Bush Job Creation Promises Failing to Deliver

[rev]

The reason productivity is up is because those who lost their jobs were less productive than those who kept them.

[Capt Dizle]

You are always going to have people around nay-saying the economic problems, even up to the point when the rioting starts.

The reason is simple, it is perfectly acceptable to the DanS's of the world for 10% of the people to suffer so that the upper class can reap the benefit of cheap labor. Those people mean nothing to people like him.

I mean, if they were worth a ****, they would just get a job, right?

[Capt Dizle]

Originally posted by rev
The reason productivity is up is because those who lost their jobs were less productive than those who kept them.

Yeah, the terrorized survivors are pedaling like crazy.

[Ming]

Originally posted by jimmytrick
The reason is simple, it is perfectly acceptable to the DanS's of the world for 10% of the people to suffer so that the upper class can reap the benefit of cheap labor. Those people mean nothing to people like him.

Discuss the topic... not the people.

[DanS]

The reason is simple, it is perfectly acceptable to the DanS's of the world for 10% of the people to suffer so that the upper class can reap the benefit of cheap labor. Those people mean nothing to people like him.

Are you kidding? I especially get my rocks off on the suffering part.

[el freako]

Originally posted by Japher

Is Bush to blame for the recession?

No, indeed his reckless abandon with the government's finances have prevented a far worse recession (but they come at the cost of there being no room for pump-priming in the next recession).

Originally posted by Japher
And why was 5.6% ok in 1996, but is bad now?

Because in 1996 the proportion of adults employed was higher than it is now - indeed it was rising steadily whereas now it is flat after the biggest fall since the 1930s.

[Vanguard]

The reason why there hasn't been much job growth is because businesses have been able to increase output greatly while not hiring any more people. In other words, people are becoming hugely more productive, which is in turn hugely beneficial occurence for Americans. I wonder why some are trying their best to kill the goose that's laying the golden eggs? Unemployment is not that bad and will get better over time.

Here's a graph that shows productivity growth -- output per hour of non-farm business. As you can see, we haven't had it this good for 40 years. Our work hours have become about 5% more productive in each of the last two years!

That's bull****, Baggins. Corporations are taking a very low percentage of their business in profits (dividends are tied to profits over the long run). It's pretty much all flowing through to the employees. See the following graph that I prepared showing this fact.

Speaking of bull****.........

First of all, do I really have to point out how ridiculous it is to equate the statistic dubbed "productivity" with the real world occurance of "people becoming hugely more productive"? The two are not equivalent. And implying that they are is an out and out falsehood.

Productivity (the statistic) is simply the value of all goods and services produced by the United States divided by the hours worked by everyone in the US. By itself it says nothing about whether people are producing goods more efficiently. If large numbers of business were, for instance, to stop producing goods in the US and to start selling imported goods in their place, then "productivity" would go go up, whether those goods were produced more efficiently or not, because the value of the goods would remain the same while the number of hours worked declined.

And, unfortunately, there is absolutely no reason to think that these current increases in productivity growth indicate that goods or services are being produced more efficiently in the United States. If this were true, then economic growth would increase with productivity. After all, if we have been producing goods and services 5% more efficiently over the past two years, then surely the economy must have grown by at least 5% in each of these years, right? Well, I'm afraid it hasn't.

So what this increase seems to indicate is that less goods and services are being produced in the US, and more in China and elsewhere, but that their value is, temporarily at least, remaining the same.

The question of corporate profits as a percentage of GDP is completely irrelevent. If you want to measure whether workers are getting more money for their "increased productivity" why not look at median income figures? That would seem to be the best evidence.

[mrmitchell]

Ming: the economy created only 21,000 jobs last month...

21000 high paying jobs? Or 21000 "Would you like fries with that"?

[DanS]

If large numbers of business were, for instance, to stop producing goods in the US and to start selling imported goods in their place, then "productivity" would go go up, whether those goods were produced more efficiently or not, because the value of the goods would remain the same while the number of hours worked declined.

You are forgetting that the numerator in this equation (output) is also reduced as you decrease the denominator (hours). Imports subtract from output.

[Sharpe]

The problem with "Total hours worked" part of the productivity formula is that many economists are starting to suspect that the number of hours are being underreported , and perhaps badly underreported - which might severely diminish or eliminate those productivity growth calculation.

That could result in good or bad news re the jobs situation - good as these extra unaccounted hours will eventually lead to more jobs as the economy grows and more work is created - beyond the ability of workers to add extra hours.

But bad - it is becoming obvious that many employers are increasingly demanding more and more hours from their employees, including unpaid overtime, regardless of their level of seniority as a regular situation - many underlings are now working more than even their managers - and that is unlikely to change anytime soon given the trends in business these days - the days of the 35 or even the 40 hour workweek are either dying or dead.

Employers have couched things in terms of regarding employees as "professionals" and using terms such as "empowerment". While many meant it at the time and it has had its benefits and uses for employees, now many employers are using it as an excuse simply to get them to work more hours at the same amount of money and to avoid having to hire additional personnel.

Plus there is the increasing use of contract/temp employees and "consultants" (i.e. outsourcing) who frequently work additional or unspecified hours which can vary from week to week or are even unaccounted for (i.e pay per day for many consultants makes it difficult to account for how many hours they are working for).

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Vanguard
And, unfortunately, there is absolutely no reason to think that these current increases in productivity growth indicate that goods or services are being produced more efficiently in the United States. If this were true, then economic growth would increase with productivity. After all, if we have been producing goods and services 5% more efficiently over the past two years, then surely the economy must have grown by at least 5% in each of these years, right? Well, I'm afraid it hasn't.

No, productivity growth isn't the only factor contributing to economic growth, in fact it's probably not even significant in the short run.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by el freako
No, indeed his reckless abandon with the government's finances have prevented a far worse recession (but they come at the cost of there being no room for pump-priming in the next recession).

If you support pump-priming (do you?) it makes good sense to prime the pump in the recession that we are in since we don't know when the next recession will be or what the conditions of it will be.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by rev
The reason productivity is up is because those who lost their jobs were less productive than those who kept them.

Productivity has been improving for some time, even while there has been employment growth.

[Kidlicious]

Re: Bush Job Creation Promises Failing to Deliver

Originally posted by Sava
that graph sure illustrates how absurd the administration's job creation predictions are...

Many economists make overoptimistic predictions before and during recessions too. Krugman's record isn't particularly good.

[el freako]

Originally posted by Kidicious

If you support pump-priming (do you?)

Yes I do support pump-priming to a certain extent (but a 5% swing in the structural budget balance is huge by any standards), but I also support the opposite of raising taxes when the economy has recovered (do you?) - this the bush administration shows no sign of doing (indeed they are trying to make the 'temporary' tax cuts permanent)

Originally posted by Kidicious
it makes good sense to prime the pump in the recession that we are in

Are you seriously claiming the the US economy is still in recession?

Originally posted by Kidicious
Since we don't know when the next recession will be or what the conditions of it will be.

Barring an external shock the next recession is due in around 6 to 8 years time by my reckoning.