Look, a company can make money without necessarily hiring more American workers.

During the deep recession, a lot of companies took the opportunity to invest heavily in automation, computers, robotics, outsourcing, etc. So now they’ve retooled, they can do even more work with fewer human workers. Bank of America used their $42 billion in bailout money to eliminate 30,000 American jobs and move their operations to the Philippines.

Plus, our GDP is now being skewed by knowledge companies that make vast amounts of money with a small labor force. Look at Facebook. They make billions of dollars with a staff of just a few hundred employees.

That’s why economists refer to unemployment as a “LAGGING indicator” of the economy. During a recession, companies first try to cut costs by getting rid of the deadwood, automation, outsourcing, etc. Because an American worker is so expensive, they don’t resort to hiring American workers until they’re really experiencing boom times and all other efforts to do more with less have been exhausted.

Not talking apples and oranges. You missed my point. The recession ended in 2009, but you have actually go back to 1981 to find lower job numbers which also includes during recession? In a country with a GDP that is largely consumer-fueled? For the labor participation to go down, and at the same time have the unemployment rate go down, shows you how there are three kinds of liars; liars, d**n liars, and government statisticians.

I loved the editorial in USAToday by Wolf, who said that “Despite Gaffes, Biden is still a force”. My contention is that USAToday put the wrong word in the headline, and it should have been is “…still a FARCE”.

It may have been developed in 1981, but there are statistics all the way back to 1948.
It measures the percentage of people working or looking for work divided by the entire adult (16 and older) poupulation that are able bodied.
The labor participation rate averaged between 58 and 60 percent for decades, until the trickle down policy’s of the 1980′s started forcing households to have more than one wage earner to survive.
At that time the rate started to skyrocket and has averaged between 63 and 67 percent every since.
The current rate is at the low end of that rate at about 63.5 percent for August.
Part of the probem with all of these statistics, is that the Labor Department has never seen a downturn like we saw 4 years ago, since the great depression. And I don’t think that their models can handle the current conditions.
For instance, Romney is making a big deal about the 96,000 new jobs for August as being low, well the actual (non seasonally adjusted) number of jobs in the report is 610,000 jobs higher.
If their estimation math for seasonal adjustment is off, by even 10 or 20 percent, the number could have been 61,000 to 122,000 jobs higher.
The point is that we are headed in the right direction, with the right kind of basic economic factors to try and rebuid the middle class that has ben decimated over the last 30 years of Supply Side economics.

I watched both conventions and I still have not heard anything from Romney, except “Trust Me, I’ll let you know what I’m going to do TO you later”.
This man will say and do anything to hide who he really is and what he will really do, and I am truly frightened for the future of my children and grandchildren if this greedy, apathetic man gets control of this country.

So let’s just double down on those tax cuts. Yeah, that’s it, that will work.

Are you lost? You were looking for a discussion group that cares what you think and you accidentally stumbled in here?

The last tiime we had ean economic down turn as bad as what we saw almost 4 years ago, it took more than a decade and a world war to get us out of it.

Would that we were returning to the era where one person worked and the other took care of house and kinder. If you look, the labor participation rate change now is paralleled by the people going onto Social Security disability and onto government “assistance” programs. We are NOT headed in the “right” direction.

There are other indicators that the economy is still in trouble: the middle class per-family income has fallen (so much for rebuilding the middle class), the deficit has skyrocketed (the Democrats all lied that they were for balanced budgets). The GOVERNMENT cannot build the middle class, which is a statistical artifact of a bell curve, and the private economy won’t until it is unfettered and the “excesses” that the liberals decry (e.g. PROFIT, that dirty word) is allowed to happen. We are headed for a socialist economy where the “rich” are the government employees. Anybody with two brain cells to rub together would know that there is tax point where people will willingly earn less revenue because of higher taxes, so if you tax them more and then redistribute it, the result is that the average income goes DOWN, not up. It is too bad that economics is not taught anymore; heck, most graduates are like “Turbo-Tax” Tim and can’t even do their own income tax forms properly (but neither can IRS agents; call the IRS and try to get a question answered; they will give you two different answers).

You are SO in the tank for Obama, so I will paraphrase for you the great question bk asked below: “Will you vote for Obama because you liked it when he lied to you and said it was easy to fix before, or because he tells you that it is so hard that he needs more time to fix it?

I would rather have had the 1920, 1947, and 1981 response than the Hoover/FDR/Carter/Obama response. All of the first three worked because the government got out of the way. The last ones listed didn’t work because Hoover/FDR/Carter/Obama thought they were the smartest guys in the room and could manage the government to remake the economy to some “fairer” ideal. I want to know what Milton Friedman asked: who are the “angels” that you think can run the economy and make it fairer? Turbo-Tax Tim? Eric Holder? Christine Romer? Valerie Jarrett? This administration is stuffed with corrupt people who never ran a lemonade stand, but know how to make our economy work, while the POTUS goes out and does fund raisers and plays golf. Thanks, I’ll take my chances on Romney, because unlike Obama, he DID build something.

Given that Leftists lie with no remorse, and given that you sound much like a Leftist interloper, why should anyone here believe that you’ve been “a Republican since Reagan”?

DId it occur to you that part of the reason it took so long to get out of that downturn was the policies that were in place. Read about how the regulations and rules on businesses were relaxed to prepare so quickly for WW2. It was that change in policy that pulled us out of the downturn.
Your mask is off. You are a lib. Own it. You’ll get more respect that way.

My $0.02:

The dirty little secret of Keynesian economics is this:

NO NATION on earth has ever recovered quickly from a financial collapse by employing Keynesian economic stimulus–without war.

How many fiscal stimulus packages did Japan have in the 1990s? Five? Six? They still had a “Lost Decade” and the Nikkei 225 never recovered.

Take a look:
http://i45.tinypic.com/mah553.jpg

All those countries tried to do precisely what Obama is trying to do. And look at the disappointing results.

Because the shortfall from the financial collapse can be so huge that only a truly titanic fiscal stimulus–trillions and trillions of dollars–can reverse it. And the economic distortions that result are politically unacceptable–except in wartime when the populace is galvanized into a state of patriotic frenzy.

Once the U.S. entered World War II, the Government started spending 40% of U.S. GDP on national defense. In today’s dollars that would be a fiscal stimulus package of $6 trillion per year for 3 years! And THAT got the U.S. out of the depression. But it caused inflation, which FDR countered with wage-and-price controls. And that caused shortages, which FDR countered with rationing. You couldn’t buy meat without a ration coupon. You couldn’t buy gasoline without a ration coupon. Etc.

Paul Krugman, a LEFT-WING economist, has been quite open about this. He said that Keynesian theory requires that size stimulus to restore full employment. But he always leaves out the concomitant requirement for wage-and-price controls and rationing.

John Kenneth Galbriath, a left-wing economist of the previous generation, admitted that FDR’s approach to full employment was only possible when accompanied by mandatory wage-and-price controls (followed by rationing). In peacetime, no Western government will dare to do that.

Excellent point. It shows another layer of his inability to lead. Even when his own advisors come to him with “facts” and “projections” under the economic theory that he adheres to, Obama still can’t make the right call. He has “deer in headlights” syndrome.

Because jobs numbers have nothing to do with weather we are in a recession or not.

Recession = Negative GDP. Nothing more, nothing less.

Actually, the money source isn’t finite…

Money is a producible commodity…

Inflation, BTW, would be very good right now. There will be no recovery without it.

he may have inherited a bad economy but it wasn’t the Bush economy it was the fall-out that finally hit from the Clinton and Congress 1998-99 era economics. The Housing Bubble collapse set of a chain reaction that spread around the world. The Problem is that Obama didn’t care about that at all. His stimulus plan was to pay back the backers of the 2006 and 2008 elections that put him into office. I don’t think he understood or cared about the collapse in that it fits into his plan to Socialize America. Blaming the Republicans is that only active thing he has done about the economy. People tend to give him credit for Obamacare and that is pure bologna. Obamacare came from congress re-packing a Hilary Clinton objective and putting it on the Presidents desk. I still don’t think he knows the power that Obamacare gives to the government over the people.

Declaring the recession over was nothing more than politics. he couldn’t tell or care if it was over. Congress was pushing this in an effort to save their jhobs in the 2010 electins which failed for them. They don’t give the American people enough credit to think that they know what is going on. i hope that they will get a very big surprise come November second when they are trying to rent moving vans. Our jobless rate isn’t all that bad here where i live but that doesn’t mean the the economy isn’t bad here. this is a big warehouse trucking area and business is always moving here. The problem is that most of the people that have jobs here haven’t had a raise since 2007 and the price of gasoline has doubled in that time along with rents, and food prices. There is more to this than just having the recession over and an alleged recovery. With so many people out of work you can’t just use the financials to declare the recovery a success.

There are people in my area that lost 6 figure jobs to the off-shore craze. These people might find jobs but not at 6 figures. many of them will lose boats, cars, and most importantly their homes. just because they are working doesn’t mean they are OK. It doesn’t mean the economy has recovered.

Even if Mr Romney wins this election I don’t believe he can do what President Reagan did in the 80′s. The reason being is that in the 80′s we still had most of our manufacturing jobs and IT jobs and 6 figure potential jobs located right here in America. Mr Romney doesn’t have that advantage. my job for example where i was making 6 figures after 30 years of hard work was off-shored to India and will not be back. i thankfully was t retirement age and didn’t have to seek another position. Friends of mine weren’t so lucky. You can’at make 6 figures driving a fork lift or picking apples especially when the illegals are here taking those jobs at not much more than minimum wage or piece work. ficing this economy is going to take a President and congress willing to give Tax incentives to companies to move jobs back to America. If that doesn’t happen than there won’t be much of a recovery under either president.