"The private sector is doing fine" - Obama, 6/8/12

Now you know full well that Republicans are for fairness. And what's fair is to get the middle class to shoulder more of the country's tax burden, which falls disproportionately on the backs of the wealthy.

Actually I'm not joking about that last bit, the righty think tanks have published a few papers along those lines and several of the highly rich people that I know like to quote from them. They've worked themselves into a tizzy about how the U.S. tax rate is extremely progressive but people don't realize that.

I'm not naive enough to think that any one man/president can cure all of our ills, but I can't possibly fathom Obama getting a second chance, especially going against someone who at least has some private sector experience and seems to be better suited to lead. Obama has never even had a real job, unless you count being an associate at a few law firms for about two years. He either isn't as smart as people make him out to be and doesn't quite understand our economic system, or he does understand it and is doing this damage on purpose to "fundamentally change America." Either way, we're screwed.

Really? This is Romney we're talking about, right?

I couldn't fathom Bush getting a second chance, either -- until I saw Kerry.

Private sector experience at what?

Hes really nothing more than a scrap dealer. In fact, hes less ethical. A scrap dealer wouldnt crush a car while people are still in it.

To be fair to Republicans, to the extent they really believe in something other than power, they would say that they believe that the gvt. can't create jobs, but the gvt. CAN interfere with the ability of the private sector to create jobs.

Well, when President Romney is in the White House, he'll ship your job, and those of your downtrodden lower middle class friends overseas.

He almost created the idea of outsourcing.

Good luck!

Way to regurgitate left wing talking points.

It's really the best way to respond to someone who regurgitates right wing talking points.

You're welcome. Really, it's the least I could do.

Cheerio now!

If everything is going so well. Maybe the people not working just don't know how to fill out a job application and how to conduct themselves with a employer.

I saw a show the other day a guy in his 20's with a masters degree filled out 300 job applications and is still not working.

Another one refuses to relocate so she is still living at home with Mom and Dad.

A president who loved the idea of outsourcing was president bill Clinton.

When the euro crashes they won't be outsourcing jobs any more

There is some truth to this, a combination of lazy/entitled Americans that want high dollar and benefits for little work or sacrifice. But it is also a generation of corporations and corporate education systems that prefer to move manufacturing job centers overseas, where people work a lot harder for far less pay, and the corporations don't have those "job killing regulations" the GOP loves to talk about, the ones where you have to keep your workers safe and can't dump heavy metals into the local water supply.

And the next generation of outsourcing is going to be white collar - architecture, software, medicine. There will still be a middle class, it's just moving east. What we'll have left are the very rich "job creators" and their wage-slaves.

A guy with a master's degree doesn't impress me. I hire for my own company, and I get resume's and interviews with these 20-somethings that have no employment history. None. I ask them about a situation at work where they had to do whatever, or show leadership, and they explain they're looking for their first job. And I say "no, McDonald's counts, working at landscaping, whatever summer job you had to pay some bills." And they say they have NEVER HAD A JOB YET. Mommy, Daddy, and Student loans are paying for their beer money, their cellphone and car insurance. This is the crisis of this nation. We don't ask our kids to work. Ever. At all.

And those "job creators" are doing extremely well. They just aren't creating jobs here. Seriously, let's take a look (again) at what group of Americans have had there accumulated wealth go up over the past 30 years, and what groups have had their level of wealth stagnate or decline. Calling them the "private sector" was a mistake on Obama's part, but the people the Republicans call the "job creators" are, in fact, doing just fine.

You have a point. My son was in sales while he was in HS and while he was in College.

He knew how to sell himself by the time he graduated college. He still is in sales.

He never bought a house even when he was married with a child. He rented a house so if something better came around he could take his family and relocate.

He has always done pretty well, but he is never satisfied he stll looks for a better position.

The Private Sector is as a matter of fact adding jobs, even if it is at a very slow rate, meaning that they're not doing that bad. And if the Repugs hadn't tried to starve the deficit, the Public Sector would be adding jobs too, bringing the unemployment rate to around 6%.... Let's see how Rmoney brings it down to 4%.... (I heard he has a plan, but can't provide details yet)....

Total nonsense

On a related note....

http://www.businessinsider.com/corp...me-high-wages-just-hit-an-all-time-low-2012-6

The headline says it all. But then, so does this line from the article.

THIS is why reelecting Obama is, really, a "second best" to electing someone REALLY left on redistribution issues, just to bring some balance.

Of course, libertarians would argue that the 3rd party that needs to gain influence isn't a left party, but the Libertarians. For any libertarians that want to make that argument, please fill in step 2 in the Underpants Gnomes plan. Step 1 is elect libertarians, and step 3 is empowering workers relative to big corporations. What is step 2?

Show me why....

How many more public jobs would have to be produced to make unemployment down to only 6 percent like you said? Now you know why that is nonsense.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...-in-one-graph/2012/06/11/gJQAv89NVV_blog.html

So just counting actual government jobs, the unemployment rate would be at ~7.3%.

Now what do you think government employees do with the money they make? Contrary to what some Presidential candidates might think, they don't deposit it in an account in the Seychelles. They spend it. Which catalyzes the economy. Which brings unemployment down even further.

It's not a stretch at all to say that if we hadn't gone on a murderous public employee killing rampage in the middle of the worst economy since the GD, the economy would be in much better shape and unemployment would have dropped to 6%.

But that wouldn't be good for a party that has explicitly stated it cares more about submarining the President than helping Americans. So here we are.

I'll give Klein the last word:

Curiousity got the better of me and I clicked on "Show Ignored Content."

At least it was his standard issue low-information posting and not another TMI bomb. Damn, though. Bigsoccer needs to expand the ignore feature so you can put the "Show Ignored Content" button on ignore.

Each point of employment is roughly 1.5 million jobs. 2% points equal about 3 million jobs. Thanks to the Repug blockade about 600.000 public sector jobs were lost. Just hiring back the same amount of workers would put the unemployment rate in the 7.5% range. Now if Obama was allowed to increase the size of government at the same pace that W. did, that would mean an additional 1.4 million jobs., which would put the unemployment rate at about 6.5%.

See.. very easy.....

For me, the nail in the coffin for any sense of trickle-down working is aggregate demand. Corporations are only going to hire people if demand for their products and services increase enough that they have to hire, even as they've squeezed every employee for huge productivity gains (which is what they've done).

Giving 10,000 normal people $1000 bucks is going to equal WAY more demand for products and services than giving 1 guy 10 million bucks. His "investments" aren't going to equal as many jobs.

I haven't heard too many arguments against this from the GOP, other than, "nuh uh."

And you won't. Ever.