Scary Kerry: The senator lies about the economy

Union Leader ^ | 4/12/04

[kattracks]

JOHN KERRY holds a rally at the University of New Hampshire today, where he is sure to try to frighten students into believing that President Bush has wrecked the economy and endangered their job prospects. Skeptical students will want to keep the following in mind as they listen to Sen. Kerry prattle on about Bush and the economy.

Presidents can neither control the economy nor will jobs into existence. Kerry blames Bush for losing nearly 3 million jobs. But the economy began to shrink at the end of President Clinton’s term, and even The New York Times and The Washington Post credited President Bush’s tax cuts with triggering a good chunk of the economic rebound that began last year.

As for Kerry’s charge that Bush has (intentionally) sent factory jobs overseas, here is what former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich wrote about manufacturing losses in The Wall Street Journal last December: “It’s true that U.S. manufacturing employment has been dropping for many years, but that’s not primarily due to foreigners taking these jobs. Factory jobs are vanishing all over the world. . . . What happened to factory jobs? In two words, higher productivity.”

Kerry is ignoring facts, even those pointed out by high-profile Democrats and left-leaning newspapers, so he can portray President Bush as fully responsible for every hitch in the U.S. economy.

How is Kerry supposed to build public confidence in his economic agenda if he is so unsure of it himself that he is not willing to engage the President in a fair and honest argument on economic policy?

[Common Tator]

For kerry and his claim that the loss of industrial jobs is related to the bush administration, I have just one question.

When did they start calling the industrial Mid West the Rust belt, and Why?

The days of paying non skilled people high wages to do dull boring repetitive simple tasks on the assembly line are gone. Industry has been replacing them with computer controlled robots since the invention of the Intel 80 processor in the early 1970s.

I had a Chemistry Professor in my Freshman year of college way back in 1956 who told me the future would be in robotics. He said the the assembly line of unskilled workers would disappear in a hundred years.

Today many of John Kerry's followers want to stop the world so t they can get off.

I am amused by the computer people who decry the loss of jobs. By 1910 there were 5,000 auto manufacturing firms in the USA. In case you haven't noticed 4,997 of them went out of business. Any one with an I.Q. larger than their shoe size should have seen what was coming. Most start ups in brand new technology are consolodated or go out of business. There is always a bubble and it always bursts.

Those that do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.

[P8riot]

How is Kerry supposed to build public confidence in his economic agenda if he is so unsure of it himself that he is not willing to engage the President in a fair and honest argument on economic policy?

Easy. He'll play to the foolish sheeple that are too stupid to look at the facts. It works for libs all of the time.

[Diogenesis]

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[R. Scott]

Kerry is ignoring facts…

Since when have facts meant anything to a politician in an election year?
I have a problem with people who actually believe political rhetoric - it is campaign advertising, nothing more. Do these people really believe that EXXON gas is better than Crown? Do they really believe one car is superior to another because of advertising?
I guess so, $ Billions are spent on advertising.

[Renegade]

What is all this Blah, Blah, Blah, blaming the Bush administration for all the unemployment in the United States at this time .
I happen to have a copy of a book titled " The Downsizing of America"- ( Millions of Americans are losing good jobs. This is their story ).
The book is a Special Report from the New York Times summarizing a seven part series that ran in the newspaper March 3-9, 1996. If I am correct , this is the middle of the Clinton administration.
Why doesn't someone in the Bush campaign counter with facts on unemployment from this source ?

[RipSawyer]

I cannot speak for the rest of the nation but in South Carolina I never knew of any place that paid "high wages" for dull boring assembly line jobs. Some did pay a livable wage for highly skilled jobs in manufacturing, of which there were many, contrary to some people's beliefs. It is now common to see ads asking for someone skilled in what would be five or six separate trades under union rules but offering a starting wage scale which would hardly match the purchasing power of the minimum wage of forty years ago. It is easy to scoff but the situation is not always as you describe it.

[maica]

And the mill towns of New England were devastated for years when the textile factory jobs moved to South Carolina.

Unions drive wages (and benefits) up to the point where managements choose to leave the local area and find cheaper labor elsewhere.

[RipSawyer]

"Unions drive wages (and benefits) up to the point where managements choose to leave the local area and find cheaper labor elsewhere."

Here in SC, we don't have the luxury of blaming the unions and we never even had really high wages, few people ever belonged to a union in this state. Ask someone who is applying for one of these jobs that demand a knowledge of electronics, industrial electrical wiring, hydraulics, pneumatics, plc logic, welding and mechanical troubleshooting and repair and general computer skills for a starting wage of eleven dollars an hour just how "highly paid" he is. I am hardly exaggerating.

[Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit]

You point is absolutely correct and one of the fundamental tenets of economics.

Producing goods at the lowest cost including the cost of materials and labor is good for society as a whole. Globalisation has made society global.

Cheap products made elsewhere are good for the world as a whole. The are, as always, temporarily short-term winners and losers The overall gain, however is positive.

This is of littel solace to an individual who has lost his job, but a necessity for the overall increase in wealth that will create another job for that person.

However, we do need an education infrastructure and safety net that retrains that person to do something of greater value.

The US has done this repeatedly over the decades. Your textile mills example is but one of many.

[maica]

However, we do need an education infrastructure and safety net that retrains that person to do something of greater value.

%%%

And if we had an honest media, Americans would know that President Bush has proposed legislation to support this.