Posted on 06/28/2010 9:56:45 PM PDT by NaturalBornConservative
Progressive Policies are Losing 4.2 Million Jobs Annually
By: Larry Walker, Jr.
On January 9, 2009, a staff writer for the Wall Street Journal wrote a smear piece entitled, “Bush On Jobs: The Worst Track Record On Record,” in which an attempt was made to show that Bush was somehow the worst President, and that therefore, Conservative economic policies (i.e. tax cuts) don’t work.
According to the staff writer, George W, Bush created a dismal +375,000 jobs per year during his eight year term; Bill Clinton created +2.9 million jobs per year; while George H.W. Bush created +625,000; Reagan prospered by +2.0 million; Carter by +2.6 million; etc… The staff writer also went into population growth during each term and the percentage of change in the population (for whatever reason). You can find the smear piece and the WSJ table here. Following is an excerpt:
President George W. Bush entered office in 2001 just as a recession was starting, and is preparing to leave in the middle of a long one. That’s almost 22 months of recession during his 96 months in office.
His job-creation record won’t look much better. The Bush administration created about three million jobs (net) over its eight years, a fraction of the 23 million jobs created under President Bill Clinton’s administration and only slightly better than President George H.W. Bush did in his four years in office.
Naturally it is important to use this same benchmark to measure how Barack H. Obama stacks up against his predecessors. So I went over to the good old Bureau of Labor Statistics website and made up my own table, based on the raw data. I brought my chart up to date through May 31, 2010. True, Obama has only been in office for 17 month’s, but we can at least get an idea of how he measures up.
Like the WSJ writer, the counts are based on total payrolls between the start of the month the president took office (using the final payroll count for the end of the prior December) and his final December in office (May 31, 2010 for Obama). Thus, there is no blaming the last POTUS for inheriting a bad economy, and no foul in taking credit for inheriting a good one. After all, being President is about leadership, and leaders take what is in front of them and do the best they can.
According to my table, Barack Obama has lost a total of -4.2 million jobs per year, making him, to date, the worst President in history. G.W. Bush actually created 1.1 million jobs per year during his eight-year term. Bill Clinton is responsible for 2.3 million jobs in each of his years. George H. W. Bush can lay claim to 881,000 during each of his four years. Reagan gets credit for 2.0 million jobs per year. And finally, even Jimmy Carter can boast in having created 2.6 million. Net job creation is so much better than, economy killing, Progressive policies that there really is no comparison.
Now I am not naïve enough to believe that Presidents, or the governments for that matter, are responsible for job creation, but if you want to make that case, at least get the numbers right. It looks like the WSJ staffer padded Clinton’s numbers while taking away from both of the Bush’s. At the same time, he did manage to get both Reagan's and Carter’s numbers right.
In conclusion, thus far, the Progressive policies of Barack H. Obama are failing. There ought to be a law. Actually there is a law. It’s called, 'The Law of Supply and Demand’. When prices fall, demand increases. When taxes are reduced, investment, production and employment increase. And when supply is increased, prices fall, leading to increased demand. Government intervention in the private sector has never worked, and it never will. Reducing the size of government, lowering taxes, and decreasing government regulation actually work after all. We will most definitely be following up.
References:
ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/suppl/empsit.cpseea1.txt
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/01/09/bush-on-jobs-the-worst-track-record-on-record/
It seems like that by now even President Obama should realize the economy’s in a mess. Time for him to do something about it, instead of payoffs to the special interests?
He has no interest in helping. His goal is to make our government collapse financially so that his masters can rebuild it into a Fascist/Communist Regime.
Should you not believe then wait and see what happens, but by then it will be to late. Well - Maybe it is already to late.
There are few people with guts and backbone to do what is necessary to prevent this outcome.
I think the Clinton era jobs were largely a result of nurturing various bubbles that have since delfated i.e. the housing boom, the home equity loan credit boom, and also around that time we had a tech bubble which popped. I believe NAFTA was ultimately incompatible with the bubble growth as it contributed to the eventual unemployment that we now see as well as the record number of home foreclosures, sub-prime defaults, housing market deflation, etc. I would go as far as to say that NAFTA greatly contributed to the bubble deflation although there are certainly other factors that contribute to the decreasing employment numbers.
Of course it’s all Bush’s fault right? The worst he does the more to blame on Bush with these clowns.
Like resign?
We could not be so lucky.
Obama on track. Worst jobs record in history.
The only President in US history to plea bargain felonies on his way out of office.......Will O become number two?
:}
The whole topic of presidents creating jobs is bogus as the writer pointed out. However, what presidents can do is lower barriers for businesses to create jobs. The fact is Bush II took office in a recession and was then hit by 9/11. Naturally, it was going to take a while for job growth to restart. Clinton rode the hightech wave of the nineties and took credit for it. How many of those jobs Clinton “created” were lost in the 2000 dot.com crash?
Interesting point.
“How many of those jobs Clinton “created”; were lost in the 2000 dot.com crash?”
Not many: There were 136,891K jobs at end of 2000, 136,485K jobs at the end of 2002, 137,736K by the end of 2003 and growth thereafter. That’s net jobs created year over year. You can probably find monthly data to pinpoint the exact peak and trough. However, based on the facts, there were at most 406K jobs lost before those fabulous tax cutting policies took effect. I’m sure it could have been much, much worse with a paranoid, progressive, reactionary like Obama halfway in charge. This much we know.
“Reality is not optional.” ~ Thomas Sowell
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