http://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2012/09/06/adp-u-s-hiring-surged-in-august-with-201000-new-jobs/
If true, it's very good news indeed. However, here's the key message: Remember, the quoted unemployment rate is the U3, not the U6. The U3 can rise if people feel more confident, as discouraged workers come back into the market. Also, it is just over the number to keep steady with population growth. Even if this number is true, we need (and past recessions would indicate we should have) better.
The economy needs to add well over 300K jobs (350K even) a month just to keep up with population growth. Considering sub 300K new jobs for 40+ months, that's a deep hole to climb out of. And the article does state a big disparity between ADP's jobs figure and the one coming out after the DNC is over, which is likely to be sub 150K and unemployment rate > 8.2.
U3 is unemployed workers. U6 includes underemployed, discouraged/left the workforce, and so on. U3 is on the order of 8.3% and 10M people. U6 is on the order of 24% (thanks Obama!) and 30M.
How the fuck can you say "thanks Obama!" when it's been in a steady (albeit slow) downward path since the fall of 2009? Your own post of the chart proves your bullshit. President Clinton put it perfectly: “In Tampa the Republican argument against the president’s re-election was pretty simple: We left him a total mess, he hasn’t finished cleaning it up yet, so fire him and put us back in."
He rammed through an "emergency" stimulus package and promised unemployment would be much better than it is if we spent the money. When you consider the debt is > GDP now, just passed $16T, it's Obama that's making a mess of gigantic proportions.
I've said it before, but if you're running serious debt when the economy is doing well, it shouldn't be a shock that the budget deficit goes up when the economy tanks and tax revenue goes down drastically. The federal budget doesn't turn on a dime and can't automatically drop to match tax revenues. In other words, if you weren't complaining about the budget deficit when Bush was president, you'd better not be complaining now. Denny, I think you may not have liked the big spending Bush did, but I think you're overhyping the spending that Obama has done and making it sound like a problem that suddenly materialized when Obama became President.
It would be one thing if spending stayed steady while receipts decreased, but government has grown by 20%. How about a little cost control?
Aside from what maxiep wrote, I wouldn't complain if the deficits were $400B and govt. spending was $3T at this point. I'm not exactly for a balanced budget. The govt. does have needs to borrow - like to build a bridge or a stadium or other public work. Any established institution that borrows to pay its bills is in deep shit.
I've been saying since 2005 that I think it's BS that we're borrowing from China to pay for the wars on terror. Every American (including ones who don't pay income taxes right now) should be ponying up to pay some part of the difference b/w the budgeted DoD/DHS cost and the "war costs" (OCO, increases in funding to accelerate TRLs, etc). If they don't want to pay, don't go to war (and don't keep voting for people who are borrowing from China to pay for it). The reality, though, is that we've increased government spending on entitlement programs that aren't self-sustaining. When you pay $700B more in Medicare payments than you bring in with Medicare taxes, you're not doing something right. If you want people to get health care, suck up paying more in payroll taxes to do so. And if you don't want to pay a bunch more in payroll taxes, stfu about not drastically cutting Medicare. Just the interest payment on our debt would fund almost half of the entire DoD. Or, to put it another way, we could cut half of our entire military expenditures and it would barely cover the interest payment on the debt we've rung up. Just that interest and the Medicare/Medicaid overruns (just under $1T) take up 90% of the personal income tax receipts ($1.09T). And yet those who want a "return to normalcy" are considered to have a War on Women/Old People/Military/Poor/Hardworking Middle Class/Etc.
Whoa! That's like when a kid goes to college and then gets a job. but he still owes more than he makes in a year and has to pay it off slowly.
The better analogy is it's like when a person makes $1,000 a month and spends $2,000 a month, charging the difference on the credit cards. The problem is the payments on the cards seem fine enough when they're $100 a month, but once you've borrowed enough the payments become $900 a month and you can't afford much in the way of rent and food. And yeah, "rent and food" in this analogy is all the things you actually want the govt. to spend on, like military, roads, and actual obligations like entitlements. It's even better for the person when the introductory rate on the charge cards is 0%, but really fucked up when the rates jump to 15%. To give you an idea of the size of the debt (it's not that we have debt, it's the size)... This person has a $100K salary and $600K in credit card debt.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/payroll-growth-seen-tepid-may-072622785.html WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Jobs growth slowed sharply in August, setting the stage for the Federal Reserve to pump additional money into the sluggish economy next week and dealing a blow to President Obama as he seeks reelection in November. Nonfarm payrolls increased only 96,000 last month, the Labor Department said on Friday. While the unemployment rate dropped to 8.1 percent from 8.3 percent in July, that was because so many Americans gave up the hunt for work. The survey of households from which the jobless rate is derived showed a drop in employment. The lackluster report keeps the pressure on Obama ahead of the November vote in which the health of the economy looms large.
