Republicans aren’t opposed by the Party of Satan.
Could have been, should have been a damn sight better. We got a butt-load of infractructure needs work. Not “could do with some work”, not “wouldn’t be a bad idea”, needs! As in gotta, or else.
We could have employed oodles of people. Borrowed the money pretty cheap, the concrete, the steel, can only go up in price as the economy struggles to recover. But no. The party of fiscal respomsibility, the party that believes in capitalism, doesn’t have the good sense God gave a goose.
Now, we’re still gonna have to do it, it will just cost us a lot more. Pissed away a golden opportunity due to some half-assed economic ideology.
(Said this before, and I know I am right because Bricker agreed with me, even as he died a little inside doing it.)
That’s exactly what the labor force number is - how many people are working.
As a comparison, the labor force was 147 million in 2004. Between 2004 and 2008 the participation rate remained steady around 66%. Even the most generous interpretation of what’s under this serious drop over the last 6 years (giving the rosiest accounting for the aging of the population and their behavior and focus on 25-54) still leaves a million people who have simply given up. The number is likely much higher.
The recovery has been anemic - the worst recovery since the Great Depression. Measuring today against the low point of 2008/2009 may make you feel better, but it’s not a useful measure.
Of course it was anemic. We know how to have good recoveries, the GOP fought that every step of the way.
The GOP blocked everything that would have helped the recovery and then they point at the weak recovery. It’s like a joke, only real human beings are suffering.
The labor force is the people available for work. The people actually working is the employment rate.
So if the labor force now is the same as 2008, we have far more people working now, because the employment rate is much higher now.
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Jesus, that is the most idiotic statement I’ve read on this board in years.
Slee
“Epitome of evil” is a bit much. Truth is, just boring, mediocre evil, dull evil without even the inspiration of malice.
Oh Bob…
A misnomer. The more correct infernal deity would be Mammon.
Most Republicans don’t have the requisite intent to be evil. They just believe, for instance, that cutting food stamps for poor people will force them to become middle class. It’s the result of magical thinking, not outright malice.
They don’t want the world to undergo warming, they just think it’s a scam by some fatcat researchers. It’s ignorance driving counterproductive actions.
That said, some Republicans try to disenfranchise poor people and then laugh about it. Those guys are kinda evil.
Beautifully done.
Jus thought I’d repost this so your astute, even-handed observation could benefit a few more eyes.
Oh, you would definitely be the guy for that. Your record for astute analysis is legendary.
Name a policy that was blocked that would have turned the ship around.
I’m more interested in Lobohan’s assertion that we know how to have good recoveries. I realize that Keynesians THINK they know how to have good recoveries, but the empirical data is lacking. Whereupon they insist in response that the stimulus measures that failed were insufficient. It’s possible they could be right, but it’s an unprovable assertion.
What I remember is that our best period of economic growth ever involved reducing spending, deregulation, free trade, and welfare reform.
So your argument is that the labor force (employed plus unemployed - those actively seeking work for those playing along) is basically the same now as it was six years ago and more people are working because the unemployed portion of that overall number has gone down. The fact that somewhere between 1 million and 4 million people (depending on the analysis you want to use - no one’s saying it’s zero) have simply abandoned the work force is of no consequence and shouldn’t color anyone’s perception.
I recall you predicting a Romney victory on the basis of the economy, as measured by the unemployment rate. But (as I recall it) that was during the Spring/Summer. The error there was to use the unemployment rate, rather than GDP during the election year, as Ray Fair uses. (See “Even money confident” June 2012 http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=15183129#post15183129 )
Offer of wager: Romney victory.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=15166992&postcount=182
I’m not sure what your true odds for Republican victory were in August, but you were apparently offering 3:1 (75% odds) vs. 60% odds of the various published models. Frankly, that’s not the sort of margin that can reliably draw me in. And as a test of worldviews, it would require n bets to give the correct party more winnings 95% of the time.
n=???
How many Republican voters are true single-issue voters, i.e. they vote solely on the basis of which candidate (or even more generally, which party) they feel more closely matches their views on abortion or guns or capital punishment or what have you?
Democrats have them, too, no doubt. I’m not sure it’s fair to call such voters stupid. They’ve picked their single highest priority and vote accordingly. I guess they might be stupid if they vote for a candidate who they think matches their views, but doesn’t really.
My most significant vote was for Charlie Crist. It wasn’t because I agreed with him on the issues. It was simply because Rick Scott is a divisive figure. I don’t believe that’s good leadership. We’ve had only GOP governors for 16 years and we didn’t have this problem when Jeb and then Crist were in charge.
Pretty much the case with economics, you don’t get to prove to empirical certainty, you get to reasonable theory by way of statistics, assumptions, mathematical models, that sort of thing.
Keynesian economics is more or less the “standard model”, save for schools of economics that exist primarily because rich guys donate money to see their political opinions get academic support. Conservative economics is like conservative humor or military music.
Now we have to grant that his very lack of irrefutable and falsifiable data has led many a graduate Ph.D. into a thesis trap, an error of unfounded cause and effect assertion. Post doc ergo propter hoc, in a manner of speaking.