People gotta eat, and you can't eat GDP. Don't you dare try and spin this that this was a benefit of W's trickle-on-you economics. What else do you think enterprising American's would do.

Good thing we made it easier to outsource so all those lazy union guys could open up a web based Amway business....yikes.

Sounds just like saying, "Hey look at all these graves we found. Never would have seen them if we hadn't been digging here to find those WMD's"

Now I'm not very up on the ins & outs of Hillarycare but I recall that, initially, small businesses liked it because of the possibility of removing the healthcare burden from them... so something which would do that seems right up the Democratic ally.

Mark
You throw some nice platitudes out there. Yeah, you can't eat GDP. Guess what? You also can't eat jobs, and you can't eat money. You eat food, so that was a nice non-statement. The point is, the GDP does represent something: people making money. With money, you buy food.

You may have a point if you question who is making the money.

But why can't we point to Trickle-Down Economics? Simply because you don't want to? Lots of people are willing to credit President Clinton with the good 90s economy without being able to point to anything he actually did to bring it about.

The economy is too complex for anyone to truly understand, okay. Part of that is because "the economy" is actually just people making decisions to buy or sell things, and marketing, and hiring/firing, etc. So "the economy" is nothing more than the gestalt of nearly 300 million different monthly/weekly/daily/hourly decisions.

But broad forces can influence broad movements. We were in a recession when Bush took office. It sunk lower, sure. 9/11 occurred, and it would be the height of idiocy to try and claim that did not have a negative effect on the economy. Then Bush got his tax cuts passed. The economy started to rebound. Direct connection? Maybe not, hard to say. Except that the economy picked up a great deal of speed after he successfully had many of the cuts accelerated.
Part of the problem is that since the economy is based on people making decisions about the future, the Mood of the People does make a difference. It doesn't take a PhD in Human Psyche to know that people feel more optimistic about getting to keep more of their money and more pessimistic when taxes are raised. Just looking at driving habits indexed with gas prices is quite revealing of how Americans react to greater and lesser amounts of cash in the pockets.

So even with no provable direct connection, the indirect connections between Bush's policies and the economic improvement are pretty compelling. Sure, there's room for debate, but absolutely no basis for your automatic dismissal.

I am curious, though. Can you possibly believe that raising taxes to pay for more entitlements would have helped the economy?

And if people are working and making money (how wonderfully condescending of you to dismiss it as merely AMWAY), what, exactly do you attribute it to?

You sound like one of those people who may hate it when bad things happen to our country, but hate it even worse when good things happen that you can't give credit to the Democrats.

What is funny about that, is the fact that I just started an LLC the other day ...

The simple fact of the matter is that large corporations are not hiring as many people, but at the same time, welfare rolls and homelesness are not up significantly, people are not starving, foreclosures are not at record levels--so what's happening? Well, it's starting to become apparent: the jobs reports we get aren't measuring the work people are doing anymore.

What I have to wonder is, why would you not find that good and encouraging news? Are you just upset to hear that fewer people are working for big corporations and more people are working for themselves and small businesses? This is a bad thing?

Facts are not partisan things.

The media is just dropping the ball.

Let me get the stats on bankruptcies for start-up businesses before I jump for joy because decent paying jobs with benefits have made such dismal news that we go looking for job growth somewhere, anywhere, but where we usually find them.

Oh, and Natan, the argument is a little more sophisticated than that. It was about retargeting the tax cuts after the reasons for the across-the-board cuts no longer applied.

Mark,

What changed me from a Democrat to a Republican? I learned some economics. Places with less regulation and less taxes have better economies. Allowing all parties in an economic transaction to freely choose without government interference will result in an economy which produces more of what people actually want, not what some politician thinks they should have.

Free markets mean freedom. Governments oppress. Capitalists trade.

FDR actually prolonged the Depression by trying to save jobs. Bush's steel tariffs saved 100,000 obvious steel making jobs and cost 150,000 hidden steel consuming jobs. So why was FDR more popular? I think it was because he made a conscious effort to reduce people's pain. That's why I am not a dogmatic free-marketeer. At the same time I cannot embrace feel-good policies which haven't had the kind of cost benefit analasys to tell us how many people our good intentions are actually hurting. I want those trade offs to be conscious.

Yours,
Wince

"Good thing we made it easier to outsource so all those lazy union guys could open up a web based Amway business....yikes."

I've seen this characterization fairly often. My wife is self employed through an LLC and makes more than I do. This setup is quite common, especially in the tech and financial services fields.

You really have a problem with ideological blinders if you think everyone who is self employed is barely making ends meet. I can think of 5 friends off the top of my head in similar circumstances, and all are doing very well. This doesn't even include the ten or so people who work with my wife and are in the same boat she is.

It would be useful to see some actual statistics on the issue, but your pessimisn is nothing more than the result of indoctrination in place of education.

Actually, this is the reason POTUS talks about the entrepreneurial spirit in that one ad.

Without exception, it is always the resident Dems pooh-poohing optimistic job reports. Their desire for and investment in the suffering of this country, and their concurrent misery at any positive news, is as predictable as night following day.

Amazing. No, I really mean that. I am amazed at the sheer chutzpah Mark revealed in his first post.

His second sentance reads "Don't you dare try and spin this..." after he's already said "You can't eat GDP."

The following graf includes irrelevant remarks about unions and Amway sales.

In Mark's next post his first remark is "[let me find some negative statistics] before I jump with joy [while implying that the jobs Dean mentions are this side of worthless]."

Now: who's spinning what?

Mark, you keep claiming that Dean is partisan, but nearly every post you make is parallel to the above. You are obviously bound and determined to deny any positive statement about the Bush administration.

That may get you a lot of agreement over at DU, or MoveOn, but not more centrist places like Dean's World. You keep losing credibility, amigo.

Big Deal, I formed LLC and I have a job. Does that mean I'm employed twice?

"Big Deal, I formed LLC and I have a job. Does that mean I'm employed twice?"

So because some circumstances don't fit we shouldn't count those that do?

Any mention of a job growth in the military? That oculd be one of the reasons Americans have "jobs"?????

marko,

I am sure the government does not fail to count military jobs.

Yours,
WInce

Wince and Nod,

I was being sarcastic. My point is, with thousands of our military people in Afghanistan, Iraq and Haiti, I'm sure the military has recruited or is recruiting thousands of Americans to join hence the explanation for job growth under the Bush administration.

marko,

I wish I could go. Too old.

Yours,
Wince

I don't call my business and LLC. Just Fast-Track Listmail. The main thing is I own it lock, stock, barrel and databases. The nice thing about being self-employed is that you've got dozens, scores or hundreds of customers, depending on what goods or services you offer and how much you charge. All these good folks don't know one another, and consequently, they can't fire you all at once.

As for who's taking what jobs, what I notice around here is that the enterprising ones are all folks with names like Mexican names like Jose, Roberto, and an occasional Jesus. You can see them hard at work at the counter of any fast food counter in the food court of any big shopping mall. They are willing to work their asses off for small money, just like newly arrived micks, krauts, herring-chokers, bohunks, polaks, wops and numerous other European breeds did a hundred years ago, when you were your own social security system, or, failing that, you starved.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

I learned some economics. Places with less regulation and less taxes have better economies

Very little government intervention right now in Albania, should be a entrepreneurial paradise, no?

So because some circumstances don't fit we shouldn't count those that do?\

No point is that other then the stats for LLC filings Hobbs has no data that these are going concerns. Since 70% of all new businesses fail he needs to show some stats that not only are they being created but they are making money before we start popping the corks.

My employer went out of business at the end of 2001.
My wife and I started two businesses at the beginning of 2002. Year 1, we combined to make a little less than half our previous income. Year 2, we about matched it. This year, based on first quarter numbers, we'll add 50% to that.

It's a different sort of life, but I wouldn't trade it for my old job. We'll be voting for Bush in November.

(BTW, of the eight people I worked directly with at my old workplace, six started their own business rather than take another job.)

Very little government intervention right now in Albania, should be a entrepreneurial paradise, no?

For some sorts of entrepeneurs, yes, but you know full farging well that certain other requirements for a healthy economy, some of which your side and ours agree on, are absent there and present here.

Rick, there is that nagging little detail about "the rule of law," not to mention that boring old idea about protection of property... :)

Haven't punched a clock (except for the alarm) since 1983. Hung up my own shingle right out of school. The "entrepenurial spirit" belongs to America, not Bush or Kerry, and neither party helped me or hurt me in "making it." My exasperation with local democrats is personal, my disgust with federal republicans is philosophical. My hope for health care reform is financial.

Every client who comes to the office is a job interview. Every customer at the bar is a potential client. They all pay me for what I think, or what I can get them to drink. Or not. I've never been counted as a statistic in the employment rolls, except for the 11 people or so we employ (five of whom are family). The cost of doing business includes local, state, and federal income taxes, sales taxes, real estate taxes, all of which are a necessary evil and require an additional cost of an accountant, also malpractice insurance (never needed except to qualify for bar association referrals), unemployment insurance (unused because employees leave when yelled at to simply do the job they were hired to do before we actually have to fire them, even then it would be for ample cause), workers' compensation (band-aids usually cover the injuries incurred), dram-shop insurance (damn trial lawers, oops, I are one, still no claims made to date), fire and casualty insurance, (won't get caught without that after losing $60 grand in another life).

The point is, if all these start-up can actually turn a profit, and pay for all the extras, and really work hard to keep growing, and don't lose it all and have to go belly-up, they can forget about vacations, sick days, 401k matching funds, affordable blue-cross, restfull nights or security that tomorrow they won't lose their house. Welcome to the great American flea market. We don't manufacture that much anymore, but do you want fries with that latte?

So, I don't believe those heretofore hidden jobs are worthless, quite the contrary, I live for them, two of them actually. I just don't want the picture to suddenly be painted rosy because the RNC "found" where all the lost jobs went.

Mark: did you mean to write: "they all pay me for what I think, or what I can get them to think??" Or drink, as in the original?

Those damn rented fingers again. :)

Casey:

Mark owns a bar.