Participation Rate (0.00 / 0)

I think the participation rate shows this even better.

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by: Judeling @ Sat Dec 06, 2008 at 10:54:28 AM CST

You expect more from our media? .. (0.00 / 0)

That measure of loss is also something else.  It's a measure of how utterly mendacious our media are. Because if it were common knowledge how utterly wasteful Republican governance actually is, how much work, income, productivity, and opportunity Republican governance has cost us, no one would ever vote Republican again.

Maybe I am just cynical .. but it is obvious to me now .. that MC Rove's favorite dancing buddy used the early part of the Bush Admin. to fluff up his name a bit .. and has used it well since .. meaning that yeah ... while David Gregory might have been a thorn in the side of BushCo in the early days .. he used it to make a name for himself .. and then settled back into being a journalistic hack .. the more I think about it .. the more he has always been a hack ... same way with David Shuster too(though part of it Shuster brought on himself with the Chelsea comments) .. and because of his own dumbness .. MSNBC has Shuster over a barrel

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by: Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle @ Sat Dec 06, 2008 at 11:34:15 AM CST

I Expect More From Us In Bringing The Media Down (4.00 / 1)

So, I've always got my eyes out for new angles of attack.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sat Dec 06, 2008 at 12:06:23 PM CST

[ Parent ]

From Krugman (4.00 / 1)

From Krugman

I would have liked to have seen the 90's on the chart.

Jeff Wegerson

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by: wegerje @ Sat Dec 06, 2008 at 11:59:48 AM CST

more employment charts (0.00 / 0)

You can see more EMRATIO charts like the one above here:
http://research.stlouisfed.org...
(I can't figure out how to insert an image in these comments.)

If you look at the last twenty years, you'll see how successful Clinton's years were at raising employment from 61% when he came into office at the end of Bush I's recession to an all time high of 64.5%, just before the dot com bubble burst. The past 8 years of Bush II's economic policies have been a disaster to employment, although the elite did quite well financially and didn't notice the rest of the country.

However, if you look at the past 60 years, the picture gets more complicated. You'll see that the civilian employment ratio used to run much lower, between 55% and 58% all through the 1950s to 1970s.

While that makes the current levels under Bush II still look great, it really reflects both good and bad trends from a progressive point of view: the benefit of womens' liberation - there are better jobs for women outside the home now; and the negative fact that income per worker has gotten worse and most families can't get by on one income anymore.

Concentration of Wealth and Income

The more damning data to me is the vast increase in the amount of the wealth and income of this country over the past thirty years held by the tiny minority (since Reagan's huge tax gift to the very rich). Which means everyone else has gotten less and less.

This wealth isn't in the top 20% or 10%, this wealth is concentrated in the top 0.1% and 0.01% and 0.001%. They have gotten almost all of the gains in the economy over the past thirty years, especially during Republican Presidencies. The upper middle class, even the top 5%, has barely stayed even in constant dollars while all the middle and working classes have fallen behind.

The implications of this hard data on the American dream are stunning. The classic American belief that better education and hard work will let the best and brightest rise to the top is a myth. If just 1 in 10,000 are all that really do well here, how is our society different from the France of Louis XVI?

Even with Obama taking the Presidency and Democrats in control of Congress, the elites still run the country and fund politicians. So how far can the Democrats really move this country back to benefiting all of the people, not just the moneyed class?

Dwight McCabe

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by: cdmc2 @ Sat Dec 06, 2008 at 14:23:00 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Thank you for an enlightening reply. (0.00 / 0)

That makes a lot of sense that a graph of employed vs population leaves out the fact that families used to be able to get by with a single "bread winner". It seems it could well be that now two incomes make less than one did in the 50's say.

To imbed a picture < img src="http://www.etc.com/x.jpg" > but don't include the spaces.

Jeff Wegerson

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by: wegerje @ Mon Dec 08, 2008 at 09:58:11 AM CST

[ Parent ]

I don't get it (0.00 / 0)

Maybe I'm just having a slow morning, but that chart doesn't make sense to me. If the Bush years were terrible, why is the line continuing to go up?

Is the chart relaying jobs produced every month, or months worked, or what?

Obviously it can't be jobs produced, because the post-2001 numbers would go down over even fall into the negative in 2008.

Sorry for my density right now.

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by: existenz @ Sat Dec 06, 2008 at 13:43:40 PM CST

The Economy Can Expand As A Whole (0.00 / 0)

even if it expands more slowly than popultion growth, so this results less jobs available relative to the number of workers.

But, in fact, the number employed didn't go up throughout all the Bush years.  We went for a very long time without job creation, and then we went a long time just getting back to where we had been originally.  So even though job creation eventually picked up, it was building on a much lower base than if Bush hadn't had such terrible beginning.

And then, of course, things turned bad again.

Visually, the half a billion missing months represent the gap between the actual employment levels under Bush and extending the slope of the growth rate under Clinton from 2001 to 2008, which would take it off the chart to the upper right.

Does that help you?

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sat Dec 06, 2008 at 14:26:24 PM CST

[ Parent ]

our population is rising too (0.00 / 0)

I think the original chart just shows total employment in the whole country. Since our population continues to grow, we actually need more jobs every month just to stay even.

So while the growth during Bush II's years looks good on this first graph, it would be better to add a line showing the number of jobs needed to stay even. If we need 180,000 new jobs added every month, and Bush II's years only added 69,000 per month, you'd see we were falling farther and farther behind. That's why graphing the percentage of the adult population that are employed is a better view of this.

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by: cdmc2 @ Sat Dec 06, 2008 at 14:32:15 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Terrible? Yes (0.00 / 0)

As it happens, December 2000 numbers are much better than January 2001 (shared by Bush and Clinton).  Let's act like Republicans: use December data.

Since December 2000, the number of jobs rose by 4.9%.
The number of unemployed rose in the same period by 90.3%.

- Clinton created three times as many jobs as Bush.

- Clinton created jobs in the manufacturing sector.

- The unemployment statistics were changed by Ronald Reagan to reduce the number shown as unemployed substantially.  Millions who are not "actively searching for work" are simply not included in the statistics.
The quality of many of the Bush jobs is likely pretty poor.  That, of course, takes a longer time to research so ...

Remember, that over the last 50 years, Democrats have controlled the White House for 20 years and produced the two best 8 year runs of the modern post -1900 era (Kennedy/Johnson and Bill Clinton) plus four years of Jimmy Carter.  Carter's performance is widely derided but based on economic growth,  GDP after inflation did better than the long term averages (not by a wide margin).

- The stock market performs markedly better under Democrats than under Republicans.  Onr reason, of course, is that the economy grows under Democrats.  Another reason is regulation.  People can trust the market more under Democrats than under Republicans.  Look at the Forbes 400 list and note the large number of individuals who have become billionaires by managing hedge funds.    During the Clinton years, the Dow went from 2770 to 10,550 (and was substantially higher); during the Bush years, it has declined overall.

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by: David Kowalski @ Sun Dec 07, 2008 at 00:52:24 AM CST