No shit. But the phoney valuations of those companies flooded the country with capital (based on crap, remember). Said (based on crap) capital created jobs in all sorts of sectors. Dot-com employees buy product A from Company B, which hires more people to meet demand. Company B employees are now spending more money on Company C products, and so forth.
It was a house of cards. Greenspan made the call, but was booed down. If we ever do see another time like the roaring Nineties, brace yourself, because it will fall. Again.
Brutus, Greenspan created that bubble, partially in response to the LTCM debacle, partially because of the Russian and Asian currency crises, and finally, because he felt the need to flood the country with liquidity for Y2K. Greenspan, more than any other single person, bears the responsibility for Nasdaq 5000, a level I expect to see again only when I’m old and even more cranky than I am now.
BTW, manny, I’d be real interested in all those topics you brought up on the previous page. I’m a sucker for new ideas on how the economy currently is operating, since there might be a way to make some money off it.
Meantime, one of my favorite quotes on Bushco’s economic advisors, who’ve proven themselves to be geniuses at making themselves look silly. From a Barron’s of a few weeks ago, I don’t remember which issue, by the always hilarious Alan Abelson:
It appears that Abelson actually has a chance at eating a little crow on the last part of that quote, which would be a good thing. We’ll see.
Some of the jobs growth has undoubtedly come from the beverage bottlers (well, Coca Cola Company, anyway) who are now making 1.5 liter bottles and selling them for the same price they were selling 2 liter bottles for last week.
And, from this cite, we can add in Austria (4.5%) and Ireland (4.5%) based on a comparison of March data. If we are willing to go back a few months for those countries that don’t have as up-to-date data available, we can also add Korea (3.7% in Dec 2003), New Zealand (4.6% in Dec 2003), Netherlands (4.7% in Feb 2004), Norway (4.3% in Feb 2003), Switzerland (4.2% in Dec 2003), and U.K. (4.7% in Dec 2003). So of the 27 countries listed by the OECD, I count 11 with lower unemployment rates than the U.S. From this, I’d conclude that the U.S.'s unemployment rate is one of the lowest unemployments rates of any country on the planet once you exclude most of those with lower unemployment rates. [And, in many of these countries with lower unemployment rates and many of them with higher ones, you still have health insurance when you lose your employment.]
Along these lines, here is an interesting report fromthe new liberal think tank The Center for American Progress that compares job growth in the U.S. vs. Canada. (I started a thread on this last week here.)
Admittedly, such cross-country comparisons can be tricky, but at best it certainly makes it hard to argue that the last few years of Bush policies have been very good for job growth unless you want to explain why the divergence between the Canadian and American job growth numbers would have been much more dramatic in their absence. And, of course, as the study point out, these Bush policies were incredibly expensive in terms of what they have done to our long-term fiscal situation, whereas Canada has managed to get better job growth and not significantly worsened its fiscal situation. That’s the part that goes unstated in all this. I mean, if I go out and charge up to my $25,000 credit limit on my credit card, things are going to look pretty rosy here in the jshore household, but perhaps it would be worse asking if that is the wisest and most efficient use of resources.
Just for completeness, I should note that the sort of bill that we are talking about for the two tax cuts over ten years is something well north of $2 trillion, perhaps approaching $3 trillion (and that’s if the various sunsets are allowed to happen)… For money like that, we ought to accept nothing less than sustained fantasmagorical job growth!!
Okay, going a little post-crazy here, but here are some actual hard cost numbers for the tax cuts from Citizens for Tax Justice for the 13-year period from 2002 to 2014: $2.6 trillion if sunsets are allowed to happen + an additional $2.9 trillion if the sunsets are repealed, as Bush desires.
pantom: Yeah, a trillion dollars here, a trillion dollars there, and, hey, maybe if we’re lucky we’ll even get a few million jobs out of the deal!
The GDP numbers may be more fantasy than reality. Have you seen this article? The Economist also ran a similar article a few weeks back.
As always, it depends on who is classified as working in what area. Perhaps there needs to be more granularity, say a distinction between “Regular Service” jobs (clerks, cashiers, etc.), “Medium Level Service” jobs (auto mechanics, etc.) and “Professional Service” jobs (doctors and such). Also union vs. non-union. I know some people in the local supermarket who are unionized. They start at $12 and change and go up to $18 and change with seniority. There is also a good deal of overtime opportunities where they get 1 1/2X or 2X hourly rate pay. Non-union people doing the same work, make a good deal less. And watch out if Bush and his “Economic Advisors” get to reclassify burger-flipping jobs as “manufacturing” jobs, as they were trying to do a few months back. That will lower the average manufacturing wage while making for a dramatic increase in the count of manufacturing jobs.
What is it with you people and your snide tempers? Just can’t have a discussion without working in the cheap shots, huh? Sucks to be you.
And this comment about the ‘facts’ is hilariously applied to elucidator’s post, in which he twists statistics by conveniently picking statistics from the best months for his case out of the past year and half in order to ‘prove’ me wrong on something that I said from the get-go was coming from memory and I wouldn’t swear by its accuracy. And which, in any case is irrelevant to the larger point, which is that the U.S. has very low unemployment by world standards. Whether there are four small countries or eight that had lower unemployment is pretty much meaningless.
Well, perhaps, but your frequent point when posting comparative unemployment figures is that low unemployment rates are the result of lower taxes/freer markets/lower social spending. So when countries like Norway and The Netherlands start showing up in the ‘lower unemployment than the US’ category, it takes a lot of plausibility from your argument, especially when you frequently comment on how high European rates are.
I know, I owe, I owe. My apologies – my market had its short-term capitulation (at least it damn well better have!) on Monday, so I’ve been busy shopping for bonds. I’ll try to get to it later this week if I decide it’s worth wading through the dreck being posted by some of the, uh, less informed people in this thread who have decided that each and every thread that tangentially relates to the economy is an excuse to throw out unsupported and stupid insults to their fellow members.
I see. So if you can find a couple of counterexamples, this negates the whole notion that economies that have low taxes and regulation tend to outperform ones that don’t, is that right? But on the other side of the coin, the fact that the vast majority of countries that have higher taxes and more regulation than the U.S. also have significantly higher unemployment and lower growth rates, is data that should just be ignored. Is that it?
Speaking of snide remarks, “conveniently picking statistics from the best months for his case out of the past year and half in order to ‘prove’ me wrong” is not only snide but is also a crock of B.S! I chose the latest statistics available for each country. And, in fact, for all but one of the countries on the list I gave that have lower unemployment rates (which is not four or eight but 11 out of the 27 listed on that site), the rates were lower for all the dates available in the last half of 2003 through March 2004 (which is the last month listed)…The one exception is Australia. Furthermore, two additional countries, Denmark and Sweden had lower rates during a part of that period.
Look Sam, you pulled some claim out of thin air, like you often do, and you got called on it because it had a certain lack of basis in reality. I can understand you being testy given how often you have been wrong on so many different points over the past year or so on the SDMB, but I think you ought to try to give it a rest! Even manhattan is suggesting this.
P.S. - And, if you actually identified the cherry-picking of data when it did occur…by the Bush Administration or by your conservatives sources…you wouldn’t get into trouble so much!
It seems that we have come up with a new definition of “vast majority” that applies when it applies to 15 of the 27 OECD countries. In fact, to even include 15 of them, one would also have to have a new definition of “significantly higher” since Denmark and Hungary’s March rate exceeded that of the U.S. by only 0.2 and 0.3%, and Sweden’s is currently 0.7% higher but was 0.6% lower last July.
Yes, I know. I’m being terribly unfair to you. I’m not making any grand claims, Sam. I’m just saying that the numbers you’re dismissing here aren’t as insignificant as you pretend. Seriously, when comparing unemployment numbers, you’ve pretty much got to stick to countries with comparable economies - so we’re talking the OECD countries, and if you look at the provided numbers, it seems reasonably obvious that the US is in the middle of the pack, and several leading the way with low unemployment are also leading the way in high taxes.
Frankly, I again state my disclaimer that I’m not remotely convinced that unemployment rates are directly comparable due to differing methodologies in gathering and classifying data. But then, I’m not the one drawing conclusions from unemployment numbers, either - that would be you, and I think your conclusions are not very well supported by the evidence.
[And, in many of these countries with lower unemployment rates and many of them with higher ones, you still have health insurance when you lose your employment.]