Serious Question - top facts to refute "The economy is improving because of Obama's plan"

I know about U-6 15% real unemployment but what are the best facts to cite that refute assertions that the recovery is real and is due to the stimulus, etc. Need quick facts for coworkers and spouse. I always bring up Ford not getting a bailout, etc. but others have spent more time on this. Thanks!

Added trillions in debt - this hurts the economy.

Several million (4.1???) people arbitrarily dropped from unemployment statistics to artificially hold the reported rate down to "only" 8 point something. BS, real numbers are double-digit unemployment rate percentages.

Rising food costs.

Helthcare, how are your costs and coverage looking?

Look in your wallet/bank account. Do you have more discretionary $$$ to spend (eg. on a night out with your significant other)? Do you have any discretionary $$$, period?

How's that cost of a college education looking for your kids?

Basically look at any measure of costs and/or taxes and we are worse off, far worse off. Look at unemployment, or even raises/salary of those still employed, and we are worse off - far worse off.

The administration admits that it has no plans to stop hemorrhaging debt. Ever.

Whether or not the economy would be even worse if nothing changed but the "stimulus" hadn't happened (doubtful), one thing is clear: it has not been worth it. This economy stinks, and since dollars are neither more nor less than government debt, increasing the government debt must water down the currency - meaning, you will see prices go up, and people will start complaining about "price gouging." But businessmen always set their prices to make profits; when more money is in circulation, businesses can charge more and still sell their product. Just not to you, if you are on a fixed income.

The dirty little secret of deficit spending to increase business is that businessmen know that their costs are gonna go up when the government prints more and more money. So they all raise their prices, and that fulfills their own prophecy. So when the dollar-printers see that prices have caught up with their printing presses, they print dollars even faster - but that just sustains the same vicious cycle. And eventually the government has to admit that it needs to sustain the value of the dollar because dollar-printing really hasn't caused prosperity. And then the dollar printing is brought under control - but at that point a hangover is baked in the cake, and the economy gets worse before it gets better.

Economic history shows that Reagan-Kemp economics - stabilize the dollar and don't get tax rates above 30% - is the only way to prosperity. But Obama is hell-bent on manipulating people to believe in an ersatz "fairness" which raises tax rates but actually cuts revenue. He even wants to increase the capital gains tax, which reduces revenue every time it's tried. Prosperity cannot return while Obama remains in charge. Because his idea of "change" is more important to him than your prosperity.

Show them the Stimulus Plan links - here’s a decent one - describe some of the programs - the ‘employed’ because of the stimulus reasoning - it’s all a farce.

http://stimuluswatch.org/2.0/

(when the stimulus was kicking in on the grants-payments I posted a few weekly updates on FR - what hit me most was the upgrading of public parks - all the spending on picnic tables - that doesn’t create jobs - once the table is built - you’re done. There were millions to drug companies for flue shots. Something like that shouldn’t be put on the stimulus pile.)

Check out the above link - get a bunch of outrageous programs-payments in your head. Explain them to the people you need to.....get them to look around too. Most of these payments went to the states to keep salaries up and to keep positions going in the public sector - once stimulus runs out the states/cities will need to lance that wound they should have lanced years ago....stimulus was a band-aid - a sugar pill.....

Two problems.

First problem - most voters have a short term, self-focused perspective on the economy.

The USA is slowly adding new jobs, and new layoffs are slowly declining - thus, more people feel more secure.

The stock market is going up - which makes retirement accounts look better.

Home prices have stopped declining in about 35 states.

GDP is slowly going up.

Tax revenues have stopped going down in most states - thus, state budget cuts will be much smaller in 2012.

All these things draw political attention away from the unsolvable crisis of long term government debt, money printing stimulus, and Medicare and Social Security.

Second problem - Obama, just like the MSM, is a hard core European Socialist.

The MSM will highlight every shard of good economic news from now until November.

If Obama was a Republican, the MSM would be calling this “The Second Great Depression.”

Every day, every news broadcast and every headline in America would reinforce the idea of economic disaster.

If Obama was a Republican, the MSM would destroy him just like they destroyed GHW Bush in 1992.

1) Auto sales. in 2011, we sold 13 million cars in the US. That is better than 2009 and 2010, but is less than sold in 2008 by about 450,000. With the bailout, we are not even back to where we started.

You can download the spreadsheet that shows the figures here: Ward's Auto

2) The price of gasoline is nearly back to all time highs, even though demand is down.

3) Home sales are at all time lows...Obama has done nothing to improve them!

4) Don't just blow by unemployment and job creation. It is the biggest issue. Here are the facts:

First, the employment numbers are an illusion. The workforce has shrunk by millions since Obama took office, instead of growing as the population increases. Here is a chart:

Here is a link to data. BLS Labor Participation Rate

Here is the Zero Hedge article:

Record 1.2 Million People Fall Out Of Labor Force In One Month, Labor Force Participation Rate Tumbles To Fresh 30 Year Low

It amounts to about 8 milion fewer in the workforce. Counting those as unfilled jobs would raise the unemployment rate to about 22.6%.

Here is a good link to the math: Smart Money Blogs

So the basic Dem claim that unemployment has improved is false. It is only the narrowly defined U3 number that has fallen, and it is no longer useful as a true measure of unemployment.

Next is the length that people that are tracked, have been on unemployment. It is at an all time high, and and clearly shows the lack of progress in hiring...even in the U3 numbers. Here is the breakdown from 1/11 till 1/12... Table A-12. Unemployed persons by duration of unemployment. It is at 40.1 weeks from 35.5 in January '11.

Here is a good graph from the The Economic Populist

This is another glaring indicator that the unemployment situation has not improved.

Zero's stimulus plan did nothing to improve the unemployment numbers. Their claim boils down to "it could have been worse". That is unprovable, and is just a joke...imagine if GWB had come out and said that his tax cuts saved or created 5 million jobs because the unemployment rate "could have" gone to 10 percent! THe MSM would have laughed him off the planet.

Now, the main argument used by the Dems on the Stimulus is the CBO scoring that has said the the stimulus created as many as 3.3 million jobs...but that is not the whole story. The CBO are estimates and RANGE from 400 thousand to 2.4 million actual jobs created. They really have no idea. If it did in fact create jobs, it cost somewhere around $260,000 (from Newsmax) each!

We do know that the stimulus failed miserably in its main claim that it would keep unemployment below 8%, even as scored on the U3.

We really are no better off than we were when Obama took office. There are a lot more indicators: savings is back down, income is down after inflation, core inflation is on the rise, fuel and food pricing is way up, electrical rates are way up, and our national debt has skyrocketed....

I hope this gives you some ammo.

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