the economic situation by looking around and talking to their friends, not by reading the media. Also, if a news story containing positive economic statistics in today's economy did not have qualifiers, it would be a biased story (as would a story claiming that every aspect of the economy is bad). Are you asking for bias? There's a cable news channel that might work for you.

Yes, what can tbrosz do when even the facts are biased?

All this whining will disappear if these unemployed people just find some jobs, which everyone except the main stream media knows to be plentiful.

Well, they could all get work being fake tbroszs. There seems to be plenty of demand for that.

fakery is underrated. ask GWB.

anyway, real or fake, how does it matter? you get a better appreciation of how a deranged brain thinks.

Republican Water Torture is good. Let's keep it.

Also note that the official statistics have yet to capture the commodities inflation that is starting to worm its way through the economy.

Notice that commodity prices are up all around, oil, gold, copper, everything, and this commodity price rise seems correlated with world economic growth, more precisely capital spending.

Mortgage rates are up a point from last year, now about 6.2%, and this means inflation has cropped up some.

The trade deficit with China is at a record as usual.

We just had a quarter of economic growth of about 4.5%, annual rate.

Stock market hit a six year high.

The federal reserve chief hasn't a clue, according to his latest testimony.

A few actual deficit hawks are speaking up in congress.

Workers are a little pissed at cheap immigrant labor.

We are probably reaching some resource constraints.

Since lil Bush gets these things wrong most of the time, I expect a downturn for the midterm elections.

For Democrats, don't be too smug because when they all go on the hustings preaching more government spending, the voters will be more concerned with the deficit.

The explanation for the bad track ratings lies in the Iraq war, not the economy.

There's an extensive literature that points that war is the other big explanatory variable to the economy for voters state of mind and assessments of presidents.

craigie, people pick out what they want to say from these statistics and run with it.

As one example, that "decreasing hourly wage" one has become a standard. Go to the BLS statistics page, and pull up "Total Private Average Hourly Earnings, 1982 Dollars - Seasonally Adjusted."

Check the graphing function to clarify the readout. Fiddle with the "from" date. Go back to 1990. 1985. 1980. What's the big picture look like? I could write some headlines going either way from this data, depending on what I would be trying to get the reader to believe.

It's certainly true that constant dollar hourly wages have been dropping since 2004. It's also equally true that these same wages have been higher through the entire Bush administration than they were during the entire Clinton administration. True, but a bit misleading, right? If I decided not to show the data, and just made that perfectly true statement, would you spot the hole in it? That's how it's done.

Push the chart back to 1964. That's an interesting graph, isn't it? I could interpret this data any number of ways. Some of them honest.

Speaking of wrong track, what's Sully's blog slogan? "To see what's in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle" (thanks to George Orwell).

What's been in front of our noses is that Mary McCarthy, fired CIA analyst, is an expert on West Africa, with a dissertation on colonial Ghana. What else is in West Africa?

And really 5 cents out of 16.75 cents is infinitesimal.

Kevin, do you really think that a decrease of 0.29% in income can account for such a radical shift in the mood of the country?

NYT: In the most recent CBS News poll, conducted last month, 55 percent of respondents rated the economy as good, even though 66 percent of Americans said the country was on the wrong track.

Such is the backdrop for the dichotomy of a majority rating the economy good, even as an even greater majority thinks it's on the wrong track. They are brainwashed by the entirety of the conservative establishment to believe that their own worsening economic situations do not reflect the nation's overall economic condition. They hear about the deceptively low unemployment rate, not understanding how the number is manipulated not to reflect the growing masses of people who simply are not counted. They hear about a low inflation rate and do not understand how that average number hides the fact of a much greater rise in prices for essentials, which makes the effective rate much higher for anyone whose purchases are mostly composed of such items. And, of course, they hear all the excuses--residual impact from recession (ostensibly caused by Democrats), 9/11, business scandals (ostensibly caused by liberal media), Iraq war (and Afghanistan and WOT and all the other wars our prez is fighting so bravely), Katrina (and other disasters ostensibly worsened by the poor preparation of local Democratic officials)--which the administration never tires of telling us about in order to explain why, yes, we still have work to do. But the economy is strong!, they say, and it will get better if we just make the tax cuts permanent, vote Republican, and watch Fox News.

But any news will do. And, if you're still not convinced, tbrosz is here to set your mind to rest.

Donkey_Courage:

Boy! Not nearly enough time or space here.

Basically not to do anything BUsh and his buddies do, and do all those things he doesn't do. That should lead us in the right direction.

Pie in the sky, what does the country need? Complete tax code reform, personal and corporate. Reform of corporate governance especially executive pay negotiation and pension funds. Complete separaton of lobbyists, $$ and people's representatives. Universal health care. $6 a gallon gas. Legal sanctions on companies employing illegal workers, especially bad for those employing workers at sub-pay, sub-conditions. . . and more, and more.

Oh, my list goes on. Repubs worse nightmare. sweet dreams.

We won't be back on "the right track" until we start building much more energy generation capacity: nuclear, wind, solar, synfuels, oil, biofuels. It's coming, but slowly.

Better progress in Iraq would help. Intervention in Darfur would probably be a setback.

Dere's a war on too. Perhaps it influences?

Does anyone have a link to the original poll? I had it and can't find it now. Was "wrong track" a general term, or applied just to the economy?

jayarbee: I can see what's going on with the cpi and employment figures. Is there somewhere where there is an analysis of either or both?

tbrosz: 5 cents may not seem too bad unless the repubs keep telling you everything is great, and you hear that growth is 4.5% (no one actually says annualized anymore, so I wonder what the real joe thinks), and you hear one guy takes home $400 million 'cos the price of oil went up (there's a skilful exec!), and your health coverage got more expensive with higher deductibles and co-pays, everyone says you've got to save but you don't have a spare cent.

Then it may seem like you're not getting any of it.

Maybe few others here are renters, but for my money the housing market bubble hasn't been the positive (or even neutral) economic news that nearly all media coverage makes it out to be. I have to pay twice as much or more for a house now than I did five years ago where I grew up (Sacramento, CA), (which sucks worse than it did five years ago). This Bush economy is killing those without a home, and soon it'll be killing my friends who believed the hype and got interest-only loans.

I can see what's going on with the cpi and employment figures. Is there somewhere where there is an analysis of either or both?

3-5% should be 3-5 percentage points.

jayarbee: thanks anyway. I guess you can figure backward from total census numbers and projected poulation increase, and assumed illegals, etc., etc. Was hoping for an academic with time on their hands! On the cpi have read the gov blurb on it; figured there might be some analysis of any built in inaccuracies.

republicrat: there's a market driven solution; build power generation. Whoohoo! Any market forces in this, or a direction you'd like to go?
Or do we just need kW?

Dere's a war on too. Perhaps it influences?

Nah, that can't be it. The war's been over for almost 3 years. Remember when victory was declared on that carrier in San Diego.

Easy.

Things are good and getting better, but there are a few obvious things that are wrong that will eventually become problems. We currently pay more SS tax than benefits and operations require, eventually the opposite will happen. Our current system promises a higher return than our economy is likely to produce. The same applies the medicare/medicade. Common fucking sense says that the should benefits we promise should be determined by our capability to produce those benefits.

Next, we still have deficits despite interest rates rising. Previously, deficits were acceptable (not considering the wasteful way they were used) because interest rates were low. We were able to increase our debt with out increasing the portion of our product then went to interest. Interest rates on the rise means that if we countinue have deficits, interest will eat-up a larger percentage of economy. To make things worse, our debt is financed with short-term debt, so even if we eliminate deficits the percentage needed to pay interest can go still increace.

Things are good now, what we've been doing has been good, but if we keep doing things like this, we'll see problems.

aaron--
Not that we weren't here before.With Reagan we started out with high and rising interest rates. Didn't stop our fearless leader from piling on debt. Noone actually does an accounting of how much the Republicans have cost this country and its economy the last 26 years through crazy policies.

May be tbrozs, Al and the others could give us a reckoning on the 'pubs consistently conservative economic policies. May be it's neo-con economics?

Can we never learn from experience?

I was too young to remember the Reagan years. My guess would be that the deficit spending was more focused on developing our economy. My assumption that deficits should stopped when interest is above historical inflation might be too low, but I think it mostly depends on how the money is spent. At what point does the productivity growth created by a dollar of debt become canceled out by cost of additional interest is the real question that needs answering. How did economic growth rates (nominal) compare to the interest rates during the period? Were we also able to reasonably expect interest rates to fall, further reducing the debt burden relative to growth?

Well, the difference between the state of the national economy and the way people experience it is the same as the difference between temperature and the windchill factor. The thermometer may say it's a nice day in spring with 75 degrees, but you don't feel like putting on a hawaii shirt if there's a nasty wind blowing in your face all the time.

Kevin, seven words explain what Americans are feeling:

You cannot borrow your way to prosperity

I think some people are mis-interperating that data. 55% think that the economy is good (that must include a lot of those average hourly rank and file workers). 66% think were on the wrong track, meaning things may be good now, but there's good reason to think that things won't stay that way if we keep doing things the way we are.

How can the economy be doing well when the amount of new unemployment claims filed last week was much higher than anticipated? Not to mention the mean salary of an American household has not changed since the early 90's. Maybe people think the economy is doing well, maybe these same people are not getting all the numbers.

Pretty hard to be upbeat when you see the pond emptying faster than it is being filled. People are waking up and seeing that our entire way of living is unsustainable. But, no leaders are emerging to get us through the coming bottleneck that threatens not just our pocketbooks but the very life of the planet.

Stephen Kriz - that's just stupid. Of course you can. People start businesses all the time on borrowed money and become very successful.

Kevin - the economy is doing well - if Greg Mankiw says it's doing well, it's just a fact. But the administration is going in the wrong direction on Iraq, on liberty, on a lot of other things. Thus the contradiction.

My guess would be that the deficit spending was more focused on developing our economy.

The Reagan deficits, like the Bush deficits, were created less by changing the mix of spending than by cutting taxes on the rich. So if you consider making wealthy people even wealthier to be "developing our economy", then sure. To some extent, higher defense budgets contributed too. Ultimately, though, the difference between Reagan and Bush is that Reagan was restrained by a (part) Democratic congress and by relatively sane advisers who forced him to stay within the bounds of reality in terms of financing the government and keeping the country running. So when his tax cuts threatened to utterly sink the budget, he instituted some of the biggest tax increases in history to keep the financial house in some vague sense of order. Unfortunately those tax increases kept the less-progressive tax mix in place, so ultimately he mostly shifted the tax burden from the rich onto the poor, rather than actually cutting taxes overall.

People aren't happy with the economy for a reason. Here's an article that explains why Democrats should be promising to Make The American People Richer

People start businesses all the time on borrowed money and become very successful.

The United States is not a startup. When you have a mature business that has ballooning debt and only modest plausible increases in revenue, and that looks set to continue basically forever, then people are going to start selling your stock.

The United States is not a startup. When you have a mature business that has ballooning debt

Posted by: brooksfoe on April 28, 2006 at 7:23 AM | PERMALINK

Analysts look at debt to revenue ratio. For which the debt isn't balooning.

Well said Kevin. These years out to be refered to as "The Big Bush Squeeze" for the middle class.

Matt said:
Notice that commodity prices are up all around, oil, gold, copper, everything, and this commodity price rise seems correlated with world economic growth, more precisely capital spending.

Since each of the commodities has 'real' value, which doesn't change with it's price, (a gallon of gas in 1965 is the same ((almost) as a gallon of gas in 2006) AND this price rise is in all of the various commodities, couldn't it just be pointed out that the value of the money is declining, rather than, the value of the commodities is rising?

Is there a statistic that indexes all of the various traded commodities (like a stock index)?

Maybe the glass really is half empty and only the blind optimists say it's half full.

I'm quite content to see Democrats ride a wave of economic discontent back into power. But I think it's more the lack of a coherent economic policy, rather than deliberate malfeasance that has gotten us to the point. The reason the "good news" isn't resonating is that it doesn't make much sense (unemployment is low, but wages are stagnating; spending is up, but only for a few; housing is worth more, but it's a bubble, etc). That's effective for poltics, but I think the real issue is that there's a lot of free-floating uncertainty, and that is what markets, and people, like least. Things could get demonstrably better or they could get much, much worse. And if Democrats get back into power and then the economy tanks, I'm a little concerned that my party doesn't have a lot of good answers. And frankly, while I don't buy most polling data, I'd check off the "going to get much worse" column if someone asked me.

"And secondly, your insistence that somehow people don't understand how much money they have, how much they owe, how much their healthcare costs, what the balloon on their adjustable mortgage is going to be, unless the media tells them, is pathetic. People don't listen to Fox to know how rich they feel, they look in their checkbooks."

Yeah, and this has those condescending conservative elitists pissed. "Whaddya mean those stupid Main Street Americans won't believe us when we tell them they're eating cake?"

I'm still waiting for the Democrat solution to America's "malaise".

I'm still waiting for conservative blowhards to learn the difference between a noun and an adjective.

These numbers don't seem so hard to interpret.

55% of people think that their own personal circumstances are not bad right now. But very many of them believe that their current prosperity is made possible by (i) heavy borrowing from foreign nations, some of whom are not exactly friendly to US interests; (ii) a cheap energy era which they can tangibly see coming to an end with each trip to the gas station, or home heating bill; (iii) cheap foreign labor, which may be helping to give them low consumer prices now, but is inexorably advancing to the point where it will ultimately take away their own jobs, and (iv) an unsustainable government deficit driven by reckless spending and irresponsible tax cuts for those least in need of such cuts.

In a word, while a majority of Americans believe that the system is still delivering reasonably well for them personally, many of them expect decline and collapse in the future.

Ordinary Americans have their own "leading indicators" - the prices on the gas pumps; the balances on their credit card bills; the cost of their groceries; the size of their last raise, and the amount they owed to the government on April 15th.

I could interpret this data any number of ways. Some of them honest.

Why stop a trend, tbrosz?

"The average hourly wage for rank-and-file workers... has fallen by 5 CENTS in the last 4 YEARS... after inflation is taken into account."

THE AVG WAGE HAS ONLY INCREASED EQUAL TO INFLATION! WE NEED MORE TAXES AND SOCIAL PROGRAMS!!

Vote Democrat.

I think the noun/verb problem is a midwest thing, not a conservative/dem thing. In Michigan we especially have trouble with adjectives and adverbs. I still have a lot of trouble, but my big weakness is puntuation. I can rationalize the use of any punctuation in just about any place. Makes for quite a mess.

Two main things cause this. Grammar is taught very poorly and probably at the wrong ages. Second, no one is exposed to proper usage. The are no good or consistent models to learn from.

Analysts look at debt to revenue ratio. For which the debt isn't balooning.

The national debt is about 9 trillion dollars. The annual budget deficit is about $450 billion. So debt is going up about 5% a year. If the US economy does 3% growth, that's a very good year. So debt is growing at least 50% faster than revenue.

Not "ballooning", perhaps, but definitely headed in the wrong direction.

But interest on that we pay on that debt is smaller than in recent history.

THE AVG WAGE HAS ONLY INCREASED EQUAL TO INFLATION! WE NEED MORE TAXES AND SOCIAL PROGRAMS!!

If the average wage had only increased equal to inflation for the last 50 years, it would be about $15,000 a year.

If want your kids to be poor, vote Republican.

Sorry,

The expense from that debt is smaller than history.

What's the point of a revolution without ...???

All of this, "it's the media's fault" business is garbage.

First of all, the article Kevin links to is hardly bad-mouthing the economy, the headline is "U.S. Economy Still Expanding at Rapid Pace" - not "Bush is Bankrupting the Nation!!"

The majority of people in this country don’t read a newspaper, they get their news from TV, and most of those people are watching fox, which never misses an opportunity to present a rosy picture of things.

People who have an unfavorable view of the economy are those in the middle who's income has been stagnate for the last few years & I think they're getting pretty friggin' sick of hearing how great things are when they see that their paycheck isn't even keeping up with the CPI increases year over year.

lou: "Pretty hard to be upbeat when you see the pond emptying faster than it is being filled. People are waking up and seeing that our entire way of living is unsustainable. But, no leaders are emerging to get us through the coming bottleneck that threatens not just our pocketbooks but the very life of the planet."

My $.02 on why people are responding that the country is on the wrong track. Definitely the growing awareness of our unsustainable lifestyles--with resource depletion and climate change the looming reality--is part of it.

An awareness of growing inequality within the US is another. People feel that they are slipping down the status pole. They can't afford health care, their jobs are insecure, they are working more and more just to keep up. Humans feed on social comparison, and a lot of people feel like they are on the losing side. With Republicans, crowing that "government is the problem," have shredded the social contract, and people are feeling adrift and fragmented.

I think we have reached a kind of tipping point on immigration as well--immigrants, legal and illegal--are a visible presence in every day American life. If you believe the numbers, ~10% of the Mexican population is living in the US without legal authorization, and 15% of the US population is foreign born. I think many native born Americans feel as if their worlds have been overwhelmed.

I think Americans are dimly aware and uncomfortable about how our unsustainable life style affects the developing world and affects us. Maybe that is a psychological aftershock of Katrina, Iraq and Darfur and illegal residents: The rest of the world is POOR. At some level, we know that it's not fair and that it is not going to last.

The principal reason for malaise, however, is the utter failure of Republican leadership in Washington. Our president--rather than providing leadership--seems to be determined to make the problems worse.

So I agree 100% with what lou said, and I took five times the number of words to say it.

For which the debt isn't balooning.

If we are running a deficit then the debt is going up and we've been running record deficits for the past couple of years.

I think the noun/verb [sic] problem is a midwest thing, not a conservative/dem thing.

Gee, and I thought it was a right-wing talk radio thing.

(It's a noun/adjective thing, BTW. Verbs are not adjectives.)

Its amazing what you can do when you max out the credit card. Throw around a couple of billion dollars on highway projects and war contracts and you can do a lot to help unemployment.

Don't worry, your grandkids won't mind paying for it.

Want to watch a lefty go mental?

It's easy: just tell him the unemployment rate is 4.7%. Then sit back and watch him froth and spit that the statistics are phony! Phony I tell you!

Next, tell the lefty that the DOW is nearing an all-time high. The Lefty will get a crazed look and mumble about "Well it was higher under Clinton!"

In a word, while a majority of Americans believe that the system is still delivering reasonably well for them personally, many of them expect decline and collapse in the future.

A supporting anecdote. Yesterday I met a guy who had lived in the area (Silicon Valley) for the past 30 years. After we talked about other things for a while, he started going on about the economy. He said that because property taxes don't keep pace with inflation, "I pay $1000 a year and my neighbor pays $8000 a year on identical houses. That's just crazy - it's wrong."

He gets it.

Keeping taxes lower on investments is exactly what we want to do. We don't want to tax income, we want to tax consumption. It isn't about giving the rich more to spend, it's about getting them to invest in that risky venture. Lowering taxes impoves the rate of return versus risk.

Reducing taxes on non-investing class persons will only drive up inlation. You increase demand, but not supply. A cool idea would be to lower the non-investment income tax for people who invest so that they can make the transition to investor class (kind of like a 401k or TSP). It would be really neat if we could do this for people who invest their wage income into their own businesses.

The economy is only bad for those who spend their days reading and posting on the moonbat blogs. The rest of the country is working, earning, investing, and paying for this group of losers.

"For most of us, trickle-down economics is more like Republican water torture."

Zing. That was a good one Kevin.

I guess thats why people like John Kerry who married into money and was viewed as one of the richest presidential candidates in history had such a tough time touching base with the working class. After all what you described in this article is what is thought of when thought of Kennedy, Kerry, etc., etc.
More people employed than ever in history. Home ownership at its highest level ever. Lower taxes.
Labor unions dropping like flies. And you think we are on the wrong track. Now stop and think for a minute why you have become the permanent minority party, with that line of reasoning.

Good point, Jason!

I recall US Secretary of Labor Ray Marshall's comment when I asked him about underemployment during his visit to the University of Helsinki. "We don't even want of go there today." Not much has changed in 28 years; U3 still is about the only unemployment figure either the press or politicians want to talk about. Shit job and good job are doubtless subjective notions, but still if a low-skill job pays $8.19 an hour without any benefits and requires a 40-minute commute both ways, how do you think most people would classify it?

All this whining will disappear if these unemployed people just find some jobs, which everyone except the main stream media knows to be plentiful.
Posted by: tbrosz on April 28, 2006 at 2:10 AM | PERMALINK

It's not the unemployed that are the RNC's problem. It's the 3 middle 20% tranches of the population who are seeing their take home pay and net worth decline throught a combination of inflation, rising interest rates and wage stagnation.

Posted by: mycampaign on April 28, 2006 at 10:08 AM | PERMALINK

Clap louder or tinkerbell will die, clap louder...

And BTW Americans wont be fooled again. Better a patrician who fights for them, like Kerry, Kennedy and FDR, than a fake southern "Old Boy" who corrupts and destroys everything he touches. No more incompetent asses in the White House.
Hey, not a bad slogan for 2008.

This is one of those situations where reporting the variance would be a really good thing. Liberals should support policy that reduces the variance of economic indicators like income. We certainly want growth, but we should much prefer slower growth that improves most people as opposed to rapid growth that increases inequality without making many any better off. Just wait until the economic slowdown comes in the next few months. That'll be fun.

It isn't about giving the rich more to spend, it's about getting them to invest in that risky venture.

Isn't that reason they are allowed to take deductions for losses ? We let them write their mistakes off and give them breaks when they have successes.

Don't these trolls look at the polls even once in awhile? These guys take "whistling past the graveyard" to new levels of musicality.

Hint: Trash talk about winning elections carries a lot less weight when your guy is at 32 percent and falling and Karl Rove and several GOP members of Congress are looking at imminent indictment.....

It's easy: just tell him the unemployment rate is 4.7%.

How many people are employed by the pork in the most expensive highway bill ever ?

Frequency nailed me!

"At what point does the productivity growth created by a dollar of debt become canceled out by cost of additional interest is the real question that needs answering."

Government debt generally gets translated into faster immigration. The reason is that the economy adjusts to rebalance the ratio of government sector to the private sector. This is why Clinton was such a great president, he understood this, as did Hamilton and Lincoln.

Hamilton ran government debt to encourage immigration out west, specifically to encourage immigration. He understood the connection, but we have all gotten progressively stupid about this since the Civil War.

"AND this price rise is in all of the various commodities, couldn't it just be pointed out that the value of the money is declining [because of commodity price rises]"

In the long term, probably. In the short term commodity price rises is not accompanied by wage rises.

"I think we have reached a kind of tipping point on immigration as well--immigrants, legal and illegal--are a visible presence in every day American life. If you believe the numbers, ~10% of the Mexican population is living in the US without legal authorization, and 15% of the US population is foreign born."

Precisely because of the bloated government sector.

------------------------------------

Flat taxes never worked, not ever since Reagan. Progressive taxation always seems to keep government spending in balance, massive migration in check and the trade debt more in balance. Probably we are discovering, finally, that the rich are under taxed relative to the government services they receive.

Our government debt will become a burden when the returns from migrating to the USA are lower than staying put.

Conservatives always miss this but each time they foist the idea of flatter taxes, government grows like a hog and the poductivity gains are soaked up.

Jim J. In case you missed the memo, George W. will never run a race again. As for Graveyard.
The dems had 258 in the house in 1994 and now 204, had control of congress for 40 years and now out for 12, lost the senate the white house. Since re-districting in 2000 in the 2004 election only 5 incumbents either party lost.
I hope this information is not viewed as trash talk. In 2006 Rep win congress, Senate, etc....

By any meaningful measure, the Bush presidency is an economic train wreck. Real wages are down, total hours worked are down, productivity is up (but only because total hours worked are down), more people than ever before are without health insurance , the rate of job creation over the past five years is the worst since records have been kept and on and on. The budget and trade deficits, the broadest indicators of economic health, are out of control and that means two things – we are borrowing from our children to pay for a war that should never have been fought and to fund tax cuts for wealthy people who didn’t need them; and we are increasingly transferring our accumulated wealth to countries like India and China. Given these facts, things like the current unemployment rate are irrelevant.

Tbrozs (fake or real?) implied upthread that jobs are plentiful, which they are, if you want to be a waitress or bartender. However, almost one-fifth of American manufacturing jobs have vanished since Bush became president and those jobs typically paid a living wage and offered health care benefits and 401(k) retirement plans. True - there are a lot of jobs out there – flipping burgers at Burger King or waiting tables at Applebees. However, most of these jobs are low-wage, low-benefit jobs. Real jobs, that produce tangible items of lasting value that will sustain this country over the long term, are disappearing. We can’t all flip burgers for one another and expect a rosy future.

The right-wing Kool-Aid drinkers can spin this any damn way they want to, but here is the unvarnished truth - We are becoming a poorer nation under this president. Full stop.

What can we do, besides impeaching the incompetent criminals in the White House?

We could start by repealing the Bush tax cuts, pulling out of Iraq immediately and investing in a crash program to become energy independent in ten years, like the one outlined here. These actions would all make much more sense than the current downward spiral we are on currently.

And you think we are on the wrong track. Now stop and think for a minute why you have become the permanent minority party, with that line of reasoning.
Posted by: mycampaign

Oh boy daveyo is back!

"Tbrozs (fake or real?) implied upthread that jobs are plentiful, which they are, if you want to be a waitress or bartender."

This is the trickle up theory. When the American middle class is overburdened by government growth, they get a productivity increase by farming out low wage service jobs to immigrants. The freed up labor at the bottom adds more working capability to the middle class. We just rebuild the economic stratification with immigrant labor and the government sector rebalances.

When we tax the rich fairly, two things happen. The government releases resources, in the form of labor, and the top layers shrink. Hence you get an internal rebalance without relying om immigrant labor.

The government sector shrinks because the apparent cost of goverment increases as taxes on the rich increase, causing less demand for more governemnt.

We want an economy where some poor slob can go out and take a low end job without the worry that government soaks up all the free resources. A lot of us would enjoy, actually, getting out and working some weak ass job, or run the corner gocery store, meeting the neighbors. Wages are less important except you and I know we are wasting our time when we see that half of our grocery customers are earning wages from our property taxes, especially when their earning will go on long after we quit working because of government pensions and insurace.

Amen to every one of you!

High home prices sound good except to the guy who had to pay top price for a place to live that is far away from his work and the price of gas takes off.

Even for me who bought my home 17 years ago the higher valuation does me no good unless I want to borrow money or sell, and I don't want to do either.

Then let's take stocks. Sure most people now own stock, but its tied up in a 401K where we can't spend it, and the value dropped 50% from Bush and has finally regained itself.

I can't spend the 401K and the value may or may not be there in the future when I can.

So the two things I can't spend are increasing in value. Big whippy deal.

In the meantime my wages are stagnant and are not keeping up with the increased cost of gas, healthcare (I pay more every year) and college, the other expense I'm currently paying.

I'm hurting in the pocketbook - in the weekly budget, and I'm sick of media telling me how great somebody else is doing. I know when I've got extra cash and when I don't!

I don't have extra cash and I know I'm still better off than most people.

I want every gas pump in America to have a sign stating the CEO of Exxon got a $400,000,000.00 bonus for the last 3 months because he 'earned' it!

Despite the periodical hue and cry about the supposedly woeful state of science and engineering education, the sad fact is that the number of tech savy people is much larger than the number of jobs that can adequately use their skills.

So the problem is not just concentrated in the low paying jobs, wherein the rate of real wage increases appears to be zero or negative, but also in middle levels where most people are underemployed. This may be an inevitable result of automation brought about by obvious technological trends, but the current political leadership has proved itself to be so incompetent and clueless and dishonest about everything else that it is very hard to escape the conclusion that the Bushistas are more than slightly responsible for this state of affairs.

How about this?

Welfare for everyone. We evenly distribute a percentage of tax revenue to every citizen.

Repubs better hope that their "permanent majority" lasts longer than Dubya's "political capitol".

Our economic uptick is a house of cards. Too much funny money (ie borrowing) being thrown around for this uptick to last.

When the other shoe drops and all this borrowing comes due, there will be trouble.

You can't blame the average Joe though. He's just emulating Uncle Sam - spend, spend, spend off of borrowed money.

Beijing and Riyadh must be laughing and laughing hard, knowing that they control most of our nation's finances, whether it be US debt from government spending or Fannie Mae bonds.

Insurmountable national debt, GCC, energy costs exploding with no concrete plans for alternatives, a trillion dollar quagmire in Iraq with Iran on deck, health care expenses skyrocketing, a pandemic of some sort probable in next couple decades...

Don't worry, just drink the kool-aid.

It's simple, really. Unemployment is low, and inflation is low outside of certain sectors of the economy. So by traditional standards, the economy is doing well.

But wages are stagnant except at the top, and the costs that are rising most rapidly are energy, housing, health care, and college education... which add up to the overwhelming majority of a typical middle class family budget.

If you're a highly paid professional, it's a terrific economy... you're seeing double digit growth. If all you want out of life is to punch a clock 9 to 5 and ride the bus to work, it's a great economy... unemployment has rarely been lower.

But if you're in the middle... your cost of living is rising faster than your income. And no matter how hard tbrosz and the rest of the trickle-down chorus push Americans to look only at one or two traditional economic benchmarks and sing hosannas to the market, people aren't stupid. They know when they're getting shafted.

In all seriousness, though, I hope the Republicans continue to blame the media and insist the economy is great and Iraq is going well, and insult the intelligence of the American public. Let them turn into the elitist "we know better than you" caricatures they've painted liberals to be for all these years.

Keep it up, tbrosz. You guys are going to get creamed at the polls in November.

Stephen:

...almost one-fifth of American manufacturing jobs have vanished since Bush became president

If you go to the BLS site and look up manufacturing employment numbers, you'll see that the decline began in January of 1998, and the real power dive started at the end of 2000. It wasn't about Bush. Guess what? I don't think it was about Clinton, either.

Something else is going on with manufacturing jobs, and it would be great to find out what, but that kind of analysis isn't going to happen around here because everyone is stuck on "Bush sucks."

We could start by repealing the Bush tax cuts, pulling out of Iraq immediately and investing in a crash program to become energy independent in ten years...

Tax increases, bail out of Iraq, and a massive new government program? Have Democrats run on that this fall, and tell me how that goes.

The good news is that there is only one idiot left here who appears to make any sense albeit only superficially.

Repubs are so done for.

lib, nice going. we don't want anyone else with a different view point to come to our site. Go get em...

Analysts look at debt to revenue ratio. For which the debt isn't balooning.
Posted by: McA on April 28, 2006 at 7:46 AM | PERMALINK

Problem is, the "revenue" picture is a very narrow slice of reality. The CEO of Exxon is getting that revenue. I'm not. Your analysts are suffering from ivory-towerism, because their golf-buddies take them on trips to Scotland. I'd happily take an analyst on a trip to Scotland for some golf. Just to show him the side of the revenue picture he's missing. Unfortunately, without that revenue, I can't.

'Tax increases, bail out of Iraq, and a massive new government program? Have Democrats run on that this fall, and tell me how that goes.'
--tbrosz

(1) It isn't a "tax increase". It's restoring tax rates to where what the government takes in is equal to what it lays out, which is what Clinton's legacy was. We had a budget SURPLUS under him, you'll recall. (2) We shouldn't have been Iraq in the 1st place. There are no WMDs, we have Saddam in custody. Ta Ta. (3) How is a massive government program to become energy independent worse than a massive government program to kill Iraq's, a/k/a the American military? One produces lasting tangible benefits to America and the other doesn't. I'd run on that any day of the week.

Republicans can only win elections by lying, cheating and keeping the American people living in fear. My sense is that the American people want truth, peace and a vision for the future that doesn't involve death and killing. The Republican Party has none of those any more.

Don't be so damn smug about your positions. The American people may be smarter than the GOP gives them credit for.

tbrosz, you'd do well to read ajl's post at 11:23 a.m. And then read it again. And then one more time.

But wages are stagnant except at the top, and the costs that are rising most rapidly are energy, housing, health care, and college education... which add up to the overwhelming majority of a typical middle class family budget.

Exacto-mundo.

And you know what? I used to think I was one of those 'highly paid professionals' that are doing fine, but no more. My highly paid profession is moving to India. Computer programs are being written in India and tested in China.

lib, nice going. we don't want anyone else with a different view point to come to our site. Go get em...
Posted by: ckelly

Alright! I've been parodied. I've hit the big time. Woo Hoo! I'd like to thank the Academy, my Mom & Dad, and all the little trollies out there.

But I really wanted to say "Frequency nailed it". Maybe next time.

Truly a fabulous post ajl. I chuckle when the talking heads insist that the economy is so great and John Q. Public should be so happy. Though I've lost faith in the electorate in the past, they aren't stupid.

ckelly, I did think that was a weird thing for you to say. But last night Don P's impersonation of me had me murdering the VP, so it's all part of the game, I guess.

We are in the midst of an Inflation/Debt driven economy. Inflated housing prices are creating artificial 'wealth' that is being pumped back into the economy.

Toss another trillion or so on war spending (borrowed money) into the mix and things look nice and rosy... until the proverbial chicken comes home to roost.

Of course, one must realize that the govt is already 'cooking the books' to make things look better... the 'real reality' of our economic situationis worse than things (currently) appear.

. . .and I was going to get a job working the drive through at McDonald's, but it turns out they want to route those calls through a remote call center.

Yup. Outsource the drive-through order taking.

Currently the pilot program is going to North Dakota (with the lowest minimum wage in the country) but you just know where the orders will eventually be going.

Wasn't there a scifi book that predicted in the future the only jobs in America would be cutting hair and prostitution, because everything else would be automated or outsourced?

And here I never learned to cut hair. Looks like I'm SOL!

ckelly: I chuckle when the talking heads insist that the economy is so great and John Q. Public should be so happy. Though I've lost faith in the electorate in the past, they aren't stupid.

I think we've had more than enough evidence the past five years that half the electorate will swallow any load of horse doo if they think it's not costing them anything. But pinch their pocketbooks this hard, and they do wake up swinging.

Tripp: Currently the pilot program is going to North Dakota (with the lowest minimum wage in the country) but you just know where the orders will eventually be going.

DAMN funny!

Kevin,

I really want to help you out on this.

1. The average hourly wage is suppressed by the high influx of illegal immigrant workers - something conservatives are against.

2. The feeling of pessimism in the country is due to a overwhelmingly liberal press which irrespective of the true statistics seeks to downgrade the economic news when a Republican is in office - something conservatives are against.

If you wish to counteract these things you can do your part by not working for a liberal magazine and by voting for conservatives. Simple solution.

I hope this helps.

Nick, when you're squeaking by on a low hourly wage, a 0.29% decrease is, in fact, a big deal. Especially when the price of everything from gas to groceries is increasing at the same time. If you're making $300 a week and have $25 disposable income a month, but the price of groceries alone has increased by $10, how do you take care of those "little things" that pop up?ANY change in that balance can be financially disastrous and would most certainly effect one's mood.

Central banks in Europe, the U.S. and Japan have been tightening rates. This past quarter economic growth of 4.5% is higher than a sustainable 3%. Japan, in particular, had been inflating with interest rates near zero, and this has stopped. Asset prices have risen too fast to sustain, and another round of belt tightening will see a significant sell off.

China continues to increase productivity in the face of rising commodity prices, but they could be reaching a limit. With per capita oil use about 10% of ours, they will have to see that increase rapidly to get additional productivity.

If the economy grows to fast, high long term interest rates, due to resource constraints, will cause asset sell off, like me, I am selling my house at the peak of the market.

Modern Republicans always grow government, modern Democrats always shrink it. Actually, this is the classic pattern we are returning to.

Because of the Republican government growth, the private sector has little room to maneuver and we end up with short term growth spurts and short term contractions, nothing ever settles and it is up to the Fed to keep things balanced, but they have less and less room to maneuver.

The best case scenario would be another round of belt tightening, a raise in the upper income tax rate, a slow down and rationalization of the Chinese economy, and a small but corrective downturn just in time for the election.

To tell you haw precarious things are, even Hillary looks good. When a small government libertarian likes Hillary, then you know something has gone wrong.

Jim J. In case you missed the memo, George W. will never run a race again.

Sigh. daveyo (aka mycampaign), don't you ever get tired of feeding us this hidebound talking point?

But let me guess - Bush won 80% of the counties in America, right?

I have to say, and I'm not being sarcastic, that I'm really glad John Hansen posts here. He's a textbook case of a certain kind of lifelong Republican's steely determination to avoid reconsidering any of his cherished misconceptions. Jobs, healthcare, education, human sexuality--the topic doesn't matter; people here politely and patiently present the facts to him and he literally sticks his fingers in his ears and sings loudly.

He's not motivated by malice and spite, so he's not like the trolletariat here. But he is consumed by fear of changing paradigms. We can learn a lot from this fellow about how this kind of voters minds' work...not all of them are as immune as John is to reason, but you have to figure out which ones are salvageable and which ones are a wash.

Two observations:

Stagnant real wages don't account for bad economic poll and right-track numbers. Iraq and gas prices do. Nothing correlates with Presidential job approval more than gas prices. When they go up, personal spending drops on other items, consumer products makers see inventories rise, they make big layoffs, unemployment rises, recession comes - all while prices keep going up because gas is a commodity. Stagflation. That's why gas prices are so important, and outweigh every other economic indicator. Oh, and they're posted on every major street corner.

The second point is about deficits. Americans don't care about deficits unless they think the government is failing. They didn't care about deficits in the 1980s, and they didn't care in the early 2000s. But they did in 1992, and they will now.

If you go to the BLS site and look up manufacturing employment numbers, you'll see that the decline began in January of 1998, and the real power dive started at the end of 2000. It wasn't about Bush. Guess what? I don't think it was about Clinton, either.

That's not even remotely true. It was and is about Bush to the extent that he has not exercised the leadership to address the issue with a comprehensive policy. Whether or not a president inherits an issue it's his or her job to address it. If the pressing issues of our time are not Bush's challenge to address, whose are they?

Even worse, Bush has celebrated the bleeding of manufacturing jobs out of the economy as just another one of the blessings of globalism, reassuring us that somehow we'll all be better off for losing these jobs in the future. And of couse he's done the same thing recently with the low paying jobs that have gone to immigrants.

So not only is he guilty of not taking responsibility for this issue, he's doubly at fault for cheering it on as a way to avoid addressing it.

Of course I want to talk to people with different and opposing points of view.

But I see no purpose in considering hackneyed viewpoints coming from those whose main objective is to defend the Bushistas at all costs no matter what the facts.

Let us face it. All the conservatives who post here are Bushlickers.

I say good riddance to them.

John Hansen,

when a Republican is in office - something conservatives are against.

As they should be. Borrow and spend and big government are not usually something true conservatives support.

But I get your point.

Once a person believes the basic 'distrust the media' premise you can get them to believe almost anything else.

The problem this time is that people are looking at their personal paychecks, bank balances, and bills. It is pretty hard to get people to disbelieve those things.

But carry on you lovable nut! Their must be a raisin in that turd *somewhere*.

...when a Republican is in office - something conservatives are against.

I'm against Republicans in office also.

shortstop:

Yeah, I read it.

But wages are stagnant except at the top, and the costs that are rising most rapidly are energy, housing, health care, and college education... which add up to the overwhelming majority of a typical middle class family budget.

The problem here is that nobody is really looking at root causes of economic shifts. I threw out a broad clue with the manufacturing jobs, and nobody cared. Try to THINK for a change. There are changes in the world's economic layout that go far beyond who is president at any given time.

What would a Democratic president be doing? Raising taxes? Putting tariffs on imports? Making outsourcing illegal? Is pricing U.S. products off the top of the scale going to help things? This isn't as easy as "Bush sucks," is it?

Jobs as an issue? Hell, I'll throw the Democratic Party some free advice:

Forget new taxes, unless it's about tax reform. Although liberals will never believe it, killing and eating the rich isn't going to create any middle-class jobs, just like kneecapping Exxon isn't going to put cheap gas in your car.

Which reminds me: Don't run for office on energy costs. It won't take long to show who has been largely responsible for squashing nuclear power, domestic fuel exploration and refinement, and pretty much every method of dealing with the supply end of the equation.

One issue that does have some potential for Democrats, as Kevin has often tried to hammer home, is single-payer health care (private providers paid from taxpayer funds). Selling points:

- Has at least the potential to reduce health care costs for businesses, although nobody has shown me any hard numbers on taxes/insurance costs trade-offs. (business taxes should be the primary source for funds at the beginning to reduce the impact on money flow). There would be other important caveats.

- Would increase employee mobility, with the same kind of positive results that lower capital gains taxes have on the mobility of capital. This is a very big deal, and I don't think it gets much play.

- Would take a large load off of lower-income people.

Bingo. Jobs and votes! Union guys and managers cheering! What's not to like?

Now, I personally don't think it will work out well in the long run, for a number of reasons. There will be strings attached to those government payments, and someday those strings will become anchor chains. They always do (see also: education). But that's another story.

I also don't think the Democrats can carry it off anyway. The temptation to focus on demonizing the existing system instead of showing how everyone might succeed will be too much.

It's good to look at the details:
ht