Bill Hobbs takes on the DNC talking points about the economy:
Democrats can’t win the White House by telling the truth about the economy, so they will lie and talk about “one quarter of growth.”
USA Today had some good coverage of the economic growth news today, including this story. The New York Times offers this analysis of the politics.
Also, I went hunting for stats and found that there are more people working today than when George W. Bush took office back in January 2001. That’s right
Brandon
Of course the Democrats are going to talk down the economy. That’s what the party out of power does during elections – they point out how terrible everthing is. Bush was criticized for talking about the impending recession in 2000. Dole criticized the economy in 1996. Clinton criticized the economy in 1992, etc, etc, etc. I hardly think it’s new or novel that it’s happening again.
jesse
Brandon, when did Bush talk about the “impending recession”? He talked about tax cuts, and how they were the right answer to any economic situation, but I remember a whole lot of rhetoric about “keeping the growth going”, not the “growth slowing down”.
ANd Bill’s point makes no sense – the population has grown faster than the amount of available jobs, therefore job growth not keeping up with population growth is a good thing. Okay…remind me not to ask him how to save on a long distance plan. I’d only be able to call Missouri at 22 cents a minute, and he’d say it was awesome.
David Perron
I quoted this data in response to Kimmitt’s comments here:
balloon-juice.com/archives/003323.html
This is what he said:
“Bush is still on track to be the only President since Hoover with fewer Americans employed at the outset of his Presidency than at the conclusion of his term.”
Again, I’m hoping he didn’t mean what he said. Kimmitt, this is as good a place to respond with “averaged” data as any.
While you’re at it, Kimmitt, did Brad DeLong ever respond to that article in Opinion Journal? I never noticed that he addressed it directly on his blog. Odd, that. I emailed Megan McArdle about it and never got a response, either. I’d have thought such unfounded claims by a Nobel laureate and Clark medal winner would have prompted a bit of commentary from the econo-bloggers.
Robin Roberts
As has been shown, that comparison with Hoover depends on cherry-picking one’s employment statistics. See Steve Verdon’s blog at http://www.steveverdon.com
greg
“when did bush talk about the impending recession”.
Well, I know you said Bush, but Chaney did it on “Meet the Press” during the campaign and was ripped for “talking down the economy”.
That’s just off the top of my head. I’m sure Bush did the same.
Dave
Posts like this, where I can’t follow the link, make me REALLY hate our filter at work.
Must be some weird meta tag (or maybe just too many of a certain set of words/phrases) that flags Bill’s page as ‘Personal’ and thus (for some ungodly reason) ‘forbidden’.
Yeesh, I hate filters.
rik
The last comment to Bill Hobbes’ post (dated 2:29 PM 11-3-03) suggests that there are in fact fewer people working now, and the apparent increase in jobs is due to a change in how the data is counted, or something. I have no way of knowing who to believe here, but I hope this is resolved before everyone takes Hobbes’ claim as gospel.
Kimmitt
Data at:
data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?bls
Looking into changes in population controls; I was unaware.
JKC
Might want to read this before gloating too much, John…
Kimmitt
Please note that the above stats are seasonally adjusted, which allows us to avoid the clumsy process of using nonfarm employment and use more sophisticated methods.
At this time, there are approximately 270,000 fewer Americans employed, seasonally adjusted, than there were in January of 2001.
Of course, our population has grown since then, so unemployment is going to go up at roughly the same rate — 2 percent or so.
Dodd
jesse has a rather selective memory. The Democrats ripped Bush for weeks for “talking down the economy” during the 2000 campaign.
JKC – Did you read past the headline on that link? It isn’t quite the body blow you seem to think. “October is typically the largest month for layoff notices, as companies slash costs at the end of the fiscal year. The… survey is not adjusted for seasonal factors.”
Kimmitt
At any rate, can we dispense with the “Democrats are lying about the economy” meme, since they are obviously presenting a valid interpretation of a complex set of facts?
David Perron
Just as long as we can treat economic claims by liberals as being only accurate to within an order of magnitude, Kimmitt. Not a lie, just an exaggeration?
Kimmitt
The Dems are talking about nonfarm jobs because that’s a standard approximation that lots of people use when discussing the health of the economy. There are other standard approximations, which carry their own baggage.
I freely admit that the Dems are choosing the valid approach which makes their opponent look the worst. But at that point, it’s called “presenting an argument,” not “lying.”
David Perron
Alternately, it’s called “cherrypicking data”, which is generally a frowned-upon technique for “presenting an argument”.
Kimmitt
Certainly cherrypicking is bad, but since the use of nonfarm jobs remains a standard first-order approximation used by economists who discuss the state of the US economy, I cannot agree that the Dems are doing so.
If the Bushies were to come back and say, “Look, if you take the whole picture into account and use the seasonally-adjusted figures, it’s not that bad,” I wouldn’t be upset either. This is regular give-and-take; there’s no intent to deceive. Both sides are putting their best foot forward.
David Perron
Which neatly explains comments you made here, Kimmitt? Let’s look:
Bush is still on track to be the only President since Hoover with fewer Americans employed at the outset of his Presidency than at the conclusion of his term.
Regular give-and-take? Uh huh.
Kimmitt
One man’s opinion; looking a year into the future is always an interesting business. Certainly we has fewer Americans employed *now* (seasonally adjusted) than we did in January 2001 (seasonally adjusted), and I am of the opinion that the situation is not likely to improve.
Mark
“The Democrats Have Made Lying Their Norm”
A Democrat claims that the economy is the worst since Herbert Hoover. No reporter says to that Democrat, ”That’s not true.” Why?
Reporters today have no background in history and they do no research. They seem to think when a Democrat says something it is an opinion, or just a point of view. It never crosses their mind that the Democrat is lying.
The Democrats running for president get away with saying that the president lied about the war, that we are in a recession, that unemployment is out of control, that we have the largest budget deficit in history, that budgets for safety-net programs have been cut, and that the election in 2000 was stolen. None of these statements are true–not even close–but reporters just let them slide.
Senator Joe Biden (D), Senator Joe Lieberman (D) and Senator Evan Bayh (D) have all said on national television that the president did NOT lie about the war. Why don