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Obama says GOP making life harder for the jobless

obvious Child said:
Your faulty assumption is there are jobs.
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There are. I did not work for a year because of back surgery. Went and got a job did not like the company so quit after 6 weeks. A week later I had another job. I have not collected any unemployment either
 
obvious Child said:
The funny sh*t is that Obama is doing many of the same policies as Reagan. But apparently the hacks here think it's okay to blame Obama despite his similar policies to Reagan.

1) Flooding the market with spending. Check
2) Expanding military spending. Check
3) Reducing interest rates. Check
4) Giving incentives to corporations to spend. Check
5) Lowering taxes. Check.

Wait, I forgot. Who are we talking about?
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Obama is creating more taxes than he is lowering
 
drz-400 said:
Why would you lower spending during a recession?
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Spending does not help if it is not causing private sector jobs. Unemployment is still rising showing Obama's spending is not motivating private industry
 
ptif219 said:
Spending does not help if it is not causing private sector jobs. Unemployment is still rising showing Obama's spending is not motivating private industry
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I think the 1st quarter of 2009 real GDP quite declining. Guess what it is being driven by, personal consumption expenditures. Of course we have not reached the 3.4% annual GDP growth needed to decrease unemployment yet.
 
drz-400 said:
A believe the taxes in 2009 were historically low, due to tax breaks in the stimulus bill.
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You believe? Letting Bush tax cuts expire and things like cap and tax will cause far more then the little tax cuts Obama has done
 
drz-400 said:
I think the 1st quarter of 2009 real GDP quite declining. Guess what it is being driven by, personal consumption expenditures. Of course we have not reached the 3.4% annual GDP growth needed to decrease unemployment yet.
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We will not see unemployment go down until the private sector starts increasing production
 
ptif219 said:
You believe? Letting Bush tax cuts expire and things like cap and tax will cause far more then the little tax cuts Obama has done
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Did those happen in 2009? Ahh, yes maybe this year, that is yet to be seen.
 
obvious Child said:
Your faulty assumption is there are jobs.
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It does not matter. It is simply not financially feasible to continually expand unemployment benefits until there are enough jobs. How many "jobs" are enough? How many people refuse to take "jobs" just because they perhaps would earn basically the same amount as they can collect on unemployment?

A line has to be drawn somewhere. We simply cannot afford to endlessly deficit spend for this vague notion of "jobs".
 
CaptainCourtesy said:
No, the problem is Washington is doing NOTHING.
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What is Washington supposed to do?

I find statements such as this indicative of a new (and I think disturbing) American mindset that it is somehow government's job to "fix" everything.
 
NolaMan said:
It does not matter. It is simply not financially feasible to continually expand unemployment benefits until there are enough jobs. How many "jobs" are enough? How many people refuse to take "jobs" just because they perhaps would earn basically the same amount as they can collect on unemployment?

A line has to be drawn somewhere. We simply cannot afford to endlessly deficit spend for this vague notion of "jobs".
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Not that we would have to spend until this point, but I believe we do measure the natural unemployment rate, so that would be a good goal. Luckily though, unemployment is a function of your wages you earned, so it will always be a percentage of your wages you earn at work. I think right now its like 50%. Also, people not getting a job because of generous unemployment benefits would be considered structural unemployment and would be part of the natural unemployment rate, something wich we are far above right now.
 
drz-400 said:
Not that we would have to spend until this point, but I believe we do measure the natural unemployment rate, so that would be a good goal. Luckily though, unemployment is a function of your wages you earned, so it will always be a percentage of your wages you earn at work. I think right now its like 50%. Also, people not getting a job because of generous unemployment benefits would be considered structural unemployment and would be part of the natural unemployment rate, something wich we are far above right now.
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Fair enough. I have seen natural unemployment estimates however argued at being between 5-7%. Where do you come down on that and how would that issue be politically resolved?

Additionally, unless we are going to agree on setting natural unemployment much higher than it has traditionaly been, under this model we would expect to continue unemployment spending for the forseeable future at large levels, something that I do not think is economically beneficial, or sustainable in the long term.
 
drz-400 said:
Did those happen in 2009? Ahh, yes maybe this year, that is yet to be seen.
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You can not cherry pick one year of a presidency and base the whole term on it. Obama is pushing cap and tax which will but a great burden on the economy and on the poor and middle class
 
NolaMan said:
It does not matter. It is simply not financially feasible to continually expand unemployment benefits until there are enough jobs. How many "jobs" are enough? How many people refuse to take "jobs" just because they perhaps would earn basically the same amount as they can collect on unemployment?

A line has to be drawn somewhere. We simply cannot afford to endlessly deficit spend for this vague notion of "jobs".
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Entitlement programs are the democrats way
 
NolaMan said:
Fair enough. I have seen natural unemployment estimates however argued at being between 5-7%. Where do you come down on that and how would that issue be politically resolved?

Additionally, unless we are going to agree on setting natural unemployment much higher than it has traditionaly been, under this model we would expect to continue unemployment spending for the forseeable future at large levels, something that I do not think is economically beneficial, or sustainable in the long term.
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I think the BLS or the fed could have the final say, and if unemployment insurance really does have such a large effect on structural unemployment, essentially taking everyone that is currently unemployed due to cyclical reasons and making them structurally unemployed (ie they will not work now because of the benefits) then the natural rate will very nearly equal the rate of unemployment, and we could consider reducing benefits.
 
ptif219 said:
You can not cherry pick one year of a presidency and base the whole term on it. Obama is pushing cap and tax which will but a great burden on the economy and on the poor and middle class
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I am not really cherry picking since he has only been president a year and a half. Also, I think the hope is that the job situation will improve, so we can reduce both spending and increase taxes to pay down the deficit, at least these are my hopes.
 
NolaMan said:
What is Washington supposed to do?
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They are supposed to foster an environment where business and commerce can grow and succeed. That in turn creates jobs and a demand for skills. This in turn increases wealth and share of money as well as provides increase to manufacture.

Government's "fix" is to get the hell out of the way.
 
obvious Child said:
Perhaps not, but cuttings benefits, including medical insurance which the GOP is pretty much doing by refusing to allow such bills to go forward is making life harder for the jobless.
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Republicans are outnumbered, so they can't stop legislation.
 
drz-400 said:
I am not really cherry picking since he has only been president a year and a half. Also, I think the hope is that the job situation will improve, so we can reduce both spending and increase taxes to pay down the deficit, at least these are my hopes.
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Hopes of who? Not Obama
 
washunut said:
A couple of things. I think Greenspan understood what was allowing the economy o grow. That is why kept interest rates low for so long and allowed leverage at financial institutions to get so high.
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Absolutely. We got fat and happy on cheap interest. Now we are paying for it. It could be argued that without cheap interest, the foundation of the crisis, bad lending wouldn't have happened. When the cost of a few bad loans was negligible due to the immaterial cost of capital but the profits were high with securitization, why not engage in it?

What is interesting is that this administration, not understanding business is doing what may turn out to be all the wrong things. That is why spending $800 billion is not creating jobs. For example how many jobs were lost in residential and commerical building and everything that surrounds it. It does not matter how many roads we tar over, those jobs won't come back until we burn off the excess supply and get back to a more reasonable building run rate.
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Yes and no. Stimulus spending arguably never works for financial crisises. What does work, but creates larger problems is state backed lending. That and export booms, but that ain't happening when the entire world has the problem.

Next the new Financial Regulation bill, without saying it is good or bad will have the effect of lowering the capacity of financial institutions to lend. Now that has to hurt not help the recovery. perhaps that is OK as we may need to burn off a bunch of excess debt the country acquired.
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It's going to reduce lending no question, but more regulation of investment banks is needed and even claimed by those who work in the industry. Canada is rockin' because it never allowed its banks to take on the levels of leverage and risk we did. Sure they had slower growth during the boom years, but their portion of the hit was pretty much immaterial. And a good reason why they should not have to pay a global bank tax.
 
Ockham said:
They are supposed to foster an environment where business and commerce can grow and succeed. That in turn creates jobs and a demand for skills. This in turn increases wealth and share of money as well as provides increase to manufacture.

Government's "fix" is to get the hell out of the way.
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Which in a financial recession is to have direct state lending. You really want that? How about you go study financial crisies before replying? Thanks.
 
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