Our Wonderful Economy Under Bush-What you won't find on Bush's economic

Quiz on the Bush/Cheney site:

Here's some info about how great our economy is doing courtesy of our good friends at http://www.bls.gov/home.htm

For starters it should be noted that Joe Blow measures the economy and the performance of the president on the issue of economy under what the unemployment rate is and their current purchasing power (i.e. are goods more expensive or less expensive to them since the president took office)

Since the "president" took office here's how the unemployment rate has changed.



To be fair I included the year before 2000 to give you an idea as to where the rate was before Bush took office. As you can see it was quite low.

To sum it up:

In the 1st quarter of 1999 we had 5,957,000 unemployed.

Since Bush took office in 2000 by the first quarter of 2004 we've had 8,273,000 unemployed.

That's a grand total of 2.3 million PRIVATE SECTOR jobs lost. To my knowledge that number if anything has grown higher by now as these facts have only been shown up to the 1st quarter of 2004.

Now Bush and his cheerleaders have been foaming about how the president has created so many jobs and how the unemployment rate is improving.

Well let's take a look at that:

Job Growth



Where exactly do those 200k+ jobs that the Bush loudspeaker raves about so much come into play? and were those created in the private or public sector?

Also the Bush cheerleaders love to talk about how the GDP has increased. Without going into too much detail let's explore why that might be:

Government spending is 18% of the GDP. Would it be fair to say that the government has spent quite a bit lately in the last couple of years? It's quite possible that the increase in GDP is a direct result of increased government spending.

On another note maybe those 200k jobs that were created could also be a direct result of this increased spending if they aren't private sector jobs...hmm would the "president" take credit for something that's more of a byproduct of his policies as opposed to a direct result?

nawww..

Okay let's move on to concept of inflation.

CPI for Jan of 2000 169.30

CPI for Apr 187.6

187.6-169.3/163,9*100 = 14.46

This figure tells us that the cost of living has increased 14.46% higher since Jan 2000.

To put it in simpler terms using BLS's handy inflation calculator $100 in 2004 buys you what 91.60 bought you in 2000.

Hence the dollar is weaker which as I've stated has led to the increase of prices for gas and commercial goods.

It's hard to convince Joe Q that the economy is going well and that he should just shut up about those rising costs of groceries and gas, and the fact that his kid's after school program has just been slashed in order to pay for Bush's tax cuts.

Therefore, it appears as though Bush would do well to try to steer us away from studying the economy.

So there you have it our wonderful growing economy under Bush.

*Sorry if the graphs don't work. Still figuring out how to post pics within posts.

Great analysis in a nutshell. :yourock: