Posted on 08/19/2005 5:22:29 AM PDT by OESY
The paradox of the year is why so many Americans tell pollsters they feel bad about an economy that's been so good, with solid job growth and corporate profits, rising wages and home prices, and a huge decline in the budget deficit. Perhaps one reason is because the media keep saying the economy stinks.
That's the conclusion of... the Media Research Center, which finds that so far this year 62% of the news stories on the Big Three TV networks have portrayed the U.S. economy in negative fashion. The "negative full length TV news stories on the economy outnumbered positive stories by an overwhelming ratio of 4 to 1," the MRC reports.
...[A] CBS Evening News story on July 22 said that the economy is "very tenuous. It could fall apart at any moment. One piece of bad news, one additional terrorist attack, one negative corporate earnings, and it goes right down again." Contrast that funeral dirge with what Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told Congress that same day: "The outlook is one of sustained economic growth."...
Media coverage of President Bush's tax cuts has been particularly slanted. During the 2003 tax-cut debate, three of every four major TV network news stories were negative. The favorite criticisms were liberal echoes that it would bust the budget and favor the rich. Earlier this year, a news story on National Public Radio announced that "as everyone knows, the primary cause of the budget deficit was the Bush tax cuts." No word yet on whom NPR is crediting with this year's revenue surge of $262 billion. Robert Rubin?
Given all of this doom-and-gloom reporting, maybe the surprise is that Americans are nonetheless behaving with their typical optimism, buying goods and services, bidding up the stock market, and creating new businesses....
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
And thats against a falling dollar!
Two words: Gas, Homes...
The good news is that Newsweek's stock is down and so is its circulation. Ditto ther NYT and the LAT. The times they are a changing.
The good news is that Newsweek's stock is down and so is its circulation. Ditto ther NYT and the LAT. The times they are a changing.
The good news is that Newsweek's stock is down and so is its circulation. Ditto ther NYT and the LAT. The times they are a changing.
LOL! I worked in blue collar trades for a decade.
Lots of people enjoy being welders, machinist etc.
I worked as a refrigeration repairman for three years and I was pretty good at it. The enjoyability of doing the exact same stuff day in day out gets pretty thin pretty quickly.
And that wasn't even a factory job - don't think I missed your little bait-and-switch, changing the topic from soulcrushing factory work to the construction trades and engineering. A machinist uses his brain - he's not an assembly line drone.
Just because you don't like to work with your hands does not mean everyone else does not either.
I like working with my hands just fine and do it for my own amusement and enjoyment on a weekly basis.
The fact is: factory work sucks. There are many rewarding ways of working with your hands, but factory work ain't one of them.
It was desirable work in the 1910s because it beats the hell out of picking fruit or cotton by hand out in the field and was often preferable to being a domestic, but time marches on.
Working with your hands is only rewarding when you work with your brain simultaneously - like construction, engineering, etc.
No one enjoys a manual job in which their brain is never required.
The problem is not the ignorance of the unschooled, but the ignorance of our college grads. Fweer and fewer yaking degrees in produtive fields, such as engineering and more and more in fields like psychology , journalism. and law.
. . . and self-proclaimed communist professors.
Illegal immigration was a significant problem long before NAFTA and the conditions which encourage it have nothing to do with NAFTA - there is not a shred of evidence to suggest that NAFTA accelerated, let alone created the immigration crisis and there is evidence to suggest that NAFTA mildly alleviated it.
Were you paying attention when he stated that NAFTA would NOT "create jobs"--but rather, reduce US factory employment AND impoverish the Mexicans?
America has more jobs today and a lower unemployment rate than it did pre-NAFTA. NAFTA was not a factor in the "loss" of the precious factory jobs you love so much (although I'll guess that you do not work in a factory yourself), they were decreasing rapidly pre-NAFTA.
and most of the factory work went to nations other than Mexico, like China and Indonesia.
The tariff penalty pre-NAFTA on manufacturing abroad was already offset by Mexico's labor costs. Plenty of American manufacturers relocated to Mexico before NAFTA and most of the factory work went to nations other than Mexico, like China and Indonesia after NAFTA - not to Mexico.
Mexicans have not been impoverished by NAFTA but have seen their GDP increase.
So PJB was wrong about everything so far.
Were you paying attention when he identified the "Culture War" as the next great problem facing the US--and pointed out that this "culture war" was both internal AND related to the US' asinine immigration policies, where non-Judaeo-Christian-culture (read: Muslims) were effectively creating non-US-culture islands in the USA (not to mention Hollywood/MSM/Professorial-class bozos?
Besides the fact that this is not an economic prediction as I specified, PJB's speech did not mention Islam.
It focused on the gay rights movement and the increasing culture of criminality on the rise in the US as exemplified by the LA riots.
If you are saying that PJB predicted Al-Qaeda in his convention speech you are now in the realm of fantasy.
I was old enough to listen to the speech, remember what he actually said and recognize the flawed economic analysis in it.
(1) His support of the full New Deal program is one indicator - people who approach Rooseveltianism as nigh-sacrosanct are already flirting with socialism.
(2) His adoption of the Marxist labor theory of value.
(3) His belief that government should actively regulate trade and fix prices.
(4) His support of the criminal organizations known as labor unions.
This is a common story about the "prosperous" economy. A well-educated, well-paid software engineer is let go because his job was outsourced to a third-world plantation state, and perhaps loses his pension. He's forced to move in with relatives, and gets minimum-wage job as a security guard while struggling to pay off his student loan and car and save for his childrens' education. The job figures say he's still employed, but it's not the same at all. This widespread trend is why there's so much discontent with the "prosperous" economy.
Many people don't read what Buchanan wrote. They just read what others, who have also have not read Buchanan, say Buchanan wrote.
Some kids will want to be actors and athletes, sure.
Some will want to be soldiers, cops and firemen.
Others will choose the professions as well.
But the essential point is that no child aspires to limiting himself to a dead end job punching out widgets. Children have aspirations and ambitions to be more than drones - and that's what the American dream is about.
With the exception of the last, those professions require brainpower which is above average.
There are plenty of jobs which require average brainpower. Factory work does not even require average brainpower - its minimum requirements are well below average.
Do I have to explain "average" to you?
Do I have to explain to you that there are jobs that lie somewhere between rote gruntwork and neurosurgery?
I'm good friends with a guy whose parents are both highschool dropouts who work in the restaurant industry. They are rightly proud of their son because he is a licensed radiology technician at a respected local hospital. He finished high school, worked at Best Buy while taking night classes at community college, got his associate's degree and then made the switch to a radiology tech-in-training.
He's not a surgeon or a tax attorney - he's an average guy with a little ambition and a little initiative.
But he doesn't work in a factory - so he must be a complete failure.
And yet, US manufacturing output continues to increase. In related news, there are vastly fewer farmers today than in 1900, yet we're producing more food. This is supposed to be bad?
The guy's opinions are well known, he has ably and assiduously promoted them and he has repeated his central theses quite often in widely-read publications and widely-watched news shows.
Guess what, bud?
A lot of people have listened to what he's said and disagreed with what he's said. A lot of people have read his opinions in their newspaper or magazine and disagreed with what he's written.
That's life.
Well said.
What an arrogant ass you have proven yourself to be. I have worked in a factory for 20+ years and I bet I can fix anything you can break. Just now, outside my shop, there are people who setting color and mixing water and ink balances to get a catalog right so some snob like you can buy a fancy radio.
Blah, blah, blah.
I have worked in a factory for 20+ years and I bet I can fix anything you can break.
I'm sure you can.
I worked in a factory for four months before I found a better job working construction - my factory job consisted of checking molded plastic components for defects and occasional sorting.
I certainly didn't learn anything about fixing anything while working that job.
Just now, outside my shop
I'm going to guess that the fact that you have your own shop off the floor means that you are not a lineworker, but actually have a significantly different job title.
there are people who setting color and mixing water and ink balances to get a catalog right
Sounds like you work at a printer's, not a factory.
so some snob like you can buy a fancy radio
Being a snob, the only music I listen to consists of live performances by my private symphony orchestra whom I keep housed in a series of bungalows on my vast estate in the Hamptons, so I have no need for a radio.
What's the difference. In your eyes we are all just mindless losers.
I'm going to guess that the fact that you have your own shop off the floor means that you are not a lineworker, but actually have a significantly different job title.
Yes. I am an electrician in a factory that prints catalogs. What does that have to do with the disdain you carry for all of us "factory" workers?
Quote: I worked as a refrigeration repairman for three years and I was pretty good at it. The enjoyability of doing the exact same stuff day in day out gets pretty thin pretty quickly.
The fact is: factory work sucks. There are many rewarding ways of working with your hands, but factory work ain't one of them.
Working with your hands is only rewarding when you work with your brain simultaneously - like construction, engineering, etc. No one enjoys a manual job in which their brain is never required.
There you go again implying that just because you did not like factory work that everyone does not also. I know lots of people with factory jobs with the same job everyday that enjoy going to work everyday.
I have no interest in golf in any way whatsoever. A good friend is a golf nut and thinks I'm nuts because I have no interest in his hobby.
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