To be more precise, the economy was rebounding from the recession in the latter part of 2009 and in early 2010. But then ObamaCare and the Dodd-Frank financial "reform" bills were passed and the Democrats clearly wanted massive tax increases. These actions and many strange and arbitrary regulations created an avalanche of business uncertainty to add to the lingering uncertainty of the earlier bailouts and company asset thefts by the government. The second dip of the recession started in the latter half of 2010. Then, once again, perhaps due to the extension of many of the Bush tax cuts, the economy showed some signs of recovery in the first quarter of this year. But, continuing government ineptitude mixed with deliberate destruction of the private sector, caused the second quarter of this year to slip back into recession mode again. This fact was hidden by the unrealistic measures of price inflation, which ignored large fuel and food price increases and over-emphasized some improvements in technology values. Apparent increases in GDP were likely just artifacts of the understated inflationary effect on goods and services of the huge stimulus spending and the two Quantitative Easings.
Each month, I calculate the real unemployment rate and the number of missing jobs in comparison to January 2000 when most anyone who wanted a good job could find one. In the belief that were good jobs available, as large a fraction of the population would be wanting to work today, one can calculate the needed jobs and the missing jobs. The latest numbers based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment report for May 2011 follow:
There actually was a nanoscale improvement in the number of missing jobs relative to April 2011. The bad news is that the improvement in jobs creation ought to be much, much better at this time after the mid-2008 start of the recession if we were really seeing any improvement of the economy. There were 693,000 more missing jobs in May 2011 than there were in May 2010! A new crop of high school and college graduates is emerging and there are no jobs for them. This is now a three-year old recession! Recessions of the private sector never last this long. Only government can make such an extended recession. This is truly the Great Socialist Recession.
We are mired in the doldrums and there is no wind in sight. The business community expects the Obama administration and the Democrats to continue making systematically awful choices with respect to the business of business and job creation. It is true that Congress is doing less harm since the Republicans gained control of the House, but that has only invigorated the administration's determination to cause as much harm as possible through executive branch agencies. Some of this is incompetence in business and economic matters, but some is very likely an effort to simply make many Americans dependent upon big government. The plan is to make many individuals so destitute that they will think government is their only salvation. It is to put many companies so at risk in the hands of regulators that they will bow and scrape before government to save their heads from the chopping block.
What is better than a crisis of no growth, inflation, and joblessness for government to aggrandize its power? This is well-understood by those many Democrat Socialists who hunger always to expand the scope and power of government, while making the private sector tremble in fear. They well remember how the Great Depression grew government and gave the Democrats the initiative in politics for decades. Some of the most influential Democrats are hoping the present crisis will give them the same power, if only they can make this recession into a long-lasting depression or at least something close to one. These supreme power-lusting Democrat Socialist leaders are a minority of the party, but they are in control of the party policy. The Great Socialist Recession is very unlikely to end until Obama is no longer occupying the White House and the Democrats no longer control the Senate.
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4 comments:
Thanks for the numbers. I appreciate the empirical analysis because it gets us past anecdotes.
"The Great Socialist Recession is very unlikely to end until Obama is no longer occupying the White House and the Democrats no longer control the Senate."
The Republicans will be just as bad, only different ... or maybe not so different.
The basic problem is cultural, which is to say, at the personal level it is philosophical. Those myriads of persons aggregate into trends. Today, in the USA, depending on the hoopla 40% to 60% of eligible voters stay home. When 75% to 90% do, it might indicate a changed culture. But the change cannot be political, except as a consequence.
What do you think it would take to change the implicit philosophy of our culture?
An excellant article and so true that this is a 3 year long ObamaDemocratic recession.
Thank you Claudia. I really appreciate your comment. When government messes with the individual's sovereign rights to life, liberty, property, the ownership of one's mind and body, and the pursuit of personal happiness with central planning to impose values and to micromanage our lives, disaster strikes every time. Unfortunately, the presumptuous progressive elitists are so enamored of their religion that they can dish out social justice that no evidence to the contrary ever registers with most of them. There may be a few we can pick off from the edges with the painful truth of their failures and some independents can be picked off for a while. It is hard to pick up independents for long however, since most of them are reluctant to think in terms of principles.
We need more Americans who love freedom for its own sake and will be immune to the bribes of big, illegitimate governments. I am happy you are one such person.
Michael, I long overlooked your comment in my stream of e-mails and then long thought I had published it.
The Republicans as a whole differ in scale with the Democrats on how much they embrace socialism. Generally, they spend less and run smaller deficits. It was the Democrats who decided to spend $1 trillion more per year since 2007. Yes, Bush did not veto the Democrat Congress big spending of 2008 as he should have and that does point to a general cultural problem. We also see such a problem in that most older Republicans do not want to entertain reductions in benefits in either Medicare or in Social Security. Nonetheless, they will eventually accept them more readily than will Democrats.
The very generous welfare state of today is not at all sustainable. It will collapse and people will once again see that there is no substitute for productive work. The major cultural change will occur then. Some people have moved well along in learning that lesson and many are in the Tea Party movement. But, that group is still a clear minority and many of the remainder of society will learn nothing until they are seriously worried they will be cast homeless into the streets. Of course those who actually are cast into the streets will claim a right to be cared for, while those who narrowly avoid it will learn from it.
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