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The Real Job Creator: Obama Nearly Doubles Bush’s Jobs Numbers
Tax cuts create jobs! I have written more posts about this and have been debunking this conservative meme for years. Now I want to show you it in graphic form from the St. Louis Federal Reserve.
In these graphs I eliminated the first year of each Presidents’ term because of a lot of debate regarding residual effect of the prior administration’s policies. This also gives an entire year for the new President’s policies to take effect and be implemented.
In fact, I even eliminated the 2008 recession for George Bush. So we looked at the period after the 2001 recession and up to the peak of his economy in 2007.
First, let’s look at employment in the private sector under President George Bush. Only 86,000 private sector jobs were created per month.
Now, lets look at President Obama’s years. Over 150,000 jobs were created per month.
For those who argue America was saturated with jobs already during Bush’s term, I ask, why did the GOP implement tax cuts under the auspices of job creation?
It turns out the facts are not on the conservatives’ side. George W. Bush implemented the largest tax cut in US history at the time and all it did was give us a deficit. Obviously, no jobs were created.
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47 Responses to The Real Job Creator: Obama Nearly Doubles Bush’s Jobs Numbers
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Shiva (Moderator)
May. 29th, 2012 at 6:08 pm
Hey Ray. I think there are a great many things one could say about why did the GOP do something if it was for this but didnt work at all.
Its difficult for Obama to respond to Romneys constant lies and attacks. Using facts dont seem to work with the GOP crowd
Shark
May. 29th, 2012 at 8:04 pm
You hit the nail on the head.
Facts don’t matter.
This is today’s Republican party. It’s a must read to understand what we are up against.
The Michigan Study on Facts.
Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.
These findings open a long-running argument about the political ignorance of American citizens to broader questions about the interplay between the nature of human intelligence and our democratic ideals. Most of us like to believe that our opinions have been formed over time by careful, rational consideration of facts and ideas, and that the decisions based on those opinions, therefore, have the ring of soundness and intelligence. In reality, we often base our opinions on our beliefs, which can have an uneasy relationship with facts. And rather than facts driving beliefs, our beliefs can dictate the facts we chose to accept. They can cause us to twist facts so they fit better with our preconceived notions. Worst of all, they can lead us to uncritically accept bad information just because it reinforces our beliefs. This reinforcement makes us more confident we’re right, and even less likely to listen to any new information. And then we vote.
www.boston.com/bostonglob...
SinghX
May. 30th, 2012 at 9:26 am
Excellent job, Shark! (can I call you “Sharkie”?)
It’s more evidence to further research the premise; Le Bon was correct, as were many social scientist and social psychologist there after…for me, it’s overwhelming. There are so many avenues of data, studies, thesis that has been ignored by all, even as history has bore out the consequences of this behavior, that it’s overwhelming. It’s like looking at the stats on the behavior of alcoholics and coming to the same conclusion via the facts over and over, and yet, what is the middle name of the alcoholic; denial.
The “misinformation” formula works like this:
A.recruitment via a social gathering; cognitive dissonance is injected into the gathering by a the “alpha” or charismatic speaker.
B.followed by application of various peer coercive-persuasive techniques(I’ll scratch your back, you scratch mine pyramid scheme)
C.resulting in a slow, methodical stream of daily “suggestions” (information) tainted with fear/reward information, until the end result is mind control over the individual.
D.Thoughts on the reality are reinvented to reflect the persona of the “alpha” leader.
E.From there the loop is complete and replayed over and over like a Stephan King “karma” revival; every “action” then has a predictable “reaction”.
Ray Medeiros
May. 29th, 2012 at 6:14 pm
Hey Shiva,
The conservative base of the GOP is not of my concern. They will always vote that way.
I want to try and reach those who are in the middle maybe even lean right or left.
Marc McKenzie
May. 29th, 2012 at 7:00 pm
@Ray: “I want to try and reach those who are in the middle maybe even lean right or left.”
That’s the best thing to do. The conservative GOP base is lost to us anyway; no amount of hard evidence–even if it was sent down by Almighty God and Sonny Jesus–will change their minds.
Shark
May. 29th, 2012 at 8:06 pm
Is your Bush chart correct. He lost jobs in the years 2007 the 2008 every month.
Ray Medeiros
May. 29th, 2012 at 9:33 pm
Yes, my source is from research.stlouisfed.org/f... St louis Fed
Middle Molly
May. 30th, 2012 at 9:17 am
Peak of jobs, both total and private, was in January 2008.
However, jobs in construction were declining throughout 2007 as the housing bubble had actually burst in mid 2006.
Middle Molly
May. 30th, 2012 at 9:36 am
Exactly. We have to pick our battles, and too many of us waste time by arguing with people whose minds are made up. But where to find those who are still open?
keymanjim
May. 29th, 2012 at 6:44 pm
Check your sources. Progressive sites aren’t reliable.
Labor force participation rate is still at a 20 year LOW.
data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOu...
Shiva (Moderator)
May. 29th, 2012 at 8:08 pm
That still doesnt change the facts. Participation might be low but jobs still created.
Ray Medeiros
May. 29th, 2012 at 9:34 pm
My source is the st louis FED research.stlouisfed.org/f...
Ray Medeiros
May. 29th, 2012 at 10:23 pm
you sir, are looking at the wrong data. I am pointing out, jobs created in the private sector, NOT the unemployment rate
Middle Molly
May. 30th, 2012 at 9:18 am
Labor Force participation is not the same as number of jobs out there.
Middle Molly
May. 30th, 2012 at 9:20 am
Labor force participation is at a 20 year low mostly due to demographics… the aging of the Baby Boomers. They account for about 2/3rds of the difference between labor force participation rates in 2009 and 2012.
Eric
May. 29th, 2012 at 7:58 pm
To be fair, Obama took over at the lowest point… So he only could go up. Bush took over at the height of the American economy (Clinton era), so there wasn’t much room for improvement. This is propoganda that tells only a half truth.
Eric
May. 29th, 2012 at 8:09 pm
What I forgot to add, was that I do not agree with tax cuts during good economic times. Taxes need to be increased during good economic times – especially corporate taxes.
Ray Medeiros
May. 29th, 2012 at 9:48 pm
and, to say it hit bottom is half true. If Obama didn’t take the steps he took, job losses would have continued even further into his first term
Holden Litgo
May. 29th, 2012 at 11:00 pm
Especially during war time.
Ray Medeiros
May. 29th, 2012 at 9:45 pm
Like I said, If tax cuts create jobs…unemployment should have dropped to Clinton levels of sub 5%. But it never did.
Middle Molly
May. 30th, 2012 at 9:23 am
No… We lost 4,462,000 jobs before Obama took one foot into the Oval Office. But we lost another 4,300,000 before the bloodbath was over. Most of those jobs lost after Obama was inaugurated were lost in the first few months he was in office.
We had lost over 5,000,000 jobs before the ARRA stimulus was signed in late February.
mollysmiddleamerica.blogs...
Dan Skinner
May. 30th, 2012 at 12:18 am
hey wait a minute… you forgot George W. gave us all of Sadam’s Weapons of mass destruction… Oh yeah… he didn’t deliver on that either…sorry.. my bad!
Ax
May. 30th, 2012 at 7:56 am
If unemployment remains at an all time high, wouldn’t jobs creation lower the unemployment rate? Methinks your a spin mister.
Shiva (Moderator)
May. 30th, 2012 at 8:16 am
Certainly you are more intelligent than that. The president cannot stop companies like Hewlett-Packard from laying off 24,000 people at one time. There are still jobs being lost in this economy as there have been since 2006. The unemployment rate depends on the number of people participating and new jobs created.
Unemployment right now is lower than it was the day Obama took office. And it is not at an all-time high
Ax
May. 30th, 2012 at 9:03 am
Exactly my point Shiva. If Obama’s job creation numbers are so great, than how come unemployment has gone up?
And no the unemployment numbers when Obama took office were 7.8 they are currently 8.1, down from a high of 10.
Shiva (Moderator)
May. 30th, 2012 at 9:25 am
The day Obama took over the unemployment rate was 8.5
www.forecast-chart.com/ch...
Middle Molly
May. 30th, 2012 at 9:46 am
Shiva, I do have to agree with Al on this one… that graph is completely wrong; I don’t have the foggiest as to where they got their data. But every month in that last column is off.
Here’s the unemployment series from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
data.bls.gov/timeseries/L...
Shiva (Moderator)
May. 30th, 2012 at 11:09 am
One is seasonally adjusted, the other isn’t. The real data makes the UR 8.5 on Jan 1 2009
Ax
May. 30th, 2012 at 8:36 pm
That is from a company that does forecasts and has nothing to do with the actual numbers.
Middle Molly
May. 30th, 2012 at 9:40 am
We have now recouped 87% of the jobs total lost during the first few months of Obama’s administration, and we have recouped 100% of the private sector jobs lost, and we have started to recoup the jobs lost when Bush was still in office.
And the unemployment rate is very close to what it was when Obama took office, and we are about two percentage points off the peak of the unemployment rate in October 2009.
mollysmiddleamerica.blogs...
Ax
May. 30th, 2012 at 8:42 pm
Nope not yet. Not until the rate dips below what is was before he took office. Also what these numbers fail to show is how many people fell off the far end. In other words the unemployment rate only shows how many people applied for unemployment during the given month. What it don’t show is how many people that are still unemployed and no longer qualify for unemployment due to the fact they’ve used it up.
Shiva (Moderator)
May. 30th, 2012 at 9:19 pm
“What it don’t show is how many people that are still unemployed and no longer qualify for unemployment due to the fact they’ve used it up.”
That is not tracked. Once you are off unemployment you are considered to be working. There are no stats for what you want
Ax
May. 30th, 2012 at 9:12 am
The current unemployment rate has only reached this high a few times in the history of the U.S. At least since records have been kept on the subject.
Shiva (Moderator)
May. 30th, 2012 at 9:24 pm
Wrong, they were higher under Reagan the tax increaser.
And the Unemployment rate right now is lower than when Obama took office
Ax
May. 31st, 2012 at 12:18 am
You do realize you just confirmed what I said?
Ax
May. 31st, 2012 at 12:20 am
And that thing about the unemployment rate being lower now than when Obama took office? The facts disagree with you.
data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOu...
Middle Molly
May. 30th, 2012 at 9:35 am
Right, Shiva, people are hired and fired all the time, during good economies and bad. The number of jobs goes up and the unemployment tends to decline when more jobs are being added and people being hired than people being laid off. And vice verse.
Even during the horrible months of late 2008 and early 2009, people were being hired. About 4,000,000 were hired in January 2009 and February 2009. But close to 5,000,000 people were either laid off or quit each of those two months, which is why the jobs numbers fell.
www.bls.gov/news.release/...
Middle Molly
May. 30th, 2012 at 9:26 am
Unemployment is not at an “all time high”. We had about 15,000,000 officially unemployed in late 2009; now we are down to 12,500,000. All measures of underemployment are also down.
mollysmiddleamerica.blogs...
Middle Molly
May. 30th, 2012 at 9:28 am
Also, if the number of people entering the labor force exceeds the number of jobs created, you can have increasing numbers of jobs AND an increasing unemployment rate.
More jobs were created (as a percent) in Jimmy Carter’s one term than any one term of any Prez in the last 40 years, but the unemployment rate did not go down during his Presidency… due to the huge influx of people into the labor market.
mollysmiddleamerica.blogs...
Ax
May. 30th, 2012 at 8:59 am
Under Bush the unemployment rate averaged 5.3 percent. Under Obama the unemployment rate averaged 9.2 percent.
The 5.3 percent average was high even under Bush, that is why he implemented the tax cuts.
Under Obama the unemployment rate is comparable to the great depression.
source: data.bls.gov/timeseries/L...
Middle Molly
May. 30th, 2012 at 10:02 am
That’s extremely misleading. We were shedding more jobs than my dogs shed hair in the spring when Bush was leaving office.
As to the Bush tax cuts, the first round of tax cuts were signed in June 2001, when the unemployment rate was 4.5%. The unemployment rate did not go down, and the economy continued to struggle, particularly after 9/11. The 2003 tax cuts were signed in summer 2003, when the unemployment rate was around 6%.
Job growth was still sluggish, and much of that growth was based on construction and the housing bubble, which burst in summer 2006. The lowest the unemployment rate was after the Bush tax cuts was 4.4%, just about where it was when the first round of tax cuts were signed.
The unemployment rate reached something like 25% in 1933 during the Great Depression. It went down quite a bit to 14% during 1937, but then, after a round of governmental belt-tightening, it went up again. It was still 17% in 1939, before the mega stimulus of WWII caused the unemployment rate to permanently decrease.
We didn’t come anywhere close to those records during this recession, in large part due to government stimulus early on.
SinghX
May. 30th, 2012 at 10:10 am
Thank you Molly; you bet me to the punch.
It’s been pointed out over and over and over that Bush came in under the Clinton rates; like Obama came in under Bush’s rates…like Sharkie said, the facts don’t matter to the mind controlled…
Ax
May. 31st, 2012 at 12:03 am
If you check Clinton unemployment rates, they averaged 5.2 percent over his 8 years, Bush averaged 5.3 percent over his 8 years. That being said Clinton started with 7.3 and ended with 3.9 with 7.3 being the highest and 3.8 being the lowest. Bush started with 4.2 and ended with 7.3 with 7.3 being the highest and 4.2 the lowest. Obama’s highest has been 10 percent and the lowest 7.8.
My question would be at what point in a presidents’ term do you quit blaming the previous president?
William Carr
Jun. 5th, 2012 at 1:04 am
“Clinton started with 7.3 and ended with 3.9 ”
So, what you’re saying is, that Clinton reversed 3% of the Reagan tax cuts and cut unemployment down to 3.9%.
Obama backed the Stimulus, cut spending, and cut unemployment 27 months in a row.
If you want to know when you should stop blaming the previous President, go read Reagan’s State of the Union Speeches.
Tell me how many speeches it was before HE stopped blaming the “previous Administration”.
***** Spoiler Alert ****
{shhh. The answer is “Four”}
Ax
May. 31st, 2012 at 12:16 am
OK, if you say 10% isn’t anywhere near 14%. Let me guess, if someone asked you what is the answer to 2+2, you would reply “What do you want it to be”
A Walkaway
May. 31st, 2012 at 12:27 am
You must think we have VERY short memories.
I remember 2008 very well, and how bad it was. 2007 for a lot of people wasn’t a picnic either. I could tell trouble was coming (even in 2004-2005) and so could a lot of my friends.
When Obama was elected, it was the first time in years I felt any hope for this nation, and a glimmer of hope for our own situation.
It HAS gotten better, in spite of the damned Republicans. Not much, but better. If they hadn’t been cutting cutting cutting so as to give money to their rich masters, things would have been a lot better.
BTW… you’ve heard of Hegemony? That’s what I’m hearing in you.
William Carr
Jun. 5th, 2012 at 1:09 am
“Under Bush the unemployment rate averaged 5.3 percent. Under Obama the unemployment rate averaged 9.2 percent.”
Bush came in to a Balanced Budget and a Surplus. And blew it.
Obama came in to a crashing Economy, ruinous Tax Cuts for the Weathy, and turned it around.
Your rather transparent use of averages to cover up the truth is weak.