President Blames Unemployment On Lack Of Tech Skills

IEEE ^

[Southack]

"Once again, there are many, many well-trained and experienced IT workers who can't find jobs now."

And once again, you are being dishonest about the context. Bush was talking about retraining programs for textile workers and factory assembliers, but you want to keep pretending that he was talking about your sacred cow of high-tech IT jobs.

[dirtboy]

No, that's not the bottom line. American industry and the jobs market is one thing, how much cash that the federal government puts into circulation (i.e. inflation) is an entirely different beast. A beast, I might add, that **you** felt compelled to dredge up to cover up your earlier insinuation that wages had actually declined (which they did not do).

Southack, that is one of the most idiotic posts I have seen in some time. What if wages went up 1.8 percent and the government went into Carter mode and inflation was 12 percent? Would you still say that things were OK? You said that average salaries went up. But average salaries, coupled with inflation, showed a net decrease of around .4 percent - and that is all that matters to someone who actually lives off their paycheck.

[Sabertooth]

(Who's that big cat I saw roaming around here again? I thought he went extinct...)

[Southack]

Show me data that supports your claim. Show me where the American middle class has physically shrunk in size.

[Southack]

"that is one of the most idiotic posts I have seen in some time. What if wages went up 1.8 percent and the government went into Carter mode and inflation was 12 percent? Would you still say that things were OK?"

Things being "OK" or not isn't the debate. Nice straw man, though.

Oh, and salaries went UP, not down; which is in stark contrast to having salaries decline even while inflation rises.

[dirtboy]

And once again, you are being dishonest about the context. Bush was talking about retraining programs for textile workers and factory assembliers, but you want to keep pretending that he was talking about your sacred cow of high-tech IT jobs.

Uh, he was talking about technology overtaking workers. He was talking about a $3,000 grant and support for community colleges. Now, what kind of tech job will someone with no prior IT experience and $3,000 of community college coursework be qualified to do? The exact same low-level IT work that is being most heavily outsourced.

but you want to keep pretending that he was talking about your sacred cow of high-tech IT jobs.

Gee, Southack, the entire premise of allowing manufacturing jobs to be carted overseas was that the manufacturing workers could become high-paid tech workers with some training. Now, even experienced IT workers with Master's degrees are having trouble finding jobs. How is the manufacturing worker with 15 hours of community college coursework going to also find a tech job?

You're not making a lick of sense, and if you're representative of the mindset of the GOP spinners, I'm starting to get really, really worried about 2004. You'd do a lot better if you started having some empathy for those facing these problems, instead of trying to prove that they're just delusional.

[dirtboy]

Oh, and salaries went UP, not down; which is in stark contrast to having salaries decline even while inflation rises.

Southack, YOU were the one trying to pretend that inflation doesn't matter. I don't think I've ever heard ANYONE on FR try to cling to a discredited debate point with that line.

[dirtboy]

Good to see you back.

[autoresponder]

WHAT AND WHERE IS THE CURRENT JOBLESS % RATE?

Why is it not in the below news story?

CLICK THE PALE HORSEY FOR MOOD MUSIC:

BEHOLD A PALE HEARSE! 



  Jobless recovery shadows 2004 vote

BY TOM CURRY, MSNBC


Feeling better yet? If you're one of the 9.1 million Americans reported as unemployed in Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Friday, probably not. But once the Democratic presidential candidate is chosen next year, will he have an open-and-shut case that the "Bush economy" merits a pink slip for President Bush? Or will national security trump economic sluggishness as the defining issue?

THE ISSUES OF

Iraq and terrorism mean that next year's election won't simply be a reprise of "the economy, stupid" Clinton campaign of 1992.

The BLS said Friday that the number of non-farm payroll jobs declined by 44,000 in July, indicating that even if the economy is growing, jobs are not being created in sufficient numbers. The number of jobs has declined by 486,000 since the beginning of the year.

But muddling the picture is the fact that the Commerce Department said Thursday the economy grew at a rate of 2.4 percent in the second quarter of the year. And claims for unemployment insurance have fallen in recent weeks, signaling a possible turnaround in job creation.

Still, the White House said Friday that President Bush was not satisfied by the drop in the jobless rate. "The unemployment rate did go down ... but there were job losses and there are still too many people looking for work. The president has always been focusing on acting to make sure that this is not a jobless recovery," said spokesman Scott McClellan.

HOW (2) GOVERNORS SEE IT

(One is a Canadian; one is pro "Illegals")

Asked whether the economy or national security will weigh more heavily on voters' minds next year, Michigan's Democratic Gov. Jennifer "Canuck" Granholm said this week, "I don't think it is either/or. I do think that national security is an important subject and we've got to make sure that we have got not just a response, but an initiative that seizes that issue for the Democrats."

But, Granholm quickly added, "I do think the economy is going to be a very big component of this election, as I see it today. Something may happen tomorrow to change that. It may mean that national security rides this out as the No. 1 issue. But today I think it is going to be the economy."

Her fellow Democratic governor, Arizona's Janet "Illegal Alien Lover" Napolitano, agreed.

"If things stay as they are right now, even in Arizona where the economy never got as bad as some other areas of the country and is already starting to tick back, I would say the economy will be the top issue," Napolitano told MSNBC.com.

Napolitano said the key is neither unemployment nor interest rates. "The key issue is per capita income -- people aren't getting enough money in their pockets.

Our per-capita income in Arizona went down even during the greatest decade of economic growth in Arizona," she said.

Underscoring the long-term nature of the income problem, Napolitano said, "The high-wage manufacturing jobs are going abroad -- that's something we as a country need to confront."

ARRAY OF PROBLEMS

The economic malaise is a compound of several problems of different kinds: The hemorrhage of manufacturing jobs that Napolitano cited. The BLS said in its report Friday that manufacturing employment declined by 71,000 last month.

The outsourcing of information technology jobs to lower-wage tech workers in India and other countries.

An influx of hundreds of thousands of foreign executives and managerial workers into the United States under special visa programs that allow multinational firms to re-locate non-U.S. personnel to American soil. A Senate committee held a hearing on this problem this week and legislation is in the works to make it tougher for multinationals to import foreign employees to work in the United States.

The collapse of inflated stock values, which hit Americans' 401(k) accounts.

The massive over-investment of the late 1990s in the telecom industry.

State and local government tax increases that retard economic growth.

Is there a way for Democratic presidential contenders to frame all this in one simple, compelling sentence?

In 1988, Democratic contender Dick Gephardt touted one of the great slogans in modern American politics when he ran for the nomination with the rallying cry, "It's your fight, too!"

Gephardt decried the import of low-priced Hyundai cars from Korea, while that country kept its domestic markets closed to American goods. This year, too, he will rely on appeals to blue-collar voters. The 1.4 million-member Teamsters union will reportedly endorse Gephardt's candidacy next week.

ARE YOU BETTER OFF?

Democratic strategist Tom Ochs said the pithy economy slogan for 2004 can be the old reliable used by Ronald Reagan in 1980.

"Are you better off today than you were four years ago?" Ochs said. "That is a fascinating question to be posed to this administration. I think the answer will continue to be 'no' and if the answer is 'no' then we put it at the feet of the people who have been in charge of the economy."

One argument the Democratic contenders have repeatedly used this year is that the tax cuts passed by Congress and signed into law by Bush were grossly irresponsible.

But data from the new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll indicates that fiscal rectitude is not what most Americans are seeking right now.

When asked, "Which do you think should be a greater priority for the president and Congress this year -- stimulating the economy or controlling the federal budget deficit?" 60 percent of poll respondents said "stimulating the economy," while only 35 percent said controlling the deficit.

The fact that so many poll respondents emphasize the need for stimulus indicates that workers still don't feel bullish about the future.

Sickly economic data can end a presidency. Just ask Jimmy Carter, who ended his last year in the White House with mortgage rates at 16 percent and unemployment near 8 percent.

But charisma can overcome bad numbers: Ronald Reagan was re-elected in 1984 when the unemployment rate was 7.4 percent; yet the less charismatic George H.W. Bush, father of the current president, was ousted when the unemployment rate was almost exactly the same, 7.3 percent.

The current President Bush -- scion of a wealthy family, graduate of Ivy League schools and savvy veteran of politics since 1978 -- may face an election next year resembling one faced by another president from a blue-blood Ivy League background, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

SIMILAR TO 1940?

Old-line Democrats would be dismayed at this comparison.

Yet consider that Roosevelt was re-elected in 1940 at a time of high unemployment -- 14.6 percent -- but when the nation was pre-occupied with the need for national security as war clouds gathered in Europe.

The unemployment data in 1940 was bad -- horrifying by today's standards. But by 1940 Americans had been living with high unemployment for 10 years. National security was the bigger worry.

Like FDR after Pearl Harbor, Bush now leads a nation that has been attacked on its own soil. Like FDR, he has sent soldiers into battle and used the rhetoric of destiny.

"In a single instant, we realized that this will be a decisive decade in the history of liberty, that we've been called to a unique role in human events," Bush said last year. As Michigan Gov. Granholm said, the economy may be the dominant 2004 issue, but "something may happen tomorrow to change that."



MSNBC Terms,

Conditions and Privacy ©2003  

[Lazamataz]

Show me data that supports your claim. Show me where the American middle class has physically shrunk in size.

More Americans take up Diet and Exercise.

Perhaps you meant to say "Show me where the American middle class has numerically shrunk."

[Southack]

"Uh, he was talking about technology overtaking workers. He was talking about a $3,000 grant and support for community colleges. Now, what kind of tech job will someone with no prior IT experience and $3,000 of community college coursework be qualified to do? The exact same low-level IT work that is being most heavily outsourced."

You really are obsessed with IT. This ain't about IT.

[dirtboy]

Oh, and salaries went UP, not down; which is in stark contrast to having salaries decline even while inflation rises.

As I recall, salaries skyrocketed in the Weimar Republic.

[dirtboy]

You really are obsessed with IT. This ain't about IT.

Once again, Southack, IT was hailed as the replacement for jobs when manufacucturing jobs were vanishing over the last decade. Now, you're telling me that it ISN'T about IT.

[Southack]

"YOU were the one trying to pretend that inflation doesn't matter."

No, I simply pointed out that inflation is a distinctly different beast. Salaries going up or down is one thing. Inflation going up or down is an entirely different thing altogether.

[CO_dreamer]

re: tax freedom day.

Consider this. In 1950, tax freedom day for the wealthiest of Americans was probably in October. They were paying a 90% marginal rate. Now, taxes are more flat, and fair.

[autoresponder]

"But the water was cold!"

-- George Costanza

[dirtboy]

No, I simply pointed out that inflation is a distinctly different beast. Salaries going up or down is one thing. Inflation going up or down is an entirely different thing altogether.

And when the rate of inflation is greater than the increase in salaries, net purchasing power goes down. It's that simple. You are trying to make your point with a salary statistic that is not adjusted for inflation, and that tells a completely different story when inflation is adjusted in. And, once you take out government jobs, the situation is even worse in the private sector. And in IT, when you couple salary decreases with inflation, net purchasing power went down around seven percent. That's pretty damn significant.

[Southack]

"And when the rate of inflation is greater than the increase in salaries, net purchasing power goes down."

Indeed, and that's my point. The increase in salaries is distinct from the net purchasing power. They are two different beasts. Let's not confuse them, shall we.

[dirtboy]

Indeed, and that's my point. The increase in salaries is distinct from the net purchasing power. They are two different beasts. Let's not confuse them, shall we.

What kind of crap is this, Southack? You're the one who tried to make a point by saying that average salaries were going up. You've clung to that statistic as a defense, even when I showed that the net purchasing power actually went DOWN. You can't have it both ways now.

Is this how you perceive to win debates? Keep spewing the same nonsense nonstop until the other side gives up and goes away?

[Southack]

"IT was hailed as the replacement for jobs when manufacucturing jobs were vanishing over the last decade. Now, you're telling me that it ISN'T about IT."

This thread isn't about IT. Nor should an honest person put what mysterious others have somehow "hailed" in the past as being my words today.

IT is a single industry that is getting hammered. No argument from me on that fact. In contrast, our economy on the whole is expanding (2.4% in the last Quarter, for instance). Moreover, national average salaries have actually gone up over the last five years.

Does that mean that the American middle class is numerically shrinking in size? Of course not.

Does that mean that you should be blaming Bush for the gloom in the IT industry? Of course not.

Does that mean that Bush should be hammered for answering a question about textile workers as if he was talking about IT? Of course not.

Yet somehow that is where we stand on this thread...