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Originally Posted by Tarl Cabot
Looks like you had to concede #1 and #2. As for #3, in a global economy, you can't sit back and relax. Once Henry Ford got cranked up, even if you were the best buggy-whip maker in the US, you had a problem.
But getting back to the election: Kerry had an even more serious problem in blaming job loss on Bush. Can you quote a single source that DOESN'T say the recession started in 2000?
Certainly not the House Budget Committee, who said:
"The most recent available data on gross domestic product [GDP] – released by the Commerce Department at the end of July – show that the pace of economic growth in 2000 was slipping faster than previously recognized, and that the recession of 2001 was more severe."
http://www.house.gov/budget/econup081402.htm
People also might have had trouble believing Kerry's "plan" which he claimed would create "10 million jobs." That's not a typo. I saw the video of him making that claim. |
I didn't concede anything, I chose not to get mired down in ridiculously broad and useless commentary on the US economy.
Here, for your enjoyment:
The economy isn't fine. It's balanced on the edge of a cliff according to all kinds of analysts--most of them conservatives.
Bush hasn't funded the school system more than any president in history.
Is that all it takes? I can regurgitate silly statements, too.
If you somehow manage to dig up any evidence for that notion, make sure it's in constant dollars, and recognize whether the funding is enough, not whether it's more the person before. Since I'd be surprised to find out you knew the baseline funding, why are you even giving so much currency to the notion that "more" funding has occurred?
It's this type of 'logic' that makes bush's other statements seem to make sense. The air is cleaner than it was when he took office--yep, if you fail to consider that when someone lowers the point where air is considered dirty and that the air you are breathing can still truthfully contain more chemicals in it and be simultaneously 'cleaner.'
Which wraps back to my original point. It's senseless to talk about job creation without recognizing what types of jobs are being lost and what they are being replaced with.
What kind of stepping up should american workers do?
maybe in your observations you have found people to just want to lay around the house. When I see workers, however, I see a lot of them begging their employers for more hours. But they are often kept hovering just below full-time status so as not to give them benefits.
Then we add in lower wages for service oriented jobs versus industrial.
Then we add in the decreasing buying power of the dollar over the past 4 decades.
and the picture starts to take on something approximating reality.
I would have thought these issues would have been made clear when white-collar jobs starting leaving our shores. before that it was the uneducated/unskilled who were at fault. but now it's american workers are just sloths and the workers making 50 cents a day are just better performers? that's a very odd view of how the economy works and what is beneficial to everyone involved in it.
Irony--you using Ford as an exemplar of the global economy. He would shit his pants at the logic of capitalists in this regard. Tell me, how often do you believe people in Singapore get to buy the shoes they produce? I don't get how people think others are going to consume their products if they can't afford the damn things. Henry sure understood this concept. So did Smith, BTW. I wish people would read the people they quote as the great leaders of capital instead of just spouting off what they believe as something those people actually said.