Unemployment rate at 7.8%? If you believe that, you probably believe the presidential polls …
Here are a few fast facts (from BankruptingAmerica.org) to put today’s absurd announcement into persepctive:
- The real unemployment rate stayed at 14.7%. This includes the underemployed and those who have given up looking for work.
- 23 million Americans are still looking for work. In January 2009, that figure was 22 million.
- Of the 12.1 million Americans unemployed, more than one third (4.8 million) have been looking for work for over six months.
- 802,000 Americans have stopped looking for work
- In January 2009, the average amount of time spent unemployed was 19.8 weeks. Today, the amount of time has doubled, rising to 39.8 weeks.
- Nearly one in six Americans are living in poverty, the highest number in two decades.
- Manufacturing employment edged down in September by -16,000 jobs.
If you’re wondering why the drop, it simply means another massive group of Americans have come to the end of their extended unemployment benefits and are no longer counted.
In reality, the only numbers that count are listed above. The labor participation rate essentially remains unchanged. Those who are celebrating 7.8% are only fooling themselves. Those who are unemployed certainly know who they are and when it comes time to enter the voting booth and pull the lever aren’t going to be thinking about this “improved number”. They’re going to be dealing with the fact they don’t have a job.
Wonder who they’ll blame?
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
Facebook: QandO
http://minx.cc/?post=333533
Well, this is progress of a sort…
Obama is blaming the economy on the NEXT President,
instead of the last one…
That’s because future Republican Presidents are coming back in time machines to make Obama look bad. He’s THAT important to the future. He’s practically Bill and Ted up there.
The irony here is that the Republicans did push to end extended unemployment benefits … or is it that the President didn’t press to keep the extension ?
Let them cheer this as good news. Then come election day they’ll wonder why their propaganda didn’t trump reality for the millions of unemployed and underemployed.
You don’t have to look very deep under the hood of this number to see it is bogus.
FEWER jobs were added last month than the month before. The number is facially bogus. The only question is whether this is just a glitch or whether it was manipulation.
A bug or a feature?
It can be a bug and a feature!
Structural question – why are all those links to “thepublicnotice.pr-optout.com/Url.aspx[...]” redirects rather than real links to the real sources?
It’s incredibly fragile, for one. (“http://thepublicnotice.pr-optout.com/Url.aspx?1295263x386403x-1347109″ is garbage; “http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2012/10/05/four-takeaways-from-jobs-report/” at least lets a reader have some idea what the link is about.)
if they could accuse Bush of manipulating the terror levels for gain, I can accuse them of cooking the jobs #s for the same reason.
And so I do.
As I’ve pointed out elsewhere, it comes down to how the numbers are reported and touted by the press and the WH.
Kevin Hassett nails this one faily well;
You know will be interesting? If this strange blip gets reversed and next jobs number shows a rebound of 8% + unemployment. Then we get to crucify Baracky.
Yeah, but if the misrepresentation of the numbers has Obama’s desired effect, he’ll still be POTUS at that point.
If they were to give a synopsis of what the reports will look like AFTER the election they’d say “Expect the UNEXPECTED”.
Ouch. I like that one.
Those numbers will come out just a few days before the election.
And what, do you suppose, are the chances of the numbers going down?
If by going down, you mean the unemployment number gets adjusted back into the 8′s, then I’d say the chances of that are about equal to the chances of sunrise.
Eric, the next one drops prior to election. If the blip reverts to normal it will be awful for him.
That said, I was worried before but I think Romney did all he could to make the sale. Not Obama wins in a squeaker.
As I asked the other respondent… What do you suppose the chances of the numbers coming back to reality are?
He could cook the books to show a 2% unemployment and those people out of a job or working part time jobs still won’t be fooled.
I sympathized with that point, @Shark, when Bruce posted it. I’d like to say it’s true;
That would make sense, if we had people who could think. Thing is, increasingly, I’m not fully convinced.
Mark Twain used to say that it’s a lot easier to fool people than it is to convince them they’ve been for fooled. Consider the overwhelming black and Jewish vote for democrats. For that matter, consider all the constituent groups democrats can claim as being locks. The fact is not a lot of them has seen any improvement in their lives because of what democrats have done. Black unemployment stands at around 15%, Hispanics at around 10%. Indeed, the separation between haves and have nots has widened substantially since Obama was elevated. I can pass along links at need, if you like.
Yet, we see all the time many remain loyal Obama voters. “I got an Obama phone!” “I got my free birth control!” and so on. Exactly what Franklin warned us of, by the way.
You see, I’d like to think we have enough people in this country who have enough functioning brain cells , to vote Obama out on his own list of failures
The pattern is undeniable, and I consider it a measure of how bad things have gotten that anyone is seriously considering electing democrats to anything above the level of dogcatcher, given their decades long track record.
I recognize I’m rambling OT a bit but I need to say this…
The pattern of failure predates Obama… Obama is merely a symptom of a larger problem, that is liberalism. The patternis there for anyone to see that wants to look… and of course, the pattern starts before this, but
Let’s start with FDR, who extendedthedepression with his policies. The only thing that got him out of trouble was the attack on Pearl Harbor… which historians tell us he very likely knew about well in advance and covered it up afterward knowing it to be his only escape.. he’d never survive the next electionw ere it a peacetime election.
Then along comes Johnson and his expansion of government power and taxing with his “Great Society”, which was an unmitigated disaster for the American economy. .
Next up, Jimmy Carter, whose presidency was marked by massive inflation,reaching up toaround 15% (Part of which, admittedly was caused by Johnson) massive taxes and massive spending, and an economy which looked hopeless in terms of recovery. When presented with these problems, Carter did what a good little leftist would do… he increased taxes and grew government to theretofore unprecedented levels. He thus made the problems worse. And in typical leftist fashion when presented with these facts, blamed the American people for their “Malaise”. What a leader!
Next up was Bill Clinton who inherited an economy coming off the longest upswing in the history of the world. By the time he got done, and for the final year of his two-term presidency, the economy was in downward spiral, so much so that the Clinton White House was forced to using accounting tricks to keep a label of “recession” being tied to the result of his policies. The reason he didn’t get us into worse shape was simply that we were in so strong a position from Reagan/Bush when he took over. It took years to recover from his misdeeds.
And now, of course Obama and company. He’s certainly made a mess of things. And like FDR, may have seen his only means of escape from the noose he’s set himself, being to arrange for a little military action. He knew of the Benghazi attack well in advance and in spite of this actually pulled back the defenses and offered up US personnel to the enemies of the US and afterward, engaged in a coverup about it. And this will hadly be the only scandal to touch Obama in the next 30 days.
You guys all know this track record, and I’m willing to bet most won’t dispute the points I (quickly) made here. (Disclaimer… I don’t intend to be all inclusive by any means…. just a general direction)
Now, look… Certainly the recent momentum we see against Obama in the electorate is encouraging. But given the track record as I list here, of Democrats in General, much less Obama in particular, how the hell is Obama even being considered for re-election?
And the thing is, it’s still close enough that I wonder if the new anti-Obama momentum will be enough, frankly. I really do wonder….And not just for this election, but future ones as well.
Think on this; If the lessons of history as I’ve listed above have not been learned as yet, on what basis might I expect that they ever will be?
You left out Nixon…a big fan of fascist economics like Bad Luck Barry. He gave us the corporatist AmTrak, wage and price controls, etc.
Carter, to his credit, did away with a lot of that crap.
@Florack There is no evidence neither FDR not anyone in Washington know prior to the PH attack, that PH would be a target in that manner or at that date and time. It was known they were set on war, but nothing specific to PH.
@Rags Why should Carter by given credit? He didn’t understand why what he did would help, and he undertook contradictory policies in other regards. Effectively decriminalizing home-brewing is the only good he did the country that stands out.
I disagree. Carter took off the Nixonian wage and price controls, and did some needed deregulation. What he was thinking is for someone more apt at mind reading. I just observe what he DID.
@Rags, I think the over-riding issue isn’t that the blind squirrel found a nut, but… more was Carter being a pragmatic liberal, or was he motivated by conservative values? I think we can rule out the latter, don’t you?
Wul, yea-ya…
But the point was that Carter was, in some respects, superior to Nixon. I regard Nixon as a Progressive.
And while Carter was a TERRIBLE president, nobody is perfect. Even perfectly terrible.
“which historians tell us he very likely knew about well in advance”
C’mon now. Don’t tell us you are becoming one of those wack jobs. The source you linked to isn’t persuasive, to be very polite.
“he’d never survive the next electionw ere it a peacetime election.”
Why not? He had already survived two other peacetime reelections , 1936 and 1940.
Pingback: Unemployment rate at 7.8%? If you believe that, you probably believe the presidential polls … | Liberal Whoppers
I think we can safely say all they’re trying to do is rally the men they already have, and possibly win the few hold overs who were just waiting to vote for Obama anyway.
I’d make it a low probability that people haven’t made up their minds yet, they just want to be a little more fully convinced. Maybe the actually think Romney CAN be worse than Obama.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444223104578038623709703516.html?mod=rss_opinion_main
Take-away…
It can ONLY get worse in his second term. For reasons of pure cause and effect.
Making the rubble bounce on unemployment…
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/10/obamas-jobs-failure-in-one-chart.php
Not true.
I was simply aiming at the biggest targets. The pattern is that Democrats get us into problems every damn time they’re elected.
That said, your point about Nixon is quite correct, and one I’ve addressed several times over the years. But consider, please, Nixon’s politics. He was by his definition a “California Moderate” which of course translates as “Stone Liberal” liberal to the rest of us… regardless how the left likes painting him as a “conservative” because of the R after his name. He was certainly more competent than HHH was, but that’s about all that could be said. Policy-wise, I doubt we could have fit water between them, then or now. And as I’ve said many times, this country is in trouble to the precise degree we’ve tilted left.
Understand, I consider, for example, that Bush (either one) was not a conservative, either, but at best a centrist. Better than the guys they ran against, but hardly in the mold of a real conservative, despite the left’s constant comparisons to Hitler.
The inclusion of the RINOs makes the equation a bit harder to track for people who are not “politically connected”, such as what we have in this discussion. Which even further dampens my hope that the lessons about leaning left means disaster, will ever be learned.
Man, if you are going to swallow that crap sandwich, you need to get better sources.
“In anticipation of open conflict with this country, Japan is vigorously utilizing every available agency to secure military, naval and commercial information, paying particular attention to the West Coast, the Panama Canal and the Territory of Hawaii.”
Well, Duuhh. Of course they are going to try to gather intelligence on a prospective enemy. We do, and did, the same. Change a few words and that passage would be just as true of the US.
These “revelations”, by the way, are not new. They were available in both hardback and paperback in the 1960s.
Also, a carrier raid on PH was not considered at the time to be extremely possible due to the distances involved. Sort of like how the Doolittle raid caught the Japanese by surprise even though they knew we were at war with them.
We probably have a better case for incompetence regarding East Asia where tensions with the Japanese had been ratcheted up super high before Dec. 7. But we did get our ships out of China and down the PI in time.
Which begs for the question, how is Romneycare Mitt not the same? I think the folks with the curly earpieces will keep us from holding Romney’s feat to the fire close enough to keep his policies from being too little too late.
Well, he’s certainly making a lot of good pronouncements vis a vis market economics, energy development, following the Constitution, etc.
Our job is to provide him strong guidance, along with everybody else we elect.
Exactly so. I’ve spoken to this point many times, mostly in the framework of Romneycare. Example:
And…
Just a couple examples. Now, as this has developed, over the time since, this race has been, so far and will remain, not an issue of how good Romney is, but how bad Obama is. Therein lies the problem… convincing enough of the 47% of those facts… convincing them how bad Obama is. And as I’ve suggested, I wonder if there’s enough active braincells in that group to make the difference.
Romney put through what he had to in a state with 87% (his remark, which many missed the point of in the debate) Democrat/whackjob legislature.
He was, you realize, GOVERNOR, not KING.
And the Repub Establishment (there is no such thing, actually) would have Newt as their favorite.
I am far less than convinced, Sharpshooter, of either point.
Consider the question of why the every nominee in the post Reagan era ends up coming down significantly to the left of the rank and file.