Time Magazine Names President Bush 'Person of the Year'

[el freako]

Originally posted by Giancarlo

The US has been better then the EU. I never claimed anything about the unemployment rate being more important then anything else.

Well it was implicit when you failed to refute my claims of faster growth in average incomes, productivity and employment as a share of population - you only mentioned unemployment so it certainly looked like you were ignoring any other measure.

Originally posted by Giancarlo
el dumbo.

I should give up calling me dumb until you actually disprove one thing I have said or, for that matter, even back up anything you have said with any data.

Originally posted by Giancarlo
All I said it was lower in the US, whereas it is sometimes in the double digits in certain countries in the EU.

So then we are agreed that in one of the 6 measures we are talking about (income growth, employment/population ratio, productivity growth, foreign balance, government balance and unemployment) that the US is doing better than the EU in one of them and worse in the other five.
Surely that's difficult to square with your statements that the US is doing better and that the unemployment rate is no more important than the other measures?

Originally posted by Giancarlo
Average income growth has not been good in the EU, nor has productivity growth or employment growth.

Actually it has, the main difference (and where you are probably being led astray) is due to measurement differences.
The US measures inflation (and thus growth) differently than the EU, so attempting to compare the two long-term using growth rates will give you false numbers.
It's much better to use PPPs for this as they have far less variance and are calculated in the same way for all countries.

Originally posted by Giancarlo
I'd like to see some links backing this up.

I'll go one better - I have prepared a spreadsheet (29k in size) which is attached to this post, there are links in it to the raw data.
In it you can see that between 1990 and 2002 the EU GDP per head grew 0.4% a year faster than the US, it's productivity grew 0.9% a year faster and it's employment/population ratio 0.2% a year faster.

Originally posted by Giancarlo
No, it hasn't. In fact unemployment has gone up in nations like France and Germany.

You need to grow up and use your damn brain.

Germany indeed fits your definition of a low-employment growth country - the trouble is that the rest of the EU does not.
The reason unemployment has been static over the last year or so in the EU is becuase the workforce is expanding rapidy - if many more people are entering the job market you need correspondingly faster employment growth just to keep unemployment stable.
Conversely if the workforce is growing much slower than usual it's much easier to keep unemployment down.
Since 1995 workforce growth in the EU, relative to working-age population, has been over 1% a year faster than it was in 1960-95
Whereas the workforce growth in the US (again relative to working-age population) has been 0.5% a year slower since 1990 compared with 1960-90.

Therefore the EU has to create many more jobs than the US just to keep the unemployment rate stable - but even considering that the rise in US unemployment since the recent trough has been double that which the EU has suffered (1.5 percentage points compared to 0.8 for the EU)

So, who was not using their brain again?

[Giancarlo]

El Crapo, you need proof, not your own words.

[el freako]

Originally posted by Giancarlo
El Crapo, you need proof, not your own words.

I see you failed to look at the links in the spreadsheet then - or even bother to download it (the one person to download it so far was me, to check if everything was correct).

The proof is there, just waiting for you to look at it, however you don't seem interested in the proof do you?

You really are childish when you hurl abuse at other people and can't be bothered to even read the proof of their position.

And anyway where is your proof?
There is none you have offered, so by your own standards your argument is worthless

[Dis]

El crapo

master debator

[Imran Siddiqui]

however you don't seem interested in the proof do you

It's Giancarlo, of course he doesn't.

[el freako]

Well, i'm an optimist you see.

One day I hope he will become amenable to reason or to acknowledge facts.

Although, admittedly, I might have to wait until he's out of education and living in the real world.

[JohnT]

Too bad this thread was Fezzed.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Giancarlo
El Crapo, you need proof, not your own words.

WTF is he supposed to use, your words?

[Dinner]

As I recall Time also gave this award to Adolf Hitler!


Edit: Got beaten to it.

[el freako]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
WTF is he supposed to use, your words?

I hope not

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

Don't compare Bush to Hitler.

Sorry... I'll apologize to Hitler's estate


PS, you don't have to be left wing to realize Bush is the worst President that the United States has EVER had.

I don't know. Grant was pretty bad and so was Harding. Bush is certainly amoung the worst three though and that's hands down.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by el freako
Well, i'm an optimist you see.

One day I hope he will become amenable to reason or to acknowledge facts.

Although, admittedly, I might have to wait until he's out of education and living in the real world.

You bloody optimists. Can't you see the truth right in front of you .

[monkspider]

Grant and Harding were just corrupt, they didn't do anything catastrophically bad.

[Dis]

Originally posted by monkspider
Grant and Harding were just corrupt, they didn't do anything catastrophically bad.

Bush hasn't done anything catastrophically bad either... yet

Yeah Iraq hurts. But the loss of life is really not bad. It'll be a failure. But not nearly as bad as Vietnam. It really doesn't impact our status as as a superpower.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Dissident
Bush hasn't done anything catastrophically bad either... yet

That depends on where you live.