Employers added fewer jobs than forecast in November and the unemployment rate unexpectedly increased, vindicating the Federal Reserve’s decision to pump more money into the economy to spur growth.
Payrolls increased 39,000, less than the most pessimistic projection of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, after a revised 172,000 increase the prior month, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The jobless rate rose to 9.8 percent, the highest since April, while hours worked and earnings stagnated.
More jobs are needed to sustain the holiday-season gains in consumer spending, the biggest part of the economy, into the new year. Payrolls aren’t growing fast enough to lower the jobless rate, one reason why Fed policy makers announced a new round of monetary stimulus.
We're starting to see the effects of Foreclosuregate on the economy as the Republicans have picked a wonderful time to cut off 2 million Americans from unemployment checks this month. The best part is that ending unemployment benefits right now will only cause even more jobs to be lost in 2011. It's not like people were sitting on unemployment money and not paying the bills with it, putting that money directly in the pockets of grocery stores, gas stations, and other local businesses. Now, that's drying up.
We're sliding down the slope and picking up speed.
We're starting to see the effects of Foreclosuregate on the economy...
ReplyDeleteWe're seeing the continuing effects of liberal policy on the economy. And what do liberals want? The Marxist vomit "tax the rich", "tax the rich", "tax the rich". You remember the people liberals call the rich, those making more than $200,000/year, right? They are the people who hire everyone else. That would be owners of grocery stores, gas stations, and other local businesses. But liberals want to raise their taxes.
Still peddling that bullshit lie how every $1 in unemployment benefits leads to $1.50 (or so) in additional GDP? With that logic, why should anyone work? Explain that one.
you are an idiot. if you ever have an original thought your head will probably explode.
ReplyDeleteThat's funny coming from a Marxist hypocrite who hijacks my name and changes only the last letter to put in something "cute".
ReplyDeleteLIBRULS LOVE RICHARD MARX! THERE'Z NO DIFFRENSE TWEEN PERSONUL N BIZNESS MUNNIES!
ReplyDeleteGah, undone again by your piercing insights! We should have always known that once someone spends money on food, that money disappears before the grocery store spends it!
Won't you please, please, re-engage your delicious wit? We cannot stand to have our arguments rent asunder so!
Oh, and where do you buy your bulk scare quotes? I'm dying to be as edgy as you!
ReplyDeleteLowkey:
ReplyDeleteWe should have always known that once someone spends money on food, that money disappears before the grocery store spends it!
With the way Zandar puts it, which is nothing more than a regurgitation of what Pelosi says, only the unemployed buy food, gas, and go to local businesses, while those who are employed have get these items magically and without paying for them. So if the unemployed have no money, then these businesses will no longer have anyone to sell their wares to. Is that what you think too?
PELLOSEE IS SATEN!
ReplyDeleteYour comment is so utterly unmoored from what Zandar or I or you yourself were previously saying, as well as from logic, grammar, or any semblance of functional human perception, as to be incompatible with either snark or rebuttal. One might as well attempt to debate or insult an ingot of lead.
Kudos, sir! You have defeated me, this time.
Right. And yet neither you or any other liberal has adequately explained the logic of how expanding unemployment benefits by increasing the national debt taxpayers eventually have to pay back is the best way to stimulate the economy. By your logic, it makes sense to have everybody quit working to go on unemployment so that the economy can recover, right?
ReplyDeleteBecause A) unemployment benefits, when necessary, have been considered emergency spending in the past and B) unemployment benefits immediately get spent back into the larger economy, unlike tax cuts.
ReplyDeleteRepublicans would have an argument about "we can't afford to pay for unemployment benefits" if they weren't willing to spend 20 times as much on tax cuts for those making over $250,000 a year...without paying for it.
Z, how do you spell "reductio a scurra ad absurdum?" Apparently we've been signed up to teach "How GDP Works 101," "Basics of Business," "Remedial Reality," and "How the Fuck Magnets Work, Anyway." People keep showing up demanding lectures, and I'm woefully unprepared to teach special needs students.
ReplyDeleteYou weren't the beneficiary of a mistaken and lavish educational grant from Reason, were you?
Okay Lowkey, you've won the thread.
ReplyDeleteBecause A) unemployment benefits, when necessary, have been considered emergency spending in the past and B) unemployment benefits immediately get spent back into the larger economy, unlike tax cuts.
ReplyDeleteNo, jobs will put money into the economy. And into federal coffers. The federal government can do some things to get this going, like a payroll tax holiday (which you mentioned previously), cuts to the corporate income tax rate, and leaving all of the individual income tax rates in place (half of all small businesses, which aren't set up as corporations, would be negatively affected if Democrats insist on raising their taxes). But the liberal ideology of Obama, Pelosi, and Reid, has trumped any of these very rational moves.
Republicans would have an argument about "we can't afford to pay for unemployment benefits" if they weren't willing to spend 20 times as much on tax cuts for those making over $250,000 a year...without paying for it.
Back at that again, eh? Tax cuts don't cost anything. If my rate is higher, then the government gets more of my money and I keep less. If my rate is lower, then the government gets less of my money and I keep more. It's my money to begin with, not the government's money. It's the same with everyone else.
All you're reiterating is CBO's not-so-educated-bad-guess (the Oracle of Dephi could do better) about how much revenue they think the government won't receive with the tax rates remaining as is, provided everything goes the way the CBO guesses it will, which it never does. As has been shown, the government won't see anywhere close to $700 billion from those tax increases. But with the tax rate cuts passed by Republicans, the federal government saw record revenues. Unfortunately, it was record spending, started by Bush and the Republicans and exacerbated by Obama and the Democrats, that have made things worse.
Doesn't that make more sense?
One other thing. Obama just imposed a seven-year ban on new oil and gas drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic coast, and the Pacific coast. So when Obama whines that he needs more money for unemployment, he's doing plenty to contribute to that unemployment. And that had nothing to do with foreclosures, which is what you, nor is the fault of Republicans.
ReplyDeleteYour assumption that I'm saying I prefer people to be unemployed over people to be working is asinine as it is incorrect. Of course jobs would be better.
ReplyDeleteBut you must have adequate demand to expand job growth. How do you get demand for items? People have money to spend. That's why when you have unemployed, benefits keep the demand machine chugging in order to prevent further job losses.
The problem right now is that we're in such a huge demand hole with the housing depression taking trillions out of the economy that we have to resort to extraordinary measures. If we cut off some 2 million people from unemployment benefits by the end of this month, which will happen unless Congress acts, then the unemployment rate will continue to rise because that demand vanishes without the means to pay for things, not to mention we're cutting people off right before Christmas.
That means people will not buy things.
That means the people who sell things will have to cut costs.
That means jobs will be lost, creating more unemployed.
Do you see what is going on here?
At some point the government has to be the backstop to keep the economy on track, otherwise we crash into a depressionary spiral.
We are choosing not to fix the problem now, making it much more expensive to fix later.
You refuse to see this basic point, instead spewing out unrelated nonsense talking points which do nothing to advance the debate, let alone provide any sort of solution to our unemployment problem.
You're a bad joke.
But you must have adequate demand to expand job growth. How do you get demand for items?
ReplyDeleteYou sure as hell don't do it by threatening to raise the taxes of the people who do the hiring, do you? But you want that to happen. Government artificially creating demand hasn't worked either, has it? But you want more of it. The unemployment rate went up even while the unemployment benefits were still being sent to those two million people, didn't it? But you want more of that, too.
You're the bad joke.
But businesses got tax cuts. Those are INDEPENDENT from unemployment benefits. Those businesses then sat on that extra money and did not hire people and recorded RECORD PROFITS as a result. So yes, poor poor businesses!
ReplyDeleteAnd it still hasn't occurred to you that if we never, ever extended benefits in the first place, we'd have even more people unemployed because of the lost demand, not to mention millions of additional folks out on the streets. But I guess that's okay with you.
It's like talking to Styrofoam. You have the intelligence and the compassion to match.
Zandar, why are you aruging with someone who jerks off to Forbes AND Free Republic?
ReplyDelete