I figure I do a decent job of it. I've been reading the monthly reports from BLS for fifteen years.
>>BEA.gov, BLS.gov, and the U.S. Treasury are the official sites for data and you ignore them all
Ignore? I posted links to the data on employment. That comes from the BLS.
I help collect it. As far as the debt figures go, yes, there is arguably a problem with borrowing from Social Security. My solution to that would be to allow the economy to continue to recover for another year or two, and then do what Bill Clinton did in 1993 when he raised the top income tax rate by a few points. With effective tax reform (closing loopholes and lowering rates on incomes below $250K — 98% of American households), and a foreign policy that avoids unnecessary wars that cost trillions of dollars, we should be able to get a better handle on debt and deficits.
Btw, it looks like I was wrong about the interest rate paid to the Trust Fund for the money that's moved from one government account to another. You had asked:
It comes from general revenues. And the rate paid in the latest round of borrowing appears to be 1.875% (
Nominal Interest Rates on Special Issues) I could be wrong. I'm sure an
expert on the federal budget like you could inform me on this.
About half the national debt is held by various government retirement accounts, principally the SS Trust Fund. That certainly does mean that we will need to manage our affairs responsibly. But where else should that money be invested?
>>The electorate got it this past election, when will you?
You like that line, don't you? Republicans have a majority in the House because of severe gerrymandering that likely will not survive the 2020 census. There's some chance they will lose the majority in the Senate in 2016 when the seats being contested will favour the Democrats, as they favoured Republicans in 2014. I suppose you want to use that line as often as you can while it lasts.
I'm a committed liberal and strong Democrat, but I can analyze economic data without being influenced by that. Sometimes that means I like the numbers, and sometimes it means I
don't like them. But my preferences don't change them.
Otoh,
you decide how to interpret them based on yer partisan and ideological bias. Case in point:
I posted the figure you get comparing the CPS number from Jan 2009 to today — 6.3 million. That's the same one you get from comparing that ugly mass of figures you posted. But as someone who understands a little bit about the way the labor market and the broader economy operate, I realize that the 4.2 million jobs lost in the first eleven months of Obama's first term, according to
that survey (4.3 million if you use the CES data), cannot properly be accounted for by his economic policies. The Great Recession was not something that was going to turn around in a few months. It took a couple of years. This was the problem with the Great Depression. The two events cannot properly be compared to the business cycle recessions we experienced between the Second World War and 2008. Do you not understand that?
>>Looks like 6 million to me at a cost of 8.2 trillion dollars added to the debt
You have repeatedly made this argument — that the figures for the debt can somehow be directly related to the number of jobs added during the recovery. I can say I don't expect you'll be hearing from the Nobel Committee for that particular "insight." The debt figures are the result of
many things, including tax policy, federal spending, actions by the Federal Reserve, the international marketplace, etc. Of course, the US labor market is similarly affected by a great many factors, including decisions made by businesses and individuals about hiring and working.
All a president can do, and be held responsible for, is getting things moving in the right direction and keeping that going. It is indisputable that this has occurred under Obama. A steady recovery in the labor market, steady GDP growth, a steady decline in deficits. It looks like it's gonna keep on going. We'll see what effect that has on the elections.
>>this is the worst recovery in the history of our nation
Again, you fail to account for the fact that this was a near-collapse of the financial sector, not a business cycle recession. Apples and oranges. Obama's policies helped us avoid another Great Depression that involved severe unemployment and led to a world war.
>>You buy the rhetoric and ignore the substance buying what you want to believe. Some people will never get it and you appear to be in that group
Look in the mirror. That's what's there to be seen.