What Recession?

[UNTflyer]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The economy shifted to a higher gear in the spring, growing at its fastest pace in nearly a year as foreign buyers snapped up U.S. exports and tax rebates spurred shoppers at home.The Commerce Department reported Thursday that gross domestic product, or GDP, increased at a 3.3 percent annual rate in the April-June quarter. The revised reading was much better than the government's initial estimate of a 1.9 percent pace and exceeded economists' expectations for a 2.7 percent growth rate.

[KRAM1]

What are you trying to do? Confuse folks with real facts?????

[Coffee and TV]

Wow. Fastest pace in nearly a year? I guess that means everything is A-Ok again!

[UNTflyer]

Wow. Fastest pace in nearly a year? I guess that means everything is A-Ok again!

It was never really bad. Despite high gas prices and falling home prices, I still see packed malls, packed movie theaters, packed restaurants...

And actually, the writer is wrong. It was fastest pace in 3 quarters, but even that means nothing. Q3 2007 we had growth of 4.8%, same as the quarter before that. "Fastest pace in 3 quarters" just means it was only the last 2 quarters that were bad. And these figures are based on 2000 dollars; current dollar GDP (which eliminates the effect of inflation) is much stronger at 4.6%

And despite the hope of some political parties, there is still no recession and no sign of one.

[KRAM1]

From an Everton fan I would suspect such rubbish! Your scarcasm is pure British...I'll bet you are not a Tory!

[BeanCounterGrad'03]

From an Everton fan I would suspect such rubbish! Your scarcasm is pure British...I'll bet you are not a Tory!

Does it involve smoking fags?

[Coffee and TV]

It was never really bad. Despite high gas prices and falling home prices, I still see packed malls, packed movie theaters, packed restaurants...

And actually, the writer is wrong. It was fastest pace in 3 quarters, but even that means nothing. Q3 2007 we had growth of 4.8%, same as the quarter before that. "Fastest pace in 3 quarters" just means it was only the last 2 quarters that were bad. And these figures are based on 2000 dollars; current dollar GDP (which eliminates the effect of inflation) is much stronger at 4.6%

And despite the hope of some political parties, there is still no recession and no sign of one.

Wages are stagnent, health care costs are through the roof, and this administration has created 1/4th the jobs that Clinton did. But go ahead, tell this college grad who is making $11 an hour that things are fine and dandy. Have at it.

[Coffee and TV]

From an Everton fan I would suspect such rubbish! Your scarcasm is pure British...I'll bet you are not a Tory!

I'll bet you I'm not even British. And if I were Canadian or British I'd be a Tory. Asshat.

[UNTLifer]

Wages are stagnent, health care costs are through the roof, and this administration has created 1/4th the jobs that Clinton did. But go ahead, tell this college grad who is making $11 an hour that things are fine and dandy. Have at it.

Gee and we have a Democratic majority in Congress where the real power lies.

Oh, and nice response to KRAM1. I see sarcasm is lost on you.

Edited August 28, 2008 by UNTLifer

[UNTflyer]

Wages are stagnent, health care costs are through the roof, and this administration has created 1/4th the jobs that Clinton did. But go ahead, tell this college grad who is making $11 an hour that things are fine and dandy. Have at it.

Wages are stagnant? Nope, wages are increasing at about the same rate they increased in the 1990s. Look up the BLS report titled "Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey". The problem isn't that wages are flat, it's that inflation is high.

Health care costs are certainly increasing, but they don't affect everyone like higher gas prices or food prices do.

PRESIDENTS DON'T CREATE JOBS. Sorry about the caps, but I am annoyed by this false perception that "Clinton created 20 million jobs". Clinton did no such thing, he got lucky that the information boom happened on his watch. If any one person was responsible for the job creation of the 1990s it was Al Gore Bill Gates.

Sir, things are fine and dandy. In the best of economies, you still have unemployed and homeless. Somewhere out there, things are horrible and things are great. And Dallas is one city where the economic problems of the country are felt the least.

Edited August 28, 2008 by UNTflyer

[KRAM1]

Coffee and Tea...don't think I ever said you were British. If you are a college grad making $11/hour look in the mirror and find out why. Health care costs are soaring due in large part to the Trial Lawyer Lobby making such friends out of their democratic congressmen and senators. Tort reform in medicine would GREATLY reduce the cost of health care in the United States. The Pacific Research Institute estimates that our present abusive malpractice system adds $124Billion...that Billion with a B...to the cost of health care in America through defensive medicine and that higher cost causes 3.4million Americans to lose their health care insurance. One ob-gyn in Rhode Island (as simply one of many examples) saw her malpractice insurance cost jump from $28,000 (too high in itself) $90,000 in one year and she had NEVER BEEN SUED! Imagine, if you can, what that did to the cost of delivering a baby...each and every baby delivered! Medical liability costs have increased an average of 11.7 percent each year since 1975! Think that has anything to do with the cost of health care and the reason some folks can't afford coverage? And, it is your democrat friends in congress who block tort reform each and evey time it rears its head! But, I wouldn't want to confuse anyone with facts insrtead of just throwing some emotional blast out there! Yep, it's those "mean" Republicans working with those mean corporate folks who just keep raising the cost of health care so they can get richer and richer...Hmmmmmmm, but sir, the facts don'rt bear that out! Young man, do not confuse me with the facts for I am a Democrat and I know what good for you! (ASIDE: A little comic relief there)...I love politics...LET THE GAMES BEGIN!

And, the beat goes on when it comes to government by the folks who think big government is good and even bigger government is Camalot! Members of the "TAKING COALITION" all!

[yyz28]

PRESIDENTS DON'T CREATE JOBS. Sorry about the caps, but I am annoyed by this false perception that "Clinton created 20 million jobs". Clinton did no such thing, he got lucky that the information boom happened on his watch. If any one person was responsible for the job creation of the 1990s it was Al Gore Bill Gates.

THANK YOU!!!

Let's see... Bush had economic challenges Clinton did not. He had the 2001 recession and that year's terror attack. And, Bush faced lingering fallout from the bursting of the stock market bubble in 2000. He also was confronted with a wave of corporate accounting scandals that rocked Wall Street. Clinton was also President when an entire new industry was being born and growing.

The economy lost jobs in 2001 and 2002. Since then jobs have been growing each year — including 2006 & 2007, when the economy was hit by the real-estate bust.

Those jolts did affect jobs on Bush's watch. Yet there are deeper reasons for slower job growth, too. The principal reason is that the labor force has grown much more slowly during the president's term than under the presidencies of Clinton and Reagan and that has nothing to do with anything but demographics. Baby boomers — a huge block of workers — poured into the work force in the 1980s and were rising through the ranks in the 1990s. That's not the case now as boomers face retirement, and there are fewer young people to take their places. Women, meanwhile, who helped to bulk up the labor force over the past few decades, aren't streaming into jobs as they once did. These changing demographic factors will shape the country's future and how we measure "job growth". "The impending retirement of the baby boomers and the fact that women are no longer increasing their participation in the labor force at the rate they were in the past will tend to restrain the future growth of the U.S. labor force," Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said in a major speech on the economy's outlook in late November.

[forevereagle]

I'll bet you I'm not even British. And if I were Canadian or British I'd be a Tory. Asshat.

Please read...

[UNTFan23]

Our labor force is going to shrink due to aging baby boomers. I'm sure in the next 10 to 20 years, someone will manage to blame that on a president or two.

[Coffee and TV]

Wages are stagnant? Nope, wages are increasing at about the same rate they increased in the 1990s. Look up the BLS report titled "Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey". The problem isn't that wages are flat, it's that inflation is high.

And I could give you plenty of reports and stats that show otherwise. The problem is that you can play with the numbers any way you want. Its the same reason why there are 800 different sects of protestantism, and only 1 bible.

Health care costs are certainly increasing, but they don't affect everyone like higher gas prices or food prices do.

That's just silly.

PRESIDENTS DON'T CREATE JOBS. Sorry about the caps, but I am annoyed by this false perception that "Clinton created 20 million jobs". Clinton did no such thing, he got lucky that the information boom happened on his watch. If any one person was responsible for the job creation of the 1990s it was Al Gore Bill Gates.

Yet history in the last 100 years shows that every time a Democrat is in the White House, there's better economic growth. And microsoft doesn't employ 15 million people.

Coffee and Tea...don't think I ever said you were British. If you are a college grad making $11/hour look in the mirror and find out why.

Uh, yeah, after this statement I stopped reading. You can kindly go muck yourself.

[Green Mean]

Lets get a group hug here!

[UNTflyer]

And I could give you plenty of reports and stats that show otherwise. The problem is that you can play with the numbers any way you want. Its the same reason why there are 800 different sects of protestantism, and only 1 bible.

That's just silly.

Yet history in the last 100 years shows that every time a Democrat is in the White House, there's better economic growth. And microsoft doesn't employ 15 million people.

Uh, yeah, after this statement I stopped reading. You can kindly go fuck yourself.

The BLS uses the same standards to calculate these statistics. There is no playing with the numbers. Sorry if facts are hard for you to take.

Silly? Nice rebuttal. I stand by my previous statement, unless you or a close family member are are seriously sick, health care costs don't affect you. It's like car accidents or house fires... it sucks when they happen but that's why you buy insurance.

EVERY TIME a Democrat is in the White House? Hmm, let's start with the Dem before Clinton - Jimmy Carter. They invented the Pain Index during his term - no need to even further discuss Mr. Peanut. LBJ? The economy took a dive in the 2nd half of his only full term. Before that was JFK, the President who slashed taxes in a very Republican-like way, which spurred economic growth until LBJ's last 2 years of office. Before that... Truman. The country was coming out of a long world war preceded by a sever depression. You could have put a dead slug in the Oval Office and enjoyed the 8.7% and 7.7% GDP growth that Truman had in 1950 and 1951.

No, Microsoft didn't employ 15 million people but they helped create economies of scale through efficiency and production increases that spurred the economic growth of the 1990s. Geez, how do you think economies work? That the President just pushes a button and jobs are created? Are you sure you graduated college?

Edited August 29, 2008 by UNTflyer

[Censored by Laurie]

I'm writing up a saftey guide for work right now and I just had to type "never give anything by mouth to an unconscious person" and I kept a straight face.

[Cerebus]

Stop the personal attacks or I will start banning people.

Keep political discussions civil or they will be banned again.

[FirefightnRick]

Wages are stagnent, health care costs are through the roof, and this administration has created 1/4th the jobs that Clinton did. But go ahead, tell this college grad who is making $11 an hour that things are fine and dandy. Have at it.

Vote Democrat: It's better than working!

Rick

[KingDL1]

Vote Democrat: It's better than working!

Rick

Well that is where a large percentage of their core votes come from.

[BeanCounterGrad'03]

Since we're dealing in stereotypes:

Republicans hate black people.

[KingDL1]

Since we're dealing in stereotypes:

Republicans hate black people.

It is not a stereotype at it is a fact that people on welfare or supplemented by welfare vote nearly 100% democratic, and not even an arguable fact.

[untbowler]

Since we're dealing in stereotypes:

Republicans hate black people.

really, really, wow. Funny how during the great DNC Meeting with the "Savior" they noted the First Black Delegate was at the RNC in 1888 or 68 I believe, yet the all knowing Democrats did not have a Black Delegate until 1936.

Yup Republicans hate black people.

[BeanCounterGrad'03]

It is not a stereotype at it is a fact that people on welfare or supplemented by welfare vote nearly 100% democratic, and not even an arguable fact.

I bet I could head down to LA, MS, and AL and prove my stereotype statement as fact as well.