Comparing Reagan and Obama on unemployment

[shira]

All these ridiculous comparisons to this president and that president. Screw that shit. I want performance out of the one we have right now. I don't care who came before him, I don't care what he inherited and I really don't care who's to blame.

Our dear leader is hell bent on social justice. Until the light bulb goes off in that head of his and he's willing to do what's needed to spur job growth in this country, we're going to be stuck in this wretched mess. Biden said that there is "no possibility" of restoring lost jobs. Is this an attitude garnered by design? I believe so.

Everything this administration does is counter to common sense principles in regards to the economic situation and job growth. Yet those with the mindset of adolescents cheer him on with vigor.

We're experiencing the longest period of extended joblessness in history and there is no end in sight. It's not fate, it's not due to the evils of previous presidents or filthy capitalists. It's due to the policies of those in power. A leader and his staff, advisor's and czars with virtually no experience running anything but their mouths. People who have never run a business, never had to make payroll and to top it off are anti-business too.

A great combination if you want to "fundamentally transform America". Transform it into a nation based on a litany of failed social models. We're in deep, deep shit kiddies and we're being force fed shovels to dig us in deeper, not out.

"The longest period of extended joblessness in history"??? Not even close:

 

[ProfJohn]

Craig, I tried to read your post but I can't take all the BS.

Make it easy on me and everyone else.

Please post one piece of evidence that Bill Clinton wanted a balanced budget. Find a speech of his when he spoke of a balanced budget. Post a document from his administration to spoke of a balanced budget. Find ONE piece of evidence pre-1995 that would leave one to believe that Bill Clinton was working on a balanced budget.

Good luck, because such a piece does not exist.

One more thing. Go back and look at those two budgets I posted and look at the spending contained in both of them.

In his 1996 budget Clinton projected spending $1.9 trillion in 2000.
In his 1997 budget Clinton projected spending $1.7 trillion in 2000.

Why did Clinton decide to cut spending by $200 billion? What changed between his 1996 and 1997 budgets?

 

[Jhhnn]

Craig, I tried to read your post but I can't take all the BS.

Make it easy on me and everyone else.

Please post one piece of evidence that Bill Clinton wanted a balanced budget. Find a speech of his when he spoke of a balanced budget. Post a document from his administration to spoke of a balanced budget. Find ONE piece of evidence pre-1995 that would leave one to believe that Bill Clinton was working on a balanced budget.

Good luck, because such a piece does not exist.

One more thing. Go back and look at those two budgets I posted and look at the spending contained in both of them.

In his 1996 budget Clinton projected spending $1.9 trillion in 2000.
In his 1997 budget Clinton projected spending $1.7 trillion in 2000.

Why did Clinton decide to cut spending by $200 billion? What changed between his 1996 and 1997 budgets?

Gawd but you're lame. If anything, we should have learned that words are meaningless when it comes to deeds. Reagan professed to abhor the magnitude of the national debt, less than $1T when he took office, then proceeded to triple it over the next 8 years.

It doesn't really matter what Clinton said, it matters what he did, and he steadily reduced deficits over his term in office until they became negligible. Republicans of the era attempted to cut taxes in response to decreasing deficits, repeatedly. When they got Clinton out of the Whitehouse and GWB in, they did cut taxes, repeatedly, contributing to the unprecedented deficits created in that timeframe. They paid a lot of lip service to smaller govt and reduced spending while doing just the opposite.

Deeds, not words, are what constitute truth, and anybody who's not a semi professional propagandist or a blind partisan realizes that.

 

[ericlp]

If Obama manages to beat those will he be getting credit for saving the economy like Reagan did ?

Reagan did what? Doesn't really look like he did much saving when looking at the chart.

Obama and Reagan are in two entirely different situation. Obama is gonna be harder because most of all the good (middle class) jobs are not even in the country any more. Too much outsourcing (jobs lost). Don't know if we can every bring them back... but good luck.

If Obama does get employment back down to reasonable levels then yeah. He would deserve some sort of credit but only if your not a die hard republican since if you are one Obama could walk on water and they would make up some sort of BS for him....

 

[ericlp]

Gawd but you're lame. If anything, we should have learned that words are meaningless when it comes to deeds.

No use arguing with a republican. If bush didn't do it then according to PF it didn't happen. You won't change this robot's mind. He's not programmed for that. Good luck tho... Your gonna need it!

It is shocking to read Walter Moyer’s letter (May 22) claiming that Republicans are not the source of the financial meltdown. When George W. Bush took office, Clinton left him with a budget surplus, 4 percent unemployment and the beginning of a paydown of the national debt with full payment expected in 10 years.
When Obama took office, Bush left him with a national debt that had, in 2008 alone, increased by more than $1 trillion; two wars that were totally unpaid for, adding billions every week to the national debt; and more than 550,000 jobs lost each month. Clinton’s budget surplus was given away in tax cuts to the rich.
In 16 months, Obama has turned the job loss into a monthly gain; in April there was a gain of 290,000 jobs. Unfortunately, we must continue to pay for Bush’s wars: $73 billion in 2010 for Afghanistan alone.
Moyer lauded Ronald Reagan, forgetting to note that in the Reagan recession in 1982 the unemployment rate was 10.8 percent; more than 10 million Americans were out of work.
When you compare the Reagan-Bush record with the Clinton-Obama record, it’s pure chutzpah for Moyer to blame the Democrats.

 

[Jhhnn]

Shucks, ericlp, I wouldn't try to convince PJ of anything. I'm not sure he actually believes any of it himself. He could just be a paid mouthpiece for some wing of the republican party for all I know.

I do think it's necessary to counter his rhetoric, his pitch to the uninformed. It's emotionally appealing in the way he tells people what they want to hear, frames it in ways that basically massage the erroneous zones in a lot of people's thinking. He's slick.

The best I can hope for is that a few lurkers will get hip to his act, reject the shuck and jive, learn to think outside the box and outside the carefully constructed frames the rightwing has developed and exploited so well for decades...

 

[Craig234]

Craig, I tried to read your post but I can't take all the BS.

You react to the truth like the Wicked Witch reacts to water.

Make it easy on me and everyone else.

Please post one piece of evidence that Bill Clinton wanted a balanced budget. Find a speech of his when he spoke of a balanced budget. Post a document from his administration to spoke of a balanced budget. Find ONE piece of evidence pre-1995 that would leave one to believe that Bill Clinton was working on a balanced budget.

Good luck, because such a piece does not exist.

This is a nice cheap debate trick frame the debate to use a twisting of the facts.

For example, a birther using this technique might say, avoiding the real issue, "show me ONE court that has EVER ruled Barack Obama was born in the US. There aren't any!"

Buy into their twisted framing, and you admit there's no such court ruling - implying they're right about about something they can't win on, what the evidence says on the real issue.

So you don't want to talk about the facts on Clinton's deficit reduction - you want to ask, "show me where he said he wanted a balanced budget early on!"

I don't have to show that, to show what I said about his deficit reduction *policies* - and what he said about balancing the budget years away when estimates shows a big deficit.

You want to mislead people by not paying any attention to what he did.

But having said that there is zero need to play by your twisted irrelevant demand:

Please post one piece of evidence that Bill Clinton wanted a balanced budget. Find a speech of his when he spoke of a balanced budget. Post a document from his administration to spoke of a balanced budget. Find ONE piece of evidence pre-1995 that would leave one to believe that Bill Clinton was working on a balanced budget.

Seconds of googling finds:

The Republicans OWN ad in 1996 about Clinton on the balanced budget before 1995:

Text: "(Announcer): For more than three years, you've heard a lot of talk from Bill Clinton about balancing the budget. (Clinton video clip from June 1992): I would present a five-year plan to balance the budget.

There's Clinton's nomination acceptance speech 1992, which doesn't promise to balance the budget in a time frame but certainly 'is a speech where he spoke of a balanced budget':

He promised to balance the budget, but he hasn’t even tried. In fact, the budgets he has submitted to Congress nearly doubled the debt. Even worse, he wasted billions and reduced our investments in education and jobs. We can do better.

He won’t streamline the federal government and change the way it works, cut 100,000 bureaucrats and put 100,000 new police officers on the streets of American cities, but I will.

He’s never balanced a government budget, but I have 11 times.

As a biographer noted:

The budget deficit inherited from the Bush presidency was staggering. Bill Clinton felt a commitment to the kind of fiscal politics out of which Republican presidents had made rhetorical hay for two generations, while presidents from both parties allowed debt to pile up.

Most of the platform that had been the foundation for Clinton’s victory, which featured a menu of social programs, was instantly challenged. Ironically, those first 100 days, while the bottom sometimes seemed to be falling out of the new presidency, the course was actually set for a historic economic recovery and boom.

Clinton alone among contemporary presidents grasped the possibilities of the global economy, and what the explosive power of America’s technical invention & new industries could do for the domestic economy. He became the first modern president to actually exercise, as opposed to merely talk about, the fiscal discipline necessary to cut and even balance the federal budget.

Or Hillary's own account of the history in 1993:

Bill's economic plan [finally passed in August 1993]. Before the vote, I had spoken with wavering Democrats. In the end, not a single Republican voted for the balanced budget package. It squeaked through the House by one vote, and Al Gore had to vote to break a 50-50 vote tie.

The plan wasn't everything the Administration had wanted, but it signaled the return of fiscal responsibility for the government and the beginning of an economic turnaround for the country, unprecedented in American history. The plan slashed the deficit in half; extended the life of Medicare Trust Fund; expanded a tax cut called the Earned Income Tax Credit, which benefited fifteen million lower-income working Americans' reformed the student loan program, saving taxpayers billions of dollars; and created empowerment zones an enterprise communities that provided tax incentives for investing in distressed communities. To pay for these reforms, the plan raised taxes on gasoline and on highest-income Americans. [/quote]

As the quote above notes, about the 'return to fiscal responsibility in deed not talk paving the way for the federal deficit', the issue is his deficit reduction, now when he said the words 'balanced budget'. Saying those words is a cheap debate trick to try to hide the real issue - which you are even wrong on. It's like a birther saying, "show me a hint of a birth certificate for Barack Obama!" And then the Hawaii certificate is produced. 'Oh.'

You say 'you won't find one mention of anything about a balanced budget', while the Republicans own ad says: "For more than three years, you've heard a lot of talk from Bill Clinton about balancing the budget." Your 1996-1997 little point is more of the same trying to obfuscate the real issue of his deficit policies with cherry picked bits.

But hey, wait a week, and you can re-post the same dishonest claims ignoring all the facts here, like you have again and again.

 

[Craig234]

While I'm at it, let's look at some bullet points from the Clinton administration:

* In February 2000, the United States entered the 107th consecutive month of economic expansion -- the longest economic expansion in history.

The longest expansion in history. Partly a bubble, but still. The American people deserve to be ashamed for voting that out, and voting in the Republicans.

And as my previous quote showed, who deserves the credit - a lot of bipartisanship? Look at the critical 1993 vote.

Not a single Republican, the House by one vote, the Senate by a tie broken by Gore.

The Democrats get complete credit for that policy.

* 22.2 million new jobs have been created since 1993, the most jobs ever created under a single Administration -- and more new jobs than Presidents Reagan and Bush created during their three terms. 91 percent (19.9 million) of the new jobs have been created in the private sector, the highest percentage in 50 years.
* Unemployment is down from 7.5 percent in 1992 to 4.0 percent in June 2000, and in April the unemployment rate was the lowest in over 30 years. The unemployment rate has fallen for seven years in a row, and has remained below 5 percent for 34 months in a row.
* The poverty rate has fallen from 15.1 percent in 1993 to 12.7 percent in 1998. That’s the lowest poverty rate since 1979 and the largest five-year drop in poverty in nearly 30 years.

Lowest poverty since... 1979. The last year a Democrat was president.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

"The longest period of extended joblessness in history"??? Not even close:

Here's a better chart...curious why you would pick one that only goes to 1964.

 

[SammyJr]

China has no problem importing the things they cant make or cant produce. That is of course how trade works. And yes china does export quite a bit of low value products while they import quite a bit of high value products.

Of course they don't, but then they figure out how to produce it themselves. Its fantasy to think that we will ever have a comparative advantage over the Chinese for their markets or that we will always have some magic product that they can't or won't duplicate.

Foreign engineers can be just as good as US ones. That is reality. We will compete against them and there is no stopping that. You can bury your head in the sand, but those foreign engineers are not going away. They can work for US companies abroad or foreign companies competing against US companies. Take your pick.

Compete? Again, Chinese engineers are really, really cheap. Another part of the Free Trade Religion is that somehow American workers will reduce their wages to match their Chinese counterparts yet somehow manage to pay 1st world prices for goods.

The belief is that eventually, Chinese labor prices will rise to match American levels. How long will that take? How many generations of Americans will have to pretend that we're competing and enjoy lower standards of living than our parents, just to satisfy the Free Trade religion?

And much of the outsourced IT work came back because it did not work out as well as planned.(time zones, language, rising labor costs overseas,..)

A temporary setback for the offshorers.

The world economy is moving to services as the primary job creator as manufacturing jobs are disappearing all over due to automation. This is not going to change either. We will all adapt.

Bullshit. There are emerging markets all over the worlds, clamoring for manufactured goods. Even automated factories need workers. The Chinese know this. We arogantly ignore this, pretending we're too good, and our population suffers.

Actually that was greenspan talking about the difficulties of classification of jobs. He used fast food as an example. Yes fast food takes several raw materials, processes them and produces a final product. It context it is a fine example.

Its a fine example of the disconnect the top 0.0001% has with the average American. Elitism at its finest.

Reality is services(nurses, mechanics, IT, plumbers,....) pay more than manufacturing on average. Services is far more than cashiers and burger flippers.

Can everyone be a nurse, plumber, mechanic, etc? Do we have infinite demand for those? Nope. You're looking at educated service jobs and pretending that they're for everyone. There are millions of Americans who can't do those jobs due to various limitations but they need jobs and the service industry jobs they can do don't pay the bills. Manufacturing was a good option for those people until our Government decided we didn't want those.

Humanity is diverse. Everyone has different weaknesses and strengths and opportunities and limitations. A major fallacy of the Free Trade religion is that Americans can retrain for anything and using that to limit the diversity in available jobs.

You are absolutely right there, Education is key. Those with education are doing much better in this recession than those without education. If you do not even graduate high school, things are really bad. If you have a degree from college unemployment is around 5% for that bracket( theoretical full employment).

Not everyone can be educated. Many jobs that "require" college education don't really need it. This philosophy is a make-work program for the education sector.

Actually it is quite the opposite. Most of these high paid jobs have to be done here as the work is here.

And that's where the H1-Bs come in. If you can't send the job overseas? Import someone to do it for 50% of the American wage. The Free Trade religion has thought of everything!

 

[rudder]

In Jan 2009 there were 21.142.000 government employees, now there are are 20.326.000. So there are actually 816.000 fewer government employees now than when Obama took office. In other words your argument is completely false.

You can check the data for yourself if you want, it can be found right here:http://bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpsatab8.htm

Fail data is well fail.

The Federal workforce will grow by 150,000+ people this year.

In 2008 the democratic controlled congress changed some mandates that had allowed contracted workers to compete for Federal jobs. Due to the changes the contractors got priced out of competition because the change said the companies going for a particular job would have to have the same benefit package as Federal workers. Can you say pension? Which most companies have abandoned.

Good article:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303828304575180421298413374.html

With in 2 months of obama taking office he began his practice of insourcing. That is... all these jobs that were awarded to contractors would be reclaimed by new Federal employees.

The Federal workforce is not shrinking.

 

[Anarchist420]

Reagan's policies were pretty similar to Obama's actually. Tax increases, stimulus, favoring high interest rates, huge deficits, and killing innocent brown people by the masses.

 

[rudder]

No use arguing with a republican. If bush didn't do it then according to PF it didn't happen. You won't change this robot's mind. He's not programmed for that. Good luck tho... Your gonna need it!

It is shocking to read Walter Moyer’s letter (May 22) claiming that Republicans are not the source of the financial meltdown. When George W. Bush took office, Clinton left him with a budget surplus, 4 percent unemployment and the beginning of a paydown of the national debt with full payment expected in 10 years.
When Obama took office, Bush left him with a national debt that had, in 2008 alone, increased by more than $1 trillion; two wars that were totally unpaid for, adding billions every week to the national debt; and more than 550,000 jobs lost each month. Clinton’s budget surplus was given away in tax cuts to the rich.
In 16 months, Obama has turned the job loss into a monthly gain; in April there was a gain of 290,000 jobs. Unfortunately, we must continue to pay for Bush’s wars: $73 billion in 2010 for Afghanistan alone.
Moyer lauded Ronald Reagan, forgetting to note that in the Reagan recession in 1982 the unemployment rate was 10.8 percent; more than 10 million Americans were out of work.
When you compare the Reagan-Bush record with the Clinton-Obama record, it’s pure chutzpah for Moyer to blame the Democrats.

Please go back and take some high school level U.S. Government classes. Clinton did not leave Bush a surplus. Clinton had nothing to do with a surplus. Well if you count repeatedly sending budgets to the Republican congress that kept rejecting them until Clintons deficit spending was reduced. Is that the surplus you are talking about?

It was the Republican congress in the mid 90's that had promised to balance the budget... not Clinton.

I will agree that Bush was a RINO.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

I seem to recall my dad telling me about something he called "the Great Depression"...

Just a couple more years to go. The difference is that we were able to pull out of the Great Depression. This time we will discover that we are not in a mere temporary cyclical recession or depression, but a permanent structural change brought about by an economic force called Global Labor Arbitrage (foreign outsourcing, H-1B and L-1 visas, mass immigration).

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Not really a valid comparison. Reagan was President when the wholesale offshoring of American industry had just begun. Obama is President after 30 years of industry moving offshore. Its truly amazing that our unemployment isn't closer to 20% or 30%. This is somewhat to Obama's credit, but he lacks the balls to tackle the underlying problem.

Yup.

In Reagan's defense, unemployment was measured differently back then and today's real numbers are probably above 15-30%. See the Shadowstats site. (The Shadowstats number is 22.5%.)

In Obama's defense, as you said, Global Labor Arbitrage was not in full swing. Zero or almost no knowledge-based jobs had been outsourced, and far fewer manufacturing jobs had been outsourced. Also, we didn't have the massive amount of illegal immigration that we have today.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Not really a valid comparison. Reagan was President when the wholesale offshoring of American industry had just begun. Obama is President after 30 years of industry moving offshore. Its truly amazing that our unemployment isn't closer to 20% or 30%. This is somewhat to Obama's credit, but he lacks the balls to tackle the underlying problem.

Will he even acknowledge the problem?

 

[WhipperSnapper]

The reality is far more jobs have been lost to automation than offshoring of jobs. US industrial output grows in most years.

Technological advance, in other words. However, the money saved from that increased efficiency should cycle back into the U.S. economy to create other good jobs. Oh wait--we don't have all of those factory and robot maintenance jobs because the manufacturing work is now being done in other countries.

It also doesn't help that many knowledge-based services that those manufacturing cost savings might fund are being done in other countries or by foreigners on H-1B and L-1 visas.

Perhaps some of the cost savings could be used for new home construction? The illegals are working those construction jobs, whattya know.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

That depends on if you think a rising middle class is china is better for workers here or not. I generally think it is.

It is, but not if it comes at the direct expense of American jobs. If the Chinese had their own self-sufficient internal economy that wasn't leaching off of our own, then it would be good (ignoring issues like the demand for oil and rising oil prices).

That is just false. Manufacturing output continues to rise every year in the US, it just requires fewer and fewer people to do it.

The U.S. population also continues to increase every year, so perhaps what we need to measure is manufacturing output per capita? Also, as you said, more manufacturing can be done because of better technology resulting in cost savings allowing people to consume even more manufactured goods--so why isn't that "even more" manufacturing being done here?

U.S. job losses are not being caused by technological advance and improved efficiency. The problem is that the jobs that make use of those advances or that are funded by the cost-savings from those advances are being done overseas or domestically by foreigners.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Maybe because Buick is one of the most popular car brands over there? Trade is a two way street. The more their wages rise( and they are) the more products they can afford to import.

Are you saying we have a trade surplus with China and not a huge trade deficit? (Is this taking place between a fictitious USA and China on another planet?)

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Instead of getting raped by taxes, you would get raped by the cost of goods. No more $3 Walmart t-shirts for doing yard work; try $10 minimum. $50 computer motherboards would be $100 easily. Back in the "good ol days" things were ridiculously expensive because they were manufactured in first world nations.

You are only contemplating front-end expenses. What about the invisible back-end costs of foreign outsourcing? If the cost savings from foreign outsourcing lowers prices by 25% but U.S. wages decrease by 50%, then where is the benefit? What if prices and wages both drop by 25% but U.S. unemployment doubles and government expenditures need to double to care for the unemployed resulting in higher taxes? What if crime increases? What if our nation's society starts to break down and everyone has increased stress?

I know you think your argument is brilliant, but it's worthless unless you consider all of the conveniently-ignored invisible back-end costs.

At the end of the day, you cannot consume more wealth than you produce. The foreign-made goods are not free and are not magically providing us with more wealth than we are producing. Instead, we're just producing less wealth overall and purchasing this stuff on credit, sometimes trading capital assets (land, business ownership) for these ephemeral consumer goods. You should read this excellent essay by Warren Buffet which describes the situation:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1053684/posts

Here's an animated You Tube video that illustrates this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGo_NL-eclw

 

[ProfJohn]

Text: "(Announcer): For more than three years, you've heard a lot of talk from Bill Clinton about balancing the budget. (Clinton video clip from June 1992): I would present a five-year plan to balance the budget.

That is awesome Craig, thanks.

So Bill Clinton ran on a promise to present a five-year plan to balance the budget, but never presented such a plan.

Most people would see that as evidence that Clinton had no desire to balance the budget, but some how you see that as proof that he wanted to balance the budget all along?

 

[Jhhnn]

Please go back and take some high school level U.S. Government classes. Clinton did not leave Bush a surplus. Clinton had nothing to do with a surplus. Well if you count repeatedly sending budgets to the Republican congress that kept rejecting them until Clintons deficit spending was reduced. Is that the surplus you are talking about?

It was the Republican congress in the mid 90's that had promised to balance the budget... not Clinton.

I will agree that Bush was a RINO.

More lame obfuscations. If it was the repub congress putting a lid on Clinton spending, what happened when repubs took congress and the whitehouse, and dick cheney pronounced that "deficits don't matter"?

Shee-it, Sherlock- repubs of the era never objected to the actual amount being spent, just how it was spent, and on how much was raised in taxes to offset it. At the time, Tom Delay offered that anytime was a good time for a taxcut, regardless of spending...

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Actually I dont know where there are made They most likely started as imports, but I would not be surprised if they manufacturing setup there now as chinas car economy is taking off. And there is nothing wrong with this. Just like there is nothing wrong with toyotas, hondas and bmws being made in the US. Trade is a two way street. A rising chinese middle class will be able to afford our exports.

You think the Chinese who earn fifty-cents-an-hour without labor and environmental regulations costs are going to be purchasing manufactured goods produced by American labor that earns $12/hour plus labor and environmental regulation costs?

What are you smoking! (The Chinese government isn't stupid enough to allow something like that to happen, anyway; they understand how a global economy works and how to work it to their advantage, unlike our nation.)

Products need to be made where they are best able to be produced. It is that simple. At one point in the time the US was a low wage country and we got the low wage crap jobs. We grew out of that. China and India will grow out of it as well.

But many of those "crap jobs" are also associated with good jobs such as robot maintenance, operating factory computers, and R&D.

The lack of manufacturing jobs does not mean there are now jobs. Services are replacing manufacturing jobs and those jobs on average pay better than manufacturing as well.

Services? You mean minimum wage services like at Walmart and Starbucks? Where are these high-paying service jobs? Are the former manufacturing employees (let's call these people the "people who are to the Left of the IQ Bell Curve) supposed to work all sorts of knowledge-based jobs? Why are so many college-educated people and PhD scientists unemployed or under-employed?

How are we supposed to pay for all of the imported goods that are produced "where they are best able to be produced"? You don't really expect people in those other nations to be satisfied with letting Americans do the high-quality knowledge-based jobs, do you?

Did you know that China wants to establish its very own Silicon Valley? Did you know that in 2004 India graduated 279,000 engineers? Soup-prise! People in those other nations intend to do knowledge-based service jobs, too (and probably at wages that are lower than what Americans will do them for). If anything, the knowledge-based service jobs will get done in those other countries and many have already been outsourced there. Even legal functions--some jobs that used to be done by American lawyers--have been outsourced now. In the meantime, Americans are being displaced domestically by foreigners on H-1B and L-1 visas.

So much for the, "The services industry will save our economy and job market," bullshit.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

The Chinese Government has little interest in direct imports. They like foreign investment but they want the products made there. They're incredibly protectionist and it is working really well. You think that the Chinese are believers in the Free Trade Religion but really, they just exploit idiot Americans who believe these things.

The Chinese think that we are completely retarded. They are thankful that we are retarded and that we are giving them our wealth while also emasculating ourselves. (It's hard to maintain a strong military when your nation no longer has much income and when you are dependent on foreign countries for manufacturing your military hardware.)

Another tenet of the Free Trade religion. The only jobs that the U.S. has an advantage are those that absolutely require face to face interaction. Anything else is "best able to be produced" elsewhere. Indian and Chinese engineers are just as smart as American ones. Foreign manufacturing is just as good. Call centers overseas can handle customer service almost as well.

That isn't really an advantage at all. Note that many of those jobs are being filled by foreigners on H-1B and L-1 visas or masses of immigrants.

So when do we grow out of needing full employment? When do we grow out of having people who are hardworking, honest, but not that smart - employment for the masses? China will always have employment for the masses whereas we operate under the fantasy that everyone here can be a "knowledge worker" or some other paper pusher who adds little value yet somehow can magically afford first world prices.

Our politicians have been falling all over themselves for years to send everyone to college (for non-existent job positions). Now we have a for-profit college industry that is ripping people off and people who can barely write a sentence are going to college! Now we have millions of people with huge student loans who cannot find work in their fields. Some of the for-profit colleges even paid homeless people to fill out student loan applications!

Homeless High School Dropouts Lured by For-Profit Colleges

The New Poor: After Training, Still Scrambling for Employment

(That article should also mention that many people with Bachelors degrees and even PhDs, such as PhD scientists, are also having lots of problems.)

In the Basement of the Ivory Tower -- a professor at a "college of last resort" discusses having to flunk community college students who can barely write a sentence and who (it is heavily implied) have no business being in college.

The Real Science Gap -- PhD scientists--STEM field workers--are often unemployed or very underemployed.

LOL. This Free Trade religious belief is just as bad as St. Reagan's attempt to classify fast food work as manufacturing. Very little service work is high paid or even moderately paid. Most of it is stuff teenagers would have done 30 years ago - stocking shelves, cashiering, fast food - and its all part time, minimum wage.

Loud speaker in fast food kitchen: "Customer is ready to take delivery of two double burgers with cheese. Please manufacture accordingly."

Any service job that pays requires education. Not everyone can get that education due to various limitations. Further, there simply aren't enough high paid service positions to go around. And then you get into the situation where employers demand prestigious degrees where none are required or needed, just to filter applicants. The Universities love this. Qualified people without the education or means to get it are SOL.

The American people have no idea how much money is being wasted on unneeded higher education. We have been indoctrinated for years to believe that higher education would solve our nation's economic and social problems. So, our politicians, no-think economists, and pundits tell Americans that the solution to our problem is more and better higher education, especially in STEM fields, and the sheeple just drink it up like Kool-Aid.

The politicians say that we don't need to address our real economic problems such as our trade deficit or H-1B and L-1 visas or mass immigration. If only all Americans would go to college we'd get our jobs back!

In the meantime, Professor X at a "college of last resort" has to explain to almost illiterate GED and high school grads how to use computers and how to write sentences.

 

[ProfJohn]

More lame obfuscations. If it was the repub congress putting a lid on Clinton spending, what happened when repubs took congress and the whitehouse, and dick cheney pronounced that "deficits don't matter"?

That was a different Republican congress with different leaders.

The biggest mistake the Republicans made was removing Newt from power.