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http://nypost.com/2016/06/08/its-the-economy-again-stupid/
‘It’s the economy (again), stupid!’
By John Crudele
June 8, 2016 | 11:14pm
Bill Clinton was right in 1992, when his presidential rallying cry was short and effective: “It’s the economy, stupid.”
He’s still right in 2016, even though now it’s not George H.W. Bush in office — it’s a Democrat.
Consider that the United States now has 144.592 million jobs, according to the most recent data from the Labor Department. That’s 5.9 million more jobs than we had in 2008, which sounds great, except that means the US has produced less than 1 million jobs a year over the last eight years — when the country needs about 1.8 million jobs a year just to employ all the newbies graduating college and high school.
Meanwhile, the US population has increased by 18 million since 2008. Not all of them were working age, of course, but that population growth also caused a strain on a labor market that wasn’t producing enough jobs.
Don’t believe the fiction that the unemployment rate, which dipped to 4.7 percent in May after the economy added a meager 38,000 jobs (when economists were projecting 160,000), is any proper indicator of the health of the US labor force.
People are considered employed these days if they work only one hour a month. And millions of completely discouraged unemployed — meaning they haven’t looked for a job in a year — have simply fallen off the *Labor Department’s radar.
https://thenypost.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/economy.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=300&strip=all
If you include these discouraged workers among the unemployed, the jobless rate jumps to 23 percent, according to statistics put together by Walter J. Williams, who runs ShadowStats.com and makes a living punching holes in government data.
No wonder the annual real median household income is down about 6 percent during the Obama years, to a 10-year low, according to ShadowStats.com.
The number of Americans who have dropped out of the workforce since President Obama was sworn in has jumped by 14,179,000, or 15 percent. The labor-participation rate is at its lowest point in four decades.
The lack of job production and relative stagnant wages sure can create a lot of unrest across the country. And there are plenty of other money issues on people’s minds these days, like:
•Food-stamp usage has skyrocketed in the Obama years.
•Health-care costs are jumping despite ObamaCare.
• Student-loan debt has soared nearly 70 percent, to $1.2 trillion, since early 2009.
•The federal debt stands at more than $19 trillion even though annual deficits have come down. That means neither Democrats nor Republicans can do much to change things when it comes to economic stimulus.
This is an opportunity for Donald Trump and a problem for Hillary Clinton.
Clinton’s burden is that, like it or not, she will be running on Obama’s economic record.
She’s the insider in this presidential election.
And as Obama is the first president in US history not to have the economy post a 3 percent or greater growth rate in Gross *Domestic Product, that’s a place a candidate doesn’t really want to be.
Back when Bill Clinton got his eureka moment about the economy — thanks to advice from strategist James Carville — he was an underdog and an outsider running against a privileged President George H.W. Bush, who incidentally was much more popular at the time than Obama is now.
Incumbent administrations always are blind to what’s really going on in an economy. They believe what they want to believe and that’s what happened to old man Bush back in 1992.
Bush kept saying naive things about the strength of the economy and got blindsided by whippersnapper Bill.
In the current economy, the odds are good that even some folks who have a job aren’t happy — as many of the 6 million new positions aren’t well paying and don’t have benefits.
Plus, a great deal of those jobs are in the health-care industry and could be the direct result of ObamaCare.
If the Affordable Care Act — ObamaCare — continues to be unaffordable to the middle class and insurers, a lot of those new jobs could disappear. If health-care costs continue to rise, there could be massive layoffs in that industry.
In an exclusive interview with me recently, Trump estimated that the unemployment rate was really closer to 20 percent. Many people feel the same way — that the “official” statistics mean nothing. It will score him votes.
Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, will be either forced to criticize Obama or try to convince a dubious public that times are good.
Can Trump capitalize on all this? He might if he can stop saying stupid things and remember his opponent’s husband’s lesson — it never stopped being about the economy, stupid!
Posted for fair use.....
http://nypost.com/2016/06/08/its-the-economy-again-stupid/
‘It’s the economy (again), stupid!’
By John Crudele
June 8, 2016 | 11:14pm
Bill Clinton was right in 1992, when his presidential rallying cry was short and effective: “It’s the economy, stupid.”
He’s still right in 2016, even though now it’s not George H.W. Bush in office — it’s a Democrat.
Consider that the United States now has 144.592 million jobs, according to the most recent data from the Labor Department. That’s 5.9 million more jobs than we had in 2008, which sounds great, except that means the US has produced less than 1 million jobs a year over the last eight years — when the country needs about 1.8 million jobs a year just to employ all the newbies graduating college and high school.
Meanwhile, the US population has increased by 18 million since 2008. Not all of them were working age, of course, but that population growth also caused a strain on a labor market that wasn’t producing enough jobs.
Don’t believe the fiction that the unemployment rate, which dipped to 4.7 percent in May after the economy added a meager 38,000 jobs (when economists were projecting 160,000), is any proper indicator of the health of the US labor force.
People are considered employed these days if they work only one hour a month. And millions of completely discouraged unemployed — meaning they haven’t looked for a job in a year — have simply fallen off the *Labor Department’s radar.
https://thenypost.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/economy.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=300&strip=all
If you include these discouraged workers among the unemployed, the jobless rate jumps to 23 percent, according to statistics put together by Walter J. Williams, who runs ShadowStats.com and makes a living punching holes in government data.
No wonder the annual real median household income is down about 6 percent during the Obama years, to a 10-year low, according to ShadowStats.com.
The number of Americans who have dropped out of the workforce since President Obama was sworn in has jumped by 14,179,000, or 15 percent. The labor-participation rate is at its lowest point in four decades.
The lack of job production and relative stagnant wages sure can create a lot of unrest across the country. And there are plenty of other money issues on people’s minds these days, like:
•Food-stamp usage has skyrocketed in the Obama years.
•Health-care costs are jumping despite ObamaCare.
• Student-loan debt has soared nearly 70 percent, to $1.2 trillion, since early 2009.
•The federal debt stands at more than $19 trillion even though annual deficits have come down. That means neither Democrats nor Republicans can do much to change things when it comes to economic stimulus.
This is an opportunity for Donald Trump and a problem for Hillary Clinton.
Clinton’s burden is that, like it or not, she will be running on Obama’s economic record.
She’s the insider in this presidential election.
And as Obama is the first president in US history not to have the economy post a 3 percent or greater growth rate in Gross *Domestic Product, that’s a place a candidate doesn’t really want to be.
Back when Bill Clinton got his eureka moment about the economy — thanks to advice from strategist James Carville — he was an underdog and an outsider running against a privileged President George H.W. Bush, who incidentally was much more popular at the time than Obama is now.
Incumbent administrations always are blind to what’s really going on in an economy. They believe what they want to believe and that’s what happened to old man Bush back in 1992.
Bush kept saying naive things about the strength of the economy and got blindsided by whippersnapper Bill.
In the current economy, the odds are good that even some folks who have a job aren’t happy — as many of the 6 million new positions aren’t well paying and don’t have benefits.
Plus, a great deal of those jobs are in the health-care industry and could be the direct result of ObamaCare.
If the Affordable Care Act — ObamaCare — continues to be unaffordable to the middle class and insurers, a lot of those new jobs could disappear. If health-care costs continue to rise, there could be massive layoffs in that industry.
In an exclusive interview with me recently, Trump estimated that the unemployment rate was really closer to 20 percent. Many people feel the same way — that the “official” statistics mean nothing. It will score him votes.
Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, will be either forced to criticize Obama or try to convince a dubious public that times are good.
Can Trump capitalize on all this? He might if he can stop saying stupid things and remember his opponent’s husband’s lesson — it never stopped being about the economy, stupid!
