Posted on 12/08/2016 9:36:13 AM PST by rhett october
You’ve likely heard the spin lines and talking points from Obama loyalists claiming Barack Obama’s presidency netted the longest period of job growth in the last xyz years or maybe even “ever.”
It’s a shame that people view things through shaded glasses and bias. In the case of this so-called “continued job growth,” we need to examine the claims and determine what has actually “grown.”
At this point, we have more federal workers than ever before. More than 1.4 million people collecting government salaries according to the congressional budget. That’s a 10 percent jump from the time Obama took office. The government has never employed so many people. Think about that.
So we’ll add this to our evaluation of President Obama’s economic record. Government employees don’t result from a healthy economy. They don’t result from policies that allow businesses to start up and grow. They simply result from a president adding new salaries to the bill paid by the taxpayers – and businesses who employ people are also taxpayers. So we very well can’t say that Obama knew his stuff on the economy or that “Obamanomics” was some great thing that led to job growth based solely on the job numbers (which aren’t impressive anyway and we’ll get to that in a minute).
Many of us remember as children, going to one of our parents and telling them that we wanted some money to buy the latest toy or some other item. Say an eight year old boy asks his mom for money for a new football. His mom says, “Well, I have some chores I guess you could do. Go make your bed, dust off the coffee table, and dry these dishes and I’ll give you the money for a new football.” That’s pretty much the equivalent to more federal jobs being added. Are some of them good and important? Sure, but in many cases it was simply a case of “finding something to be done” so that President Obama could claim job growth.
The jobs haven’t been coming from a healthy economy making it where businesses could expand and, therefore, need to hire in solid or large numbers. It was just the taxpayers having their bill increased even more. And we’ve seen how that has worked. At the time of this writing, the U.S. national debt is at a record level at $19,934,670,800,000. That’s nearly $20 trillion dollars! It’s never been that high before and it has increased more under President Obama than under any president in history. So the new government jobs didn’t even come from a healthy government bank account. They were funded by digging deeper into colossal, disturbing, and astronomical debt.
There was some increase in private sector jobs – a very large number of them being part-time jobs – but there were also losses. One of the things often ignored during this presidency is the job addition versus population addition. Under President Reagan, for example, starting in 1982 the population grew by 12.4 million but the number of jobs grew by 18.4 million.
Under President Obama the population has grown by 20 million but gained by his own claims, 14 million. There is a difference. With population growth, there is more purchasing and more demand for goods and services. That should result in more jobs without the president having to do anything. But, based on population growth, job increases weren’t impressive at all. Based on the way economists used to measure a president’s term in job growth, Obama’s would be a loss of 6 million jobs (20 million population growth but only 14 million jobs is a gap of 6 million jobs).
And to the claim that Obama likes to make of 73 months of job addition, well, consider what has been said above and then consider this: The gains were small which might cause one to say, “Well, at least they were consistent.” Sure, but can anyone even name something that Obama has done to stimulate natural job growth? Again, I’m not talking about something taxpayer funded, I’m talking about something that Obama has done to reduce the government-imposed burden on businesses both large and small so that they could naturally flourish without the artificial hand of the government. The answer is, nothing.
And concerning this, “consistent” argument, what if a basketball player stood right under the goal and made a simple bank shot, one after the other with no defender? Would anyone be impressed? That’s the case of the economy when you have the government adding federal employees to the taxpayers’ bill resulting in a total record number of federal employees and when you have record population growth that increases demand of goods and services. In light of those simple facts, job growth at the numbers under Obama have been the least that could have been done. The economy is not healthy or else we would’ve seen the fed raise interest rates. But Obama hasn’t wanted them to and so they haven’t so that the weak economy wouldn’t completely cave. It’s really that simple.
What Trump has done, before he’s even sat in the commander’s chair in the Oval Office, is to go directly to manufacturing companies and look at the government’s role in the negatives impacting them. His tax policy will lower the corporate/business tax rate from the world’s highest at 35% to 15% which will allow U.S. businesses to be much more competitive internationally, will make the economic environment much more conducive to small business being able to grow to medium and large sized businesses resulting in higher employment numbers, and will encourage new businesses to start up – something that has been at near record lows under Obama. Already we have seen jobs saved and already we’ve seen commitments from foreign corporations to actually come to the United States to do business instead of our corporations going to the economically friendlier waters of our foreign competitors.
With the addition of Trump renegotiating trade deals and refusing to enter ones where the U.S. is disadvantaged, natural, or we could even call it, “organic,” job growth will occur again. It won’t be dependent on government spending or on population growth – it will be because the weights on the shoulders of U.S. entrepreneurialism and enterprise will be reduced and the freedom to prosper will exist in greater amount. And that’s a big deal.
WHY? Trump needs to FIX THIS SH*T.
Mark it.
Trump has had a real one and obama hasn’t?
I DO remember one of the first unions to fold: the United Steel Workers. Their jobs went to China.
The SWISS will pay MORE for their own meat, instead of going right across the line into France and pay LOTS less.
Of course, it's the LAW there that EVERY Swiss household MUST have weapons. "Weapons are kept at home because of the long-held belief that enemies could invade tiny Switzerland quickly, so every soldier had to be able to fight his way to his regiment's assembly point." [Google]
When you factor in the cost of labor per widget made the difference in price between the 3rd world produced widget and the US produced one is small. Pennies on the dollar small. Also I fell US made products are of higher quality. CAr parts being a good example.
Yep!
Yes, one example would be timing belts. On Hondas, Hyundais, Toyotas and Nissians, most are made from a stretchable plastic/rubbery material. U.S. timing belts are really chains, made of metal. Almost impossible to be stretched or warped out of shape. Asian made cars having timing belts stretch and warp all the time.
Every strut, rotor, brake pad, belt, bearing and tire that I bought and was made in China has been a piece of crap.
I might have missed it, but I think the article left out that not only has the population grown by 20 million since 2009, there was a huge job crater right around that time as well, so we’ve been playing “catch-up” ever since. We might have added 14 million jobs in that time, but the net-new job number is far lower (and might be statistically zero) because a lot of the jobs in that 14 million had to cover the losses of 2009.
And I also didn’t see any kind of analysis of the *type* of jobs those 14 million encompass. A lot of those are low-end, even part-time positions, which don’t even come close to generating the kind of economic output that the pre-2009 full-time jobs (mostly tech, but covering many other fields as well) generated.
Lastly, in true Keynes-ian fashion, the job growth was not evenly distributed, both geographically and demographically. I’ve seen several sources that indicated that the vast majority, if not all, of the job growth or job creation (not sure which) took place in Texas, and that the vast majority, if not all, of the new employees are all immigrants.
Good thoughts Little Pig, but I did mention in the article that a very large amount of those jobs were part-time jobs.
But you are absolutely right about the “catch-up” concept. Basically anyone could be president and DO NOTHING and those jobs would’ve replaced themselves, making it look like achievement had happened when what actually happened was a correction that didn’t require any action from a president. Thanks for reading and making a great point.
"I am not among those who fear the people. They...are our dependence for continued freedom. And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds...our people...must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they (the British) now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers.... This example reads to us the salutary lesson that private fortunes are destroyed by public, as well as by private extravagance. And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from the principle in one instance, becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering. Then begins, indeed, the 'bellum omnium in omnia,' which some philosophers...have mistaken for the natural, instead of the abusive, state of man. And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression." - Thomas Jefferson
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