Chart of the Day

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1. Liberal Elite says:

   May 5, 2012 at 4:58 pm

   Units? It must be per 1000 jobs. That would make about 3.5 million jobs created in two years.

2. Bob says:

   May 6, 2012 at 1:47 am

   NYT reported the jobless rate dropped in April, from 8.2 percent to 8.1 percent, but the decline was caused by 342,000 people dropping out of the work force. Meanwhile, approximately 27 million people need a full time real job. Part time work has been exploding upward. Basically, this all boils to a real unemployment rate just shy of approximately 17%. By this alternative measure, April was worse than March but the difference is certainly within an insignificant margin of error. The public sector employment grew significantly in the years on the graph thanks to the policies of the democratic majority and democratic president. After spending trillions and inflating the currency through fed action by 7 T, we are in a much much worse place than we were in February 2009. The stock market looks positive because those dollars can find no other place to flow. The trillions being held on the sidelines by such giants as Apple or Google is a function of just how terrified the corporate community is. No one knows where this out of control deficit set in motion by the 2007 congress and the 2009 executive hat trick is leading. The 2011 House couldn’t undue anything, just marginally balk at the insanity. Even liberal billionaire stalwarts like Mort Zuckerman are now terrified of where our president is taking the nation. This silly Mother Earth News painting a happy face graph out of context is just that, silly. Rather than address reality, the president compounds the terror by pretending there is actually a dispute over the rate attached to student loans when it was the democrats in congress who fabricated this issue years ago by putting a sunset date on the lower rate. He is projecting a message that screams, “If my last two budget proposals which couldn’t get a democratic vote weren’t enough to tell you I don’t give a hoot, watch me gin up this loan nonsense on college campuses while the economy groans. I’m playing divide and conquer, Baby, all the way to November.” This type of behavior is paralyzing small business growth which is actually in collapse and cowering big businesses who horde cash. If they believed the market valuations they’d be buying back stock or acquiring smaller fish. Or better yet they’d be using it as collateral to exploit these ridiculously low interest rates of Helicopter Ben’s doing. They are not. They are hunkering down for the storm. The curative plan the president has consciously or unconsciously seems to be, “Let’s disintegrate the excess global currency through another crash.” Its a heck of a wealth re-distributive plan, but its a bit heartless reset on the poor and pensioners who will bear the brunt of it.

3. Liberal Elite says:

   May 6, 2012 at 2:05 am

   @Bob “The curative plan the president has consciously or unconsciously seems to be, “Let’s disintegrate the excess global currency through another crash.””

   Interesting analysis. Yea… Things aren’t so great, but you offer no cure. Ryan’s plans are a disaster in the making, and surely you don’t see Romney as a savior?

   The only solution seems to be to ask the wealthy to get us out of this mess… and I thought that is what Obama was proposing to do (and what the GOP seems determined to prevent).

   You know… Taxing the rich IS a good way to unfreeze money that has been locked away.

4. puck says:

   May 6, 2012 at 5:35 am

   The public sector employment grew significantly in the years on the graph thanks to the policies of the democratic majority and democratic president.

   Is that what winguts are being told these days? But there are now 600,000 fewer public sector workers than when Obama took office on the downslope of a major recession caused by Republicans. Those 600K public sector jobs have now all been replaced by private sector jobs.

   Nice try though.

5. puck says:

   May 6, 2012 at 5:46 am

   The only solution seems to be to ask the wealthy to get us out of this mess… and I thought that is what Obama was proposing to do…

   I thought so too until Obama dropped the ball in December 2010, extending the jobless recovery for another two years.

   Exactly what plans does Obama have, other then uselessly asking a Republican Congress to raise taxes on the rich as some kind of campaign stunt?

   Because, as DL readers all know, nothing can be done unless we have the votes first, right? We have to elect 60 senators who will vote to raise taxes, I think the theory goes.

   The shortest (and probably the only) route to actually raising taxes on the rich is for Obama to keep his pen in his pocket this December, and let all the Bush tax cuts expire. Anything short of that means he really doesn’t think asking having the rich pay their fair share is all that important.

6. Bob says:

   May 7, 2012 at 10:25 pm

   Liberal elite, you are right I don’t offer solutions because there may be no definable solution. Instead there is a constant process at work of facing challenges and dealing with them at the individual level based on personal interests which vary with the individuals involved. There is no group smart enough for the complexity of billions of decisions made everyday across the nation and globe. The solution sets that built this majestic incredible distributive and exchange system we have known as corporate capitalism sprang from countless minds making countless errors and victories along the way. President Obama and his inexperienced crew are particularly unaccomplished and unfit for the directing of this activity. In fact, if they were all spitting replicas of Bernard Baruch, Henry Ford, Steve Jobs all rolled into one, they still would be not up for the job. Logistically its impossible for a select elite to be in the millions of circumstances where the Darwinian decision process can best be discovered. this means winners and losers along the way. The Utopian Leninists of the modern day claim it could be done better this time if we are only truer to the principles laid down by Marx, a guy who never ran anything but his mouth and lived off the good graces of buddy or lover or whatever Engels was. These ,”Put in me in coach as the godlike determiner.” pipe dreams are doomed from the get-go. Certainly, I would suggest that you and 25 other people picked randomly from the phone book could have done a better job of directing economic growth than this latest green energy stimulus fiasco. they set the bar awfully low. You wouldn’t be crooks and chances are a hand full of you would have some real enterprise experience to draw from. My faith is with the mass collective intelligence, not with those who somehow against all historical evidence believe an elite could direct better. Sure there is an elite intelligence out there but these folks work best unfettered by government decrees.

   Energy in the hands of the individual is the best measure stick of human progress. The more available, the more progress throughout history. The obumble brigade wants to stifle real existant energy just when its most desperately needed. Concentrating power through tax confiscation simply whets the insatiable desire for more power. We have no revenue problem. Corporation USA produces fantastic wealth to the government. We have a monstrous spending problem where are grand-kids are on the hook for 43 cents of every dollar spent. That’s an impossible model. Sure, I’d like to see the wealthy taken down a peg since I’m not one. Jealousy is a strong emotion. But, do the math. Confiscate all the billionaire wealth and apply it to the debt and future liabilities, conservatively 116T. Its a spit in the ocean that will unemploy millions of workers in the process. My suggestion is dump futile class war baloney and deal with reality.

7. Liberal Elite says:

   May 8, 2012 at 1:36 am

   @Bob “Sure there is an elite intelligence out there but these folks work best unfettered by government decrees.”

   Good discussion, but your quote above is sadly not true. Are you a student of history? Time and time again we’ve seen what unfettered bankers, scoundrels, and tycoons can do. You need to have good rules in place and enough backbone to enforce them.

   And when the wealthy scoundrels do run off with the contents of the national “safe”, it’s OK to ask them to put it back.

   “Sure, I’d like to see the wealthy taken down a peg since I’m not one. Jealousy is a strong emotion.”

   Common sense can trump greed and jealousy. Raise my taxes!

   “Its a spit in the ocean that will unemploy millions of workers in the process.”

   But that spit in the ocean is mostly money that is locked up. How many wealthy people do you know?? Most of the wealthy are just sitting on their money. Let’s get it moving around and see it spur the recovery. Millions of workers will finally get jobs!

   “My suggestion is dump futile class war baloney and deal with reality.”

   Class war? Not… My war is against scoundrels.
   Reality? We have a problem that really needs fixing. I support a real solution. Your solution is to just let the scoundrels do what they want. Hmmm…

8. Bob says:

   May 15, 2012 at 1:01 pm

   This is the thing, Liberal Elite. Referring to the productive members of society as scoundrels is the class warfare baloney I’m talking about. Small business start ups are in their worst condition since WWII. That’s the marrow of the body politic. This sickness is not an accident. Its a direct result of the policies, if I can dignify it as policy, from this present president. Somewhere above in this string someone questions my characterization of a splurge in public sector jobs. Well, I saw the figures as I simultaneously heard from the mouth of a Federal Reserve fella working directly under the Reserve Board. This was a top echelon guy presenting his power point to inform us in the hinterlands of Upstate NY about labor trends. Federal salaries were climbing at an alarming rate as was total employment, outpacing the private sector in almost every similar work category. That was a year or two into this administration but a trend set long before the Great Divider came along. What the misinformed rebuke was speaking to is the disintegration of state and local public employee positions as the misguided stimulus monies are now evaporating along with the effervescent effect of QE 1, 2, etc. This eventual collapsing of local budgets is the outcome of a failed “plan”. From a background in government I possibly had a favored vantage point to perceive the explosion of ridiculous grant funding pouring out like the best Christmas ever. It is absolute insanity to imagine that feeding the federal government enormous amounts of money (money now owed by my grandchildren’s children) would be a solution for a tanking economy. Postponing all federal taxes for a year of all kinds would have been better with a shorter debt consequence than what has been wrought. The fact that the federal government is in no way shape or form set up to create private sector jobs escapes the statists in charge. It shouldn’t because its not there authority to do so. They call it mission creep in the services. The original mission is lost. The folly on exploding the federal pie was equally matched by the folly to pick and choose winners on the private sector side, of course that’s about winning elections and power more than anything else. I’m old enough to recall reading my JrHS school civics charts. The chart showed somewhere in the area of ten or more private sector workers for each public one. That was the 60’s. The ratio was much more favorable when the US catapulted to #1 spot back in the 20’s. Now, that ratio is closer to 4 to 1 or worse. That’s an impossible ratio. Even the innumerate should understand that. I tend to agree with A. Rand’s beliefs that a small sliver of humans create the conditions that allow for the many to be productive. Life experience has immutably convinced me that a large number of the folks I’ve worked with from factory lines, private business and, definitely, in government have been able to survive and thrive through little genius of their own; but, rather because high intelligence and high ambition people have set conditions for them to earn paychecks by applying their efforts to others designs. I’m not much brighter. Most, the vast majority, of us have not demonstrated the skills or ambition to be the instigator of successful business enterprise. We are content to earn, grow and then grouse about the ‘man” whether he is white collar, blue collar or no collar. Your scoundrels are endemic to all humanity. They are a given like cockroaches. Stamp them as best as law and order can accomplish. Fine. They’ll return. Don’t crush the productive class and line up K-16 indoctrination
   centers to propagate Marxist idiocy throughout the society. We can be a Cuba, a USSR, or any of the other fine examples of socialistic communal serfs if we shape the minds to it. The only things that sets us apart is the dogged beliefs in Constitutional Government and a dynamic economy, still the most dynamic on earth. And, both of these things are under assault from all sides by the statists’s insatiable appetite for more, more more. We are on the road “Forward” towards socialism by ignorant idiocy rather than design? What seems haphazard feckless leadership may, I suppose, be more sinister. This collection of radicals in the executive may actually realize what they are doing. But, it makes no difference…potatoe…potatatta….its The Road to Serfdom. Your children are on it as are my grand kids. Yeah, well, American idol is pretty good this year, huh, and what about them Orioles in the AL East?