Is Obama really as stupid about economics as his recent statements imply he is?

You're deviating from the script. You're supposed to say that all the jobs have gone to Obama's public sector union friends. Try to stay on message.

Receiving or not receiving UI benefits does not affect one's employment status. Those who are unemployed and not receiving benefits -- which has lately been 45-50% of them -- are still unemployed. People who can't be bothered to so much as look for work have never been counted as unemployed. With a seasonally adjusted increase of about 1.2 million jobs so far this year (more than Bush managed in eight years), we are actually slightly ahead of population growth.

He would have had his term lasted another three months. Worst record on jobs of any modern President. Just one of the reasons why he is consistently rated among the three or four worst Presidents in US history. I'm not sure those other couple can hold out either.

The national average for a gallon of regular has been below $4.00 since the week of July 28, 2008.

 

What you have seen before are the accurate statistics. You just refuse to believe them on account of who posted them. That's silly. Prepare to be silly again, because here are some more accurate statistics you'll refuse to believe...

Change in total non-farm employees:

Nixon/Ford (8 years):.......69,438 >>..80.692.= +11,254 (16.2%)
Jimmy Carter (4 years):.....80,692 >>..91,031.= +10,339 (12.8%)
Ronald Reagan (8 years):....91,031 >> 107,133 = +16,102 (17.7%)
George HW Bush (4 years):..107,133 >> 109,725 = + 2,592 ( 2.4%)
Bill Clinton (8 years):....109,725 >> 132,469 = +22,744 (20.7%)
Goerge W Bush (8 years):...132,469 >> 133,563 = + 1,094 ( 0.8%)

 

It's one thing to tell blatant lies when your a FOX News commentator or some paid hack at the Heritage Foundation. Trying to claim this kind of birther-level crapola during a Presidential campaign will get any Republican candiadte killed. Not that they aren't all dead in the water already.

There already are CBO-based charts showing the sources of the current debt. They don't do the Republican cause any good.

Arson reported at 10:32. First units arrived on scene at 10:44. Fire declared out at 3:10. Therefore, the fire department was 95.7% responsible for the fire. Arsonist just 4.3% responsible.
-- The Right-Wing

 

Did you bother to read the OP? Here, let me help you...

Both, in fact, were concerned by something the President had said in a morning briefing: that he thought the high unemployment was due to productivity gains in the economy. Summers and Romer were startled.

Now this little essay is nothing but manufactured right-wing slop of course, but at the same time, it does not anywhere say anything at all about "productive technology improvements", and it is entirely true that unemployment has been made sticky by the sort of forced productivity gains that I described earlier.

Any questions?

 

Let's see Obama's academic records.

 

Government interference in the housing market.

 

Depends on what Harvard needs to fill its Affirmative Action quota. If they're short on AA, a slow garden slug could get in if it was not Caucasian.

 

When interviewed, the specific examples Obama used were ATMs and Airport Kiosks - not people doing more.

Regardless, if a business can do the job with three workers, why should they hire four?

 

There is a prominent American Pasta Co. that has a plant that covers many acres of area. At one time they had THOUSANDS of employees working the plant floor making pasta of many different shapes. Now that same plant has machines making all the pasta. Today they have TWO people roaming the floor watching over the machines, and they have 10 people working in the "control room."

No matter how high their profits might be, they don't need 13 people.

As it is, their parent company made 4% profit. But had it been 40%, they still need only 12 people.

 

This is very interesting, Dan40.

Thanks for sharing!

 

Start a thread about it. Maybe you can argue that automation doesn't result in unemployment either. Meanwhile, the claim made in this thread was with respect to productivity. Any comment actually relevant to that?

 

Any experience with the Harvard admissions committees to base that on? I'm klind of thinking no, it was just another combo racist/anti-intellectual waste of space comment.

 

No, if they earned a 40% profit with 12 people, they would begin to suspect that they might be able to double their investment and make perhaps a 30% profit with say 24 people.

 

Talk about not reading a whole post. What about the second half of my post:

"Regardless, if a business can do the job with three workers, why should they hire four?"

 

Is there demand to justify doubling production? Do they have capital to purchase twice the machinery that they currently have? Are they even currently maxing out production with those 12 workers, or could they still produce more with their current crew? Will another worker even increase production at all?

It is very myopic to believe that if a company can produce $X profit with 12 workers they can make $2X profit with 24. In many cases more workers won't lead to more production - at least not without an appropriate increase in equipment and machinery.

 

It's irrelevant. The point is over a company with four workers laying off one and forcing the other three (now even more fearful of losing their own jobs) to pick up the slack. Want to stay away from topic-drift iand deal with that?

 

Quite the bunch of chicken-scratchings. It was already assumed that they would double their investment. Meanhwile, simply assume that the greedy capitalists involved are apt to behave in a rational manner. If they are making a 40% profit with Output = X, they would have to be complete imbeciles not to up the situation to Output = X + 1, where the "1" -- just like all the numbers in the earlier post -- is a notional concept of "some number" used in particular merely to keep the math simple. And unless there are signficant barriers to entry and/or expansion in this field, the greedy capitalists are likely to know that 40% profits are going to draw competitors like flies, so they'd better get off their duffs and get to expanding before someone else beats them to it.

 

Wellllllll,,,Maybe. Many of the 300 pound liberals that never have done an honest days work,,COULD,,,,,eat more pasta. If someone gave it to them free and cooked it for them and cleaned up after them.

But the pasta company made a 4% profit, not 40% so the point is moot. They have 12 employees, they need only 12 employees. END of story.

 

But without demand, further investment would be wasted. You seem to assume that there will always be enough demand to sell whatever is produced. That very clearly is not the case. In fact in many markets there is already overproduction, or was before companies cut their workers to match the lack of demand.

 

But if they can produce the same output with three workers, the fourth added no value and was a waste. Why should any company keep unnecessary workers on the payroll?

 

About the pasta company and its thousands off laid off pasta makers. They can whine and collect unemployment. Or they could set out and find that a great many Italian restaurants would be very interested in a person that could make large quantities of pasta in a short time, right in the restaurant. Fresh made pasta is a quantum leap better than the dried variety. Or a few could organize and become a fresh pasta supplier to many restaurants.
Easy answers, but one's that would require them to worker harder and smarter than they ever did before.

 

You are very correct, Dan40.

Especially when you say, "Easy answers, but one's that would require them to worker harder and smarter than they ever did before."

 

Let's hear you shoot out some economic terms at us. Come on. Impress us with your vast economic knowledge.

 

Dirty dishwater-grade rant.

They would be closer to the point if they fired one of the 12 and told the other 11 to make do. That would result in unemployment and productivity gains. Which is the notion supposedly on the table that some can't stick to.

 

Yes, demand is what creates jobs. The is why programs such as the stimulus bill were so important in helping to halt the Great Bush Recession and set us back on a slow path of recovery. ARRA provided an injection of demand into the economy, and where possible, it tailored that injection to sites where funds would be spent quickly, thereby rapidly fostering a second wave of increased demand.

No, that would be a silly supply-side assumption that rational people would mostly laugh at.

How many of them were making a 40% profit at the time? How many were making any profit at all at the time? The fact remains that unemployment has been made sticky by productivity gains of the sort that has now been described many times. Why is it that you want to argue various unrelated points, but not that one?