Especially the number in my bonus check! (assuming I get one, of course. We live in hope.)
Well, finally, we get to some real economic data! But have a look at those cars, John. They may be pretty nice cars, kind of cars people buy when they’re making good money. Of course, if they are a couple years old, it might be the car they bought when they were making good money.
Could be Pappa Berenstien, systems analyst, and Mamma Berenstien, network manager, on the way to the temp agency to do “word processing” for $10/hour, while little Teddy Berenstien, html-webpages, is gonna go downtown to skateboard for a messenger service. They left Dad at home, of course, Cobol programmer, hasn’t worked since Dec. '99.
And there they are, all going to work in thier nice car.
(and, of course, if any of them get really sick, their options are a) throw themselves on the charity of the local emergency room or b) die.)
Hmm.
Anyway, if the Republican constituency feels good because the economy’s growing, taxes at the Fed level are cut, and the stock market is rising, while the Democratic constituency feels increasingly alienated because job growth is subpar, wage growth is flat, and outsourcing continues to put pressure on their job security, then we’re going to have two highly motivated bases, 40% each of the electorate, going to the polls, with a few defections from each side over Iraq.
The middle 20% will be key. And for them, the defining issues will probably be national security and its relation to terrorism and Iraq. Between the two economic sets above, probably more of those in the middle will care about wages than about the stock market, meantime.
All of which means it’s shaping up, at this stage, as a tight election.
And in economics, I continue to believe that the single most important point will be whether Bush can get to net zero on job creation by October, which will be the last jobs report before the election. The net jobs deficit at this point stands at 2,262,000 jobs, which divided by 10 means he’ll have to achieve job creation of 226,200 per month between now and October to avoid that headline about being the first President since Hoover to have a net loss of jobs during his tenure. That level of job creation hasn’t been achieved even so much as once yet since Bush took office.
All the GDP figures in the world won’t save him from that headline.
Employment chart: http://www.economagic.com/em-cgi/charter.exe/fedstl/payems+1996+2003+4+1+0+290+545++0
Graphically shows that there hasn’t been one period of year-over-year growth in this administration yet. Shaded area is the “official” recession, according to the NBER. Click on numerical data link in upper left for the actual numbers.
PS: These are the payroll numbers, which are comparable year over year, but which don’t include hires in new businesses until later revisions, to the best of my knowledge. In any event, these are the numbers used in political campaigns, which for the purposes of this thread, is all that matters.
pantom:
You’re a smart guy, and you look at the data pretty closely. We come to different conclusions based on the data, but that doesn’t mean either of our positions is unthoughtful or invalid. But the vast majority of the electorate doesn’t analyse things that thoroughly. They vote, to a large extent, on gut feelings about security, the economy, and how likeable to candidate is. It looks like Dean is likely to be the Dem candidate (9 out of the last 10 nominees have been the guy who raised the most money by the time election year rolled around). He’ll have to contend with this sentinement, regardless of whatever economic statistics you come up with.
And the fact of the matter is, the unemployment rate is very much in the normal range of what it has been for decades. Most people do have jobs-- 94-95% of them do. They’re not going to relate to an abstract statistic that doesn’t affect their daily lives.
Yeah, all true, but that’s going to be a real juicy headline if the Dems can use it, and sound bites like that are priceless.
It’s not surprising, looking at your data, that war is popular. With a few notable exceptions, this is usually the case, unfortunately. And of course everybody likes to have their taxes cut.
So those are the things the Dem nominee will have working against him. But a juicy headline like “Worst Job Creation Since Hoover” can go a ways in cancelling that out, or at the very least in getting people to listen to your case, which for a challenger is always a, um, challenge.
I think the Dems have convinced themselves that the ‘net job loss’ thing is a political winner, but I think that’s the kind of detail that only policy wonks care about. The electorate is all about, “What have you done for me lately.”
If the economy is creating 200,000 new jobs a month around election time, no one is going to care whether or not the net total has hit some arbitrary figure. People care about the future, not the past. Plus, the American people are smart enough to figure out that Bush does not deserve the blame for the recession. What they care about is whether he was the steward of a good recovery.
The Dems have two solid issues, as I see it. One is the size of the deficit, and the other is civil liberties. If they can portray Bush as a reckless president who starts unnecessary wars, spends money he doesn’t have, and plays fast and loose with the rights of the citizenry, they might have something. Not enough to win, IMO, but those issues are their best shot.
If they instead try to attack him on the economy at a time when it’s firing on all cylinders with a wonkish argument about whether his net job gain or loss is good or bad, they’ll get killed.
Sam:
I disagree on the Civ Lib issue. That might play well with the hardcore Dem left, but I most people in the US think criminals (even alleged criminals) get too much protection from the state. And most people think terrorists are a lot more dangerous than common criminals. It will be an extremely rare individual indeed who can say that his or her life was affected in any way whatsover by something like the Patriot Act.
The Deficit might play a bit better, but it’s still a pretty abstract concept to most people. They’d get upset about the defecit mainly if taxes had to be raised. Bush Jr did learn one thing from Dad-- we don’t have to read his lips to know he’s not going to raise taxes.
It is with heavy heart that I agree with this. I would like think that if we had a reckless president who started unnecessary wars, spent money he doesn’t have, and played fast and loose with the rights of the citizenry would be sufficient to initiate more than an ousting come election time. However, I remain unconvinced that it would.
John: I don’t think the deficit is abstract at all. At least, not as a political issue. People don’t like deficit spending because they intuitively understand from their own experience that continuing to spend money you don’t have is a sure ticket to poverty. The fact that it’s much more complex than personal finances are gets glossed over. And deficits HAVE been big election issues before. Reagan used Carter’s deficit as a major campaign plank, and George Bush I lost the election in part because of big deficits.
BTW, I don’t agree with the characterization of Bush as a reckless president - for one thing, I think the war in Iraq was exactly right, and I also think the civil liberties thing is overblown (and I’m a civil libertarian…). I just happen to think that these are the only real issues with ‘traction’ that the Democrats can use.
Of course, the elephant in the closet here is security. That’s going to be the REAL issue. And the Democrats are going to get crushed on it. One big shift in this election cycle has been a huge migration of women from the Democrats to the Republicans. One of the theories for this is that Women tend to vote for whatever makes their families secure. In the past, this played to Democrat’s strengths - health care coverage, education, subsidized day care, etc. But when terrorists are attacking your country, the desire for familial security plays to the Republican’s strengths.
No, he’ll just sit happily by while the federal debt increases and while the state and local governments, under increasing pressures from federal mandates and without sufficient federal assistance, are forced to raise their taxes and/or cut back on services. (Of course, these taxes tend to fall much more heavily on the lower and middle classes and less on the upper class than the taxes that Bush cut.)
Actually, jshore, the states are doing much better this yeaar. I believe 31 of them are no longer running deficits.
If leading us to war under false pretenses isn’t reason enough to chuck him out on his ear, what, in the name of God, is? Have we become so totally debased and degraded that it doesn’t even matter?
I guess that would be their uncanny ability to manipulate language and exploit fear to do what they want to do anyway, most all of which does and has done less than nothing to increase our safety.
elucidator, thought experiment: if LBJ hadn’t abdicated, and had in fact somehow managed to wangle the Dem nomination in '68, and the choice had been between Nixon and LBJ, what would you have done?
I mean, I don’t like the Iraq war anymore than you do, but on the scale of wars started with false pretenses, Vietnam was as big as it gets, far bigger than Iraq and far costlier. And Humphrey, who was basically LBJ’s stand-in, came very close to actually winning that contest.
Think about it: when all was said and done in '68, the left had no one to represent them come the election. Sad, but true.
I find cold comfort in the polls showing how many Americans think Hussein plotted 9-11.
I don’t know what mixture of ignorance, malice and incompetence is responsible for the relative apathy.
Just read this and thought it might be somewhat relevant
http://www.workingforchange.com/comic.cfm?itemid=16208
Well, point of fact, I did vote against Nixon.
Its kind of hard to make a rational guess, looking back at '68. It seem to me at the time that I lived in a nation that was going mad, and dragging us all down with it. The polarization was incredible, no middle ground was possible, there was no moderate stance to take. As you may very well suspect, there was certainly no moderation in my stance, me and my ilk wore our political opinions like a uniform, or perhaps a costume.
I have never not voted, but LBJ against Nixon? Socialist Labor Party, I guess.
An interesting perspective on all this: not offered as proof of anything in particular, but very interesting nonetheless…this article from 12 years ago about how the Democrats were in total disarray and there was no chance of beating Bush I come November with that sorry-ass Arkansas hick, Bill Clinton.
http://www.worldandi.com/public/1992/june/cr6.cfm
"Another Democratic strategist, who conducts polls for the party, told me that in head-to-head polling against President George Bush, who has substantial negatives of his own, Clinton does poorly. “I did a poll in Idaho for a Senate race and we found that Bush had a 61 percent negative job approval rating. And yet Bush beats Clinton by 2-to1.” "
You could be right, but Bush will be able to claim that “we’re at war” and at least make a good case for defecit spending. Dean can go on about the defecit if he wants to, but he’ll have to talk about raising taxes if he makes that a campaign issue. And very few folks will be buying the “it’s not a tax increase, it’s just repealing the tax cut” mantra. Bush can talk about growing the economy and taking care of the deficit that way, plus he should be able to show that we are significantly reducing the Iraq expenditures.
Well, if Bush wins and continues his fiscal policies, I’ll continue to make money betting against their success. Haven’t lost a dime yet betting against the validity of his economics, and I don’t think I’ll have anything to worry about if he’s re-elected either. The same can’t be said for those poor souls who may have loaded up in Nov 2000 on stocks in the expectation of making some money.
Matter of fact, as I recall, it was in that precise month that gold stocks bottomed, and they’ve been moving up ever since. Can’t imagine why.