Bush Destroying Jobs

[The Muckraker]

The International Association of Machinists has compiled a list of job creation from Truman on. Here's how it stacks up:

Truman First Term: 60,000 jobs gained per month

Truman Second Term: 113,000 jobs gained per month

Eisenhower First Term: 58,000 jobs gained per month

Eisenhower Second Term: 15,000 jobs gained per month

Kennedy: 122,000 jobs gained per month

Johnson: 206,000 jobs gained per month

Nixon First Term: 129,000 jobs gained per month

Nixon/Ford : 105,000 jobs gained per month

Carter: 218,000 jobs gained per month

Reagan First Term: 109,000 jobs gained per month

Reagan Second Term: 224,000 jobs gained per month

G. Bush: 52,000 jobs gained per month

Clinton First Term: 242,000 jobs gained per month

Clinton Second Term: 235,000 jobs gained per month

G.W. Bush : 69,000 jobs LOST per month

Yep, Bush is the first president since Hoover in which jobs were actually lost. Depression is in the air, and George W. Bush is the man responsible for it. More tax cuts for the rich, which no one thinks will create jobs, and more poverty for the working class. That's the GOP platform.

[Tkinter1]

Good ol' bush...Is there anything he can't do?

[Blibblob]

Good ol' bush...Is there anything he can't do?
I know! Have a reason.

[Anonymous]

As I recall, the recession began roughly nine months before Bush took office.

[The Muckraker]

Dark Capitalist,

What's your point? His father had a recession as well. Carter inherited stagflation. The beginning of the Seventies, as I recall, didn't have a booming economy. Clinton's first administration started in recession.

You seem to think that George W. Bush has faced an economy none other has. In that you're partly correct, for he inherited a government without the huge deficits that he's run up.

Even Bush's father realized that he had to raise taxes. Bush just wants more cuts. Hey, they didn't work the first time, let's do it again! Even supply-siders are saying more cuts won't stimulate the economy.

This is just another example of Bush's war on the working class.

[Sabocat]

Another telling statistic is that Clinton elevated 8.2 million people out of the ranks of poverty, in GWbush's first two years, 6.5 million have fallen back into poverty level.

[Capitalist Killer]

Bush is an evil man who wants to lower wages by reducing the demand for labour and reducing the wages that can be paid.

[Invader Zim]

How much does he want cut wages by in relation to the increase in inflation that you get with any resecion?

[The Muckraker]

Disgustapated,

Did you get those figures from me? I've posted them in a couple of places. I should have been clearer, the 6.5 million pushed into poverty came during George H. W. Bush's administration, the one before Clinton.

As for the Shrub's record, the poverty rate rose from 11.3 percent in 2000 to 11.7 percent in 2001, about 1.3 million more people. Also, median household income fell 2.2 percent in real terms from its 2000 level to $42,228 in 2001. Plus, the people in poverty sunk deeper into poverty in 2001.

None of this is surprising, of course. Bush's argument for tax cuts on the wealthy, saying they need that money to invest in business and create jobs, is just plain silly. First, the rich already have money. That's the definition of being rich. People are not going to invest and expand business, however, when people are not buying, and that's the situation now. Capitalists are a lot of things, but they're not stupid. When consumer confidence is low, they aren't going to increase the size of their operation. In fact, we see exactly what they do--they lay off workers. That's why the Shrub's economy is losing jobs, not gaining them.

This is the worst economic mess since the Great Depression, and Bush prescribes more of the same medicine that's already failed. You know the quote, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Bush's economic policy is insane in just that way.

[redstar2000]

It is something of a tradition in American politics to hold the current occupant of the White House responsible for whatever happens to be taking place in the economy.

This is not only un-Marxist but extremely misleading as well. The factors that govern the ebb and flow of capitalism as well as its long term tendencies have little or nothing to do with the parade of ambitious personalities in bourgeois politics.

America's imperial presidency can make more or fewer wars; there's little it can do (or wants to do) about corporate behavior. It can regulate, if it wishes, but even regulations are easily evaded...and usually are.

Bush's tax cut for the rich is indeed deplorable, but hardly unexpected. It's not the first such rip-off and won't be the last. One must always remember that the capitalist class does not believe (with a handful of exceptions) that they should pay any taxes, ever. Whatever they can "pass on" to the ordinary consumer, they do. Wherever they can evade, they will. No one who is rich enough to afford the services of a tax advisor is without one or more "off-shore" bank accounts..."beyond the reach" of the tax collector.

The long-term strategy appears to be the "value-added tax" or "national sales tax". This highly regressive tax targets ordinary working people (who must spend all their disposable income and even go into debt to maintain a minimal standard-of-living)...while having a marginal effect on the wealthy, who invest the largest portion of their income.

As I believe someone else has already said, the capitalist state could be summarized as "socialism for the rich" and "barbarism for everybody else."

It will stay that way no matter who is in the White House.

:cool:

[The Muckraker]

Redstar2000,

What is misleading is to say that tax policy has no effect on the economy, that somehow the economy magically follows its own rules regardless of the rules placed on it by the State. Somehow, we're expected to believe your assertion that a massive tax cut, decreased social spending and increased military spending will have no effect on the economy.

Clearly, that's a flawed belief.

You cite a national sales tax. Fully two-thirds of the GDP is based on consumer spending, not business spending. Do you suggest that this would have no effect on the economy, either?

You seem to have something in common with conservatives and other fundamentalists: you dismiss inconvenient facts without saying why, but rather simply making up a reason, in this case that regulation doesn't work. If it didn't work, why would conservatives and capitalists be so very eager to get rid of them?

Your analysis of the world leaves out one very significant factor: the real world.

[redstar2000]

Well, Muckraker, you certainly neatly evaded every point that I made; I rather doubt that you should be talking to me about the "real world".

I did not assert that tax policies have "no" effect on the economy; in fact, I didn't even mention the subject.

What I do suggest is that, most of the time, the effects are marginal. This is to be expected in a country where the state apparatus is entirely under the control of the bourgeoisie; any change in the tax structure that would have significant negative impact on accumulated wealth would not be permitted.

A massive increase of federal spending on anything will certainly have a measurable effect on some part of the economy; the overall effect will probably be too small to measure accurately. (I might add here that of all the unreliable statistics we are deluged with on a daily basis, I strongly suspect official economic statistics are the worst.)

Yes, a national sales tax would have an impact on the economy; a further transfer of wealth from the working class to the bourgeoisie...something that is routine in any event.

There is nothing "magical" about any of this; the laws of capitalism have been more or less well-known for more than a century. If anyone here is invoking "magic", Muckraker, it is you...with your peculiar insistence that it really matters who sits in the Oval Office; that the occupant has some "magical" power to create or destroy jobs.

Your fascination with this kind of trivia suggests not an interest in the real world but rather an interest in the spectacle of "issues" presented by the bourgeois media...things we are "supposed" to concern ourselves with lest we perceive the reality of wage-slavery and imperialism.

The difference between us, Muckraker, is not that you "really care" about people and I don't; the difference is that you have succumbed to distraction and I have not.

:cool:

PS: As you might have gathered, a correspondence of my views on a particular issue with the views of some other political grouping does not disturb me. I am not concerned with conforming to anyone's stereotype of what is "correct" (meaning acceptable); I just try to get it right.