Comment by CRmain on Economy not worst since Hoover.

Fri, 30 Jan 2004 11:48:56 EST

We are at roughly 6% unemployment right now. In the "golden years" of the tech boom in the late 90s we were at 5%, which most economists consider full employment. How anyone can suggest with a straight face that 1% off of full employment anywhere approaches the 30+% unemployment of the great depression is beyond me. ]]>

Comment by Hal Pawluk on Economy not worst since Hoover.

Tue, 21 Oct 2003 11:45:21 EDT

> how George Bush is presiding over the "worst economy since Herbert Hoover" I've never heard that claim but have heard that the jobs lost during the Bush administration represent the "worst job loss since Herbert Hoover." That claim is true, with 3,200,000 jobs lost, most in manufacturing and many lost by transfer to lower-wage countries so they won't be back. > The problem is, is that the economy is showing signs of a strong recovery. Today's figures show that the Index of Leading Economic Indicators is down, and forecasters are saying that there will be a slowing in the economy from the third quarter. > While it is good that unemployment numbers are down, there are still many Americans out of work. There are still about 9 million unemployed, and the job increase was 0.057 million. At that rate, it will take 56 years to overcome the 3.2 million jobs lost. Some people also got excited about the fact that new claims filed in the prior week dropped to 395,000 because 400,000 is a sort of "magic number" to some economists. That's only one week out of about 140 weeks since the job losses started, so I'm still holding my breath. > IBM reported last week that they will hire 50,000 new > people in the first 2 quarters of next year. Numerous others are still announcing job cuts or transfers to lower-wage countries. > The stock market is also showing robust growth. That's largely due to the tax cut you mention. My Representative told me that he supported the huge tax cut because it went to "the investor class" (his words). 43% of the money went to the richest 1% in the country, that "investor class". Another 34% of taxpayers (representing about 90,000,000 men, women and children) got $0, nada, zip, bupkis. A tax cut for investors would be a great idea if those investors actually invested in the economic infrastructure, such as plant expansion, new production equipment, etc. Unfortunately, that's not what's happening. The so-called "investor class" is investing in the stock market. The result is that stock prices are going up because of all the "found money" but companies like Levi are shutting their last factory in the US. Many people don't seem understand that "the map is not the territory" - the stock market is not the economic infrastructure. I'm not a Democrat, in fact have no party affiliation whatsoever, but did want to put some additional facts on the table. I do have a bit more on the job situation in this country and on "productivity", another measure of economic well-being, on my site. ]]>

Blogcritics Comments on Economy not worst since Hoover.

Comment by CRmain on Economy not worst since Hoover.

Comment by Hal Pawluk on Economy not worst since Hoover.