Moonage Political Webdream

The unemployment rate was released today.  It has suddenly jumped to 5.5%.  This is the highest it’s been in four years.  Now, this is a concern to me for two reasons.

In the past decade, if unemployment in May was less than January, it was less in December eight out of ten times.  That’s a pretty regular rate.  You could almost say it’s predictable:

Year	Jan	May	Dec
1998	4.6	4.4	4.4
1999	4.3	4.2	4
2000	4	4	3.9
2001	4.2	4.3	5.7
2002	5.7	5.8	6
2003	5.8	6.1	5.7
2004	5.7	5.6	5.4
2005	5.2	5.1	4.8
2006	4.7	4.7	4.4
2007	4.6	4.5	5
2008	4.9	5.5	?

The only exceptions were 2001 and 2007.   It’s fairly obvious what affected things in 2001.  However, something affected 2007. Which leads me to my second concern:

That’s the pattern since January 2006.  It starts off OK and then gets kinda ugly.  Where it starts getting ugly is after July 2007.  That’s when Nancy Pelosi’s Congress’s first budget would be kicking in.

In her first year of controlling budgets, she bucked a decade long trend of summer months boosting employment.  It’s just continued to get worse.  If math holds true, we can expect a nasty employment situation by December.  Some will blame it on the President.  That’ll just tell you they don’t have a clue what they are talking about.  The fact is, Congress sets the budget and spends the money and the President can only approve it.  Sure, he submits a budget, but Congress changes it as they see fit.

In the 2009 proposed budget, federal agency spending and the Department of Defense get huge increases in spending.  However, it lays the foundation for most of the Bush tax cuts to expire by 2012 in order to “balance” the budget.  It also does not address spending on the War in Iraq or reflect massive increases in Medicare.  It assumes there will be no expense in Iraq at all.  Go figure that one ( nod to Obama ).

Now, the thrust of the Democrat budget is bigger government.  They are increasing agency spending on the backs of the private sector.  That’s not disputable.  In order to do this, they are eliminating the tax breaks “for the wealthy”.  Nevermind that it nails the poor more than the wealthy, the fact is the private sector employs a hell of a lot more people than the federal government.  And that’s the way it should be.  However, the private sector has had a lot of deal with over the last few years.

In the short time the Democrats have been in control:

• Manufacturing has seen quarterly job creations drop from a previous of 524 thousand to 467 thousand in the third quarter ( the most recent reported ).
• Production jobs have dropped 1,629 thousand to 1,486 thousand.
• Service jobs created have dropped from 6,173 thousand to 5,763 thousand.
• Even the darling industry of the Democrats, the information sector, has dropped from 167 thousand to 153 thousand.

That folks, is an 8% drop in job creations since January 2007.  And, given the rhetoric and budgets coming from DC, they have no reason to be excited now.  And, the source of this continued economic downtrend is rooted in a very simple reason: It’s the wealthy that employ everyone else.  When the Democrats take money out of their pockets, they are taking jobs.  It’s that simple.  The more they tax “the wealthy”, the fewer jobs they can create.

This is a catastrophic philosophy to have given the economic drive of China and India, and several other countries to boot.  And, it is the philosophy Barack Obama has loudly endorsed.

Technorati Tags: budgets, congress, employment situation, job creation, nancy pelosi, obama, proposed budget, unemployment rate

Tags: budgets, congress, employment situation, job creation, nancy pelosi, obama, proposed budget, unemployment rate

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