I hate starting threads. I’m not very good at it and I usually don’t know which forum to post them in. That being said, I think that this question most likely belongs here:
I live near the IL/Mo border and work in Mo. Most of the political ads I hear on the radio have a conservative bent to them. It seems that lately what I hear more than anything else is from politicians wanting to turn the country or economy around. Our economy has been growing, albeit poorly, for some time now. Am I to gather from this that these conservatives want our economy to be proportionately shrinking?
We’re not creating jobs fast enough to meet the demand. We typically need to create ~250k/month just to keep the unemployment rate from increasing. Typically, a recovery from recession is above average growth, but we’re below average.
Whether or not the folks you’re hearing in ads can actually change that is a different story. But no, they are not arguing for a return to recession. You knew that, right?
Yes, of course I knew that, but the fact remains that if we were to turn the economy around at this point, we would be worse off than we are now. I am not particularly pleased with my position in life in relation to about 2007. (making about 50% less than then) but I have gainful employment, unlike 2008- 2010. I would hate for the economy to return to the level it was two years ago, therefore I think turning it around would be the wrong decision.
You’re being way too literal. When you hear “turn the economy around”, think “improve the economy”, because that is what is meant.
Are you just getting a jab in on indelicate phrasing of the ad or do you think conservatives are really campaigning on returning to the economy of 2010 or 2009?
Political ads are theatre. It is no different than when Romney calls Obama an appeaser despite Libya being overthrown and Bin Laden dying on his watch.
A lot of people are going to say–“I don’t care that the recession ended three years ago. It still FEELS like a recession.”
And you know what? They’re right. This is such a slow, weak recovery that there’s no meaningful difference between “recovery” and a shallow recession.
Here’s a chart showing how this recession compares to previous ones.
http://www.cbpp.org/images/chartbook_images/2.1.2-cumulative-loss-OPT.jpg
They certainly want to return to the policies of 2007.
That can’t be right, can it? 250k extra jobs a month is 3 million jobs a year. That’s a bit more than 2% of the entire workforce. Are you telling me we have a 2% increase in the size of the workforce every year?
This. It’s just jargon. It’s like when someone – nearly anyone! – says, “Doggone those activist judges,” all it really means is that a judge made a decision he disagrees with. When a judge makes a ruling he likes, he holds his peace, because he likes that variety of activist judging!
Or when they say, “Throw the rascals out,” they really only mean, “Throw out the rascals belonging to the other party; our own rascals should be re-elected!”
Maybe I was off. Seems like most estimates are more like 150k. But they range from 100k to 250k.
As for the “turn around” phrase, it also follows on the typical poll question about whether we are “headed in the right direction” or not. Right now, most people think we aren’t. Whether that means they want Romney to be president is a different matter.
The writers of those ads are working under constraints. They can’t say what they literally mean, which is “we want the economy to improve more (or faster)” because then they’d be admitting the economy is already improving to some degree, albeit maybe not as well as it could be. And no political campaign wants to concede any ground to the opposition.
I can’t speak for the OP but he’s making a valid point. If a politician is promising to “turn the economy around” at a time when the economy is actually heading in the right direction, it’s fair to ask if the politician is either unaware of the current economic condition or is trying to fool his audience about the current economic condition. Evidence that a candidate is either clueless or deceitful is worth looking at when you’re considering who to vote for.
Is the economy heading in the right direction, though?
There’s plenty to not vote for Romney for, but him promising to turn the economy around isn’t one of them. You’re reaching too far.
Why bother when we can argue about horses?
This the whole point of this thread. The economy is growing, that is the right direction. If Romney is promising to turn the economy around, it means:
- Romney is just mouthing empty slogans that have no meaning behind them.
- Romney is unaware of what the economy is doing.
- Romney is aware of what the economy is doing but is lying about it.
- Romney is appealing to voters who don’t know anything.
- Romney thinks the economy should stop growing and start shrinking.
I don’t see any of these as being a reason to vote for Romney.
This is the point. There are enough conservatives who think that the economy has been worsening, and enough occasions of sloppy or misleading descriptions by conservative political and media types that they ought to be called upon to get things right.
Make the argument based on fact, not fiction.
I think they do want to turn the economy around making it worse for the vast majority of Americans. The super-rich who are funding this current election cycle with billions of dollars were able to increase their share of the pie significantly during the economic downturn during the Bush administration. I don’t see any reason these politicians wouldn’t gladly return to that state at the behest of their masters. They don’t have to be lying in their statements, simply deceptive in that they assume the electorate will believe they mean something else.
It’s just political-speak. If you’re unhappy with the current situation, you want to turn it around, even if it’s going slowly in the direction you want it to go. I’m not as offended by that as I am “take our country back” which really means “take our country backward”.
thank you for your replies. As many have said, they keep playing lip service to this idea of turning things around. If I were Obama, I would do my best to remind the people what turning around memeans, relative to our economic situation. Pposing on phone so forgive the mustards in sp and punctuation