Biden and Democrats are a job creating machine

[GaryDenton]

The Biden presidency sees lower inflation, new jobs, and annual deficits falling. Inflation over the past year is now only 3.2% and unemployment remains a low 3.8%. That is a slight uptick from last month as more people, particularly those over 55, are looking for work.

"Biden's 13.5m jobs are more than 7 times as many jobs as were created in the 16 years of the last 3 Republican Presidencies, combined. Since 1989 and the end of the Cold War, the US has seen 49 million new jobs created. Remarkably 47 million of those 49 million jobs were created under Democratic Presidents, 96% - essentially all of them."

Too bad the Republican Party has gone mad and will do anything to discredit this record achievement.

Read more here:

https://simonwdc.substack.com/p/september-jobs-report-the-remarkable

[saxitoxin]

Too bad the Republican Party has gone mad and will do anything to discredit this record achievement.

If by "Republican Party" you mean "the Associated Press, Washington Post, CNN, and Politifact" -- all of which have declaimed this Biden assertion as a lie -- sure.

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/ ... 99aa187452
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2 ... -some-ast/
https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus- ... 31f89c56bc
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... -100-days/

Read more here:

https://simonwdc.substack.com/p/september-jobs-report-the-remarkable

Hmmm ... who should I believe?

(a) an internet rando with a substack, or,
(b) CNN, the AP, the Washington Post, and Politifact

[GaryDenton]

So now you see CNN, AP, the WP, and Politifact as bearers of truth?
Doesn't that contradict your usual statements?
Not that I am surprised.

I see them saying Trump shouldn't be blamed for the recession and pandemic and the job losses which Biden could more easily correct and recover from.
Shouldn't he? You blame Biden for everything. Shouldn't Trump be blamed for bad trade, economic, tax, and health policies?

It is all just a string of bad luck that Republicans have recessions and can't create jobs?

That seems remarkably bad luck. I could also see about extending this back before the end of the Cold War and the new international economic era, but I am out of time today.

Remarkably 47 million of those 49 million jobs were created under Democratic Presidents, 96% - essentially all of them."

Do you like to keep going with the bad luck party, if at least they hate the people you hate?

[saxitoxin]

So now you see CNN, AP, the WP, and Politifact as bearers of truth?
Doesn't that contradict your usual statements?
Not that I am surprised.

You need to use a larger font and ALL CAPS if you expect me to respond.

[keyborn]

Too bad it takes two or three of those jobs to make ends meet in the present economy. I know multiple coworkers that have a night jobs to help pay their bills. Inflation is out of control.

[GaryDenton]

Inflation is out of control.

People should have better news sources.

Inflation over the past year is now only 3.2% and unemployment remains a low 3.8%.

[Pack Rat]

Too bad it takes two or three of those jobs to make ends meet in the present economy. I know multiple coworkers that have a night jobs to help pay their bills. Inflation is out of control.

Unskilled labor, I'm sure. Or, do they have drug, alcohol or gambling issues.

Have they considered job training to learn a more specialized skill such as welding, HV/AC, plumbing or other good paying jobs.

Some people just can't be helped, but you might be able to help your co-workers with seeking better jobs outside this low paying company that you work for?

[keyborn]

Inflation is out of control.

People should have better news sources.

Inflation over the past year is now only 3.2% and unemployment remains a low 3.8%.

Average mortgage rates 30 year fixed- 2021 was 2.650%. Today - 7.18%.
Average national price of gas - January 2021 was $2.41. Today - $3.81.
Average price of a gallon of whole milk - 2021 was $3.55. Today - $4.31.

When it comes to food prices, milk is just one example of hundreds that could be used to compare recent inflationary trends over the past couple of years.

I didn't use a news source to find these numbers. Also, I don't use a news source when I gas up or go grocery shopping. What matters to most people and to me, is the bottom line at the checkout or at the gas pump.

[jusplay4fun]

Inflation is out of control.

People should have better news sources.

Inflation over the past year is now only 3.2% and unemployment remains a low 3.8%.

Average mortgage rates 30 year fixed- 2021 was 2.650%. Today - 7.18%.
Average national price of gas - January 2021 was $2.41. Today - $3.81.
Average price of a gallon of whole milk - 2021 was $3.55. Today - $4.31.

When it comes to food prices, milk is just one example of hundreds that could be used to compare recent inflationary trends over the past couple of years.

I didn't use a news source to find these numbers. Also, I don't use a news source when I gas up or go grocery shopping. What matters to most people and to me, is the bottom line at the checkout or at the gas pump.

So how do you know prices and mortgage rates in 2021? Do you log that in your diary?

You are correct on this point, however; most do not need a news source that inflation is occurring. One only needs to pay attention to what one pays for things such as food and gasoline.

[Dukasaur]

Too bad it takes two or three of those jobs to make ends meet in the present economy. I know multiple coworkers that have a night jobs to help pay their bills.

So do I, but that's nothing new. Been that way for at least 20 years, maybe 30.

Can hardly tie it to the current administration, either in your country or in any other.

[jimboston]

I love how…

1) People quote statistics they don’t understand.
2) People don’t understand base-rates.
3) People assume a stat ticking in a positive direction has an immediate impact.
4) People cherry-pick stats to flesh out a predetermined story they wish to ‘sell’.
5) People mimic Saxi’s form/humor in an attempt to make their posts more relevant.

… and by “love” I actually mean hate.

[xroads]

I dont think Biden could create anything. Just like McCarthy, he is an old puppet being manipulated by people behind the scenes.

[Pack Rat]

I dont think Biden could create anything. Just like McCarthy, he is an old puppet being manipulated by people behind the scenes.

Who are these people who are pulling these strings? Please share your wisdom here.

[jimboston]

I dont think Biden could create anything. Just like McCarthy, he is an old puppet being manipulated by people behind the scenes.

I don’t think any President has a meaningful impact on job creation or the economy in the short term.

People who do are ignorant.

[GaryDenton]

I don’t think any President has a meaningful impact on job creation or the economy in the short term.

People who do are ignorant.

Biden barely managed to get this through over Republican opposition.

Investments in clean energy and climate since the Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law have created more than 170,000 jobs, and the law is projected to create more than 1.5 million additional jobs over the next decade according to estimates by outside groups.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90938486/inflation-reduction-act-bidens-land-mark-climate-bill

[KoolBak]

I have an acquaintance that operates a high-end private diaper service. Biden and his pants-pooping brethren keep his children fed Go Go Gadget Joe!

[GaryDenton]

People working two jobs trying to make ends meet...

I think it really started in the 70s.

As a liberal, I blame Republicans of course. Mostly Reagan.

That is the easiest explanation of why wages flat-lined while productivity kept going up, income and wealth for the wealthy skyrocketed, and the share of taxes paid by the corporations and the wealthy went down.

Republicans are not for the working man or the middle class. Obviously.

They went to the culture wars to distract their voters from their policies. And the great pivot away from Civil Rights to get the White racist and Southern Democrats vote. And even Goldwater warned of them chasing the religious extremist fundamentalist vote.

What got me started on this is productivity and wage separation.

https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
From 1979 to 2020, net productivity rose 61.8%, while the hourly pay of typical workers grew far slower—increasing only 17.5% over four decades (after adjusting for inflation).

But I am also still thinking of Robert Heinlein's Future History where a fundamentalist preacher turned politician became president. On our timeline, we got the conman businessman who only uses the fundamentalists for power.

"If This Goes On..." Revolt in 2100.

[GaryDenton]

Biden is the most transformative president since Reagan.

But corporate media and Republicans focus on his age, ignoring that his diaper-wearing, unhealthier chief opponent is only three years younger.

Politics is not governance and corporate media is bad and there is a huge Republican media bubble that is so bad it should not be called news. Biden has been surprisingly good as president but constant Republican attacks and the big corporate media have obscured that.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/08/joe-biden-presidency-progressives-donald-trump

The Guardian is a progressive smart newspaper.

The Inflation Reduction Act is the centerpiece of Bidenomics, an approach that resurrects Democratic principles discarded in the Bill Clinton years, seemingly forever: old-school industrial policy centered on an activist state making a serious public investment in manufacturing; muscular regulation of corporations; and warm encouragement of unionized labor. (“When unions win, Americans across the board win,” says Biden.)(Edited to American English)

[jusplay4fun]

People working two jobs trying to make ends meet...

I think it really started in the 70s.

As a liberal, I blame Republicans of course. Mostly Reagan.

That is the easiest explanation of why wages flat-lined while productivity kept going up, income and wealth for the wealthy skyrocketed, and the share of taxes paid by the corporations and the wealthy went down.

Republicans are not for the working man or the middle class. Obviously.

They went to the culture wars to distract their voters from their policies. And the great pivot away from Civil Rights to get the White racist and Southern Democrats vote. And even Goldwater warned of them chasing the religious extremist fundamentalist vote.

What got me started on this is productivity and wage separation.

https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
From 1979 to 2020, net productivity rose 61.8%, while the hourly pay of typical workers grew far slower—increasing only 17.5% over four decades (after adjusting for inflation).

But I am also still thinking of Robert Heinlein's Future History where a fundamentalist preacher turned politician became president. On our timeline, we got the conman businessman who only uses the fundamentalists for power.

"If This Goes On..." Revolt in 2100.

GaryDenton on Fri Sep 08, 2023 10:38 pm

People working two jobs trying to make ends meet...

I think it really started in the 70s.

As a liberal, I blame Republicans of course. Mostly Reagan.
That is the easiest explanation…..

Get your facts right, GaryD. Reagan did not become President until 1980. And your "easiest explanation" is simply too myopic.

Again, your liberal biases are showing, and you are wrong. To blame only one person or one party for Economic issues is shorted-sighted and biased. The US Economy is much too complex and too large to blame or credit so narrow a focus.

Much of the improved efficiency ("net productivity") is tied to technology. You need to read more economic history and theory and understand the causes of economic stats. To add technology takes capital (i.e., money) and so money that COULD have gone to improve wages went to buying and implementing the new technologies and not due only to "evil Republicans."

Further, the decline in the GROWTH of US wages in the 1970s is also tied to increase international competition. The world of the 1950-60s changed as West Germany and Japan, as well as France and the U.K. improved their economies and their production capacity from wartime destruction. Other nations improved economically, too, all leading to greater competition for markets and the US was not a dominant an economy as it was post-WWII. Hence wage increases were less.

[jimboston]

I don’t think any President has a meaningful impact on job creation or the economy in the short term.

People who do are ignorant.

Biden barely managed to get this through over Republican opposition.

Investments in clean energy and climate since the Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law have created more than 170,000 jobs, and the law is projected to create more than 1.5 million additional jobs over the next decade according to estimates by outside groups.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90938486/inflation-reduction-act-bidens-land-mark-climate-bill

From the article

“Climate Power, a nonprofit climate advocacy group, has more numbers that show the jobs impact of the IRA. According to its research, the climate plan in the Inflation Reduction Act has created more than 170,600 clean-energy jobs.”

See that term “climate advocacy group”… not a “non-partisan research center”… this is called “propaganda”.

[GaryDenton]

The replies can be funny.

While it started a little before the Reagan presidency there were so many high-impact changes that slowed wage growth during his presidency he can't be ignored.

While the Chicago School corporatists try to blame automation and international trade, their timeline is off.

Previous economic research has pointed to two explanations for wage stagnation, especially among lower-paying jobs in the manufacturing sector: globalization has flooded the market with cheap goods from China and sapped domestic-manufacturing wages in the process; and technology has steadily ushered in more job-killing automation...

Wage growth has been slowing since the early 1970s, but “the competition with China starts somewhere in the 1990s, and the process of automation is a product of the last ten or fifteen years.”

“So many things have happened in the last 40 years—you have different policies, and the world is changing. But employer concentration seems to be an important factor,” he says. “It probably explains at least 30 percent of the fact that wages have not been increasing. And for economists, that’s a large amount of explanatory power.”

https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/wage-stagnation-in-america

Robust new research shows the decline of unions and more market concentration have been two key factors.

One party doesn't care, the GOP in fact approves, of greater corporate power and monopolies, and opposes unions every chance it can. Reagan is the prime example.

I would point to other Republican policies as well but thought I would stick with some credentialed economists.

[GaryDenton]

The other funny is someone trying to discredit a nonprofit climate advocacy group as propaganda.

See that term “climate advocacy group”… not a “non-partisan research center”… this is called “propaganda”.

Every time that happens I am usually next pointed to opposing nonprofits and supposedly non-partisan research centers, which are, in fact, funded and usually staffed by extremists from Koch Industries or similar.

But that didn't happen this time, so I didn't get the worst propaganda referrals to Heartland and Heritage, etc.

Climate Change is rapidly going to start killing millions. I will use so-called "propaganda" from climate advocacy groups unless flaws are pointed out because the opposing groups have a record of lying.

[GaryDenton]

If I was a real hard-core liberal I probably should just post a union response to why wages have stagnated while productivity and CEO pay have greatly increased.

Instead, I will post something from a nonprofit non-partisan research institute that has been researching this.

Starting in the late 1970s policymakers began dismantling all the policy bulwarks helping to ensure that typical workers’ wages grew with productivity. Excess unemployment was tolerated to keep any chance of inflation in check. Raises in the federal minimum wage became smaller and rarer. Labor law failed to keep pace with growing employer hostility toward unions. Tax rates on top incomes were lowered. And anti-worker deregulatory pushes—from the deregulation of the trucking and airline industries to the retreat of anti-trust policy to the dismantling of financial regulations and more—succeeded again and again.

In essence, policy choices made to suppress wage growth prevented potential pay growth fueled by rising productivity from translating into actual pay growth for most workers. The result of this policy shift was the sharp divergence between productivity and typical workers’ pay shown in the graph.

From 1979 to 2020, net productivity rose 61.8%, while the hourly pay of typical workers grew far slower—increasing only 17.5% over four decades (after adjusting for inflation).

A closer look at the trend lines reveals another important piece of information. After 1979, productivity grew at a significantly slower pace relative to previous decades. But because pay growth for typical workers decelerated even more markedly, a large wedge between productivity and pay emerged. The growing gap amid slowing productivity growth tells us that the same set of policies that suppressed pay growth for the vast majority of workers over the last 40 years were also associated with a slowdown in overall economic growth. In short, economic growth became both slower and more radically unequal.

If the fruits of economic growth are not going to workers, where are they going?

The growing wedge between productivity and typical workers’ pay is income going everywhere but the paychecks of the bottom 80% of workers. If it didn’t end up in paychecks of typical workers, where did all the income growth implied by the rising productivity line go? Two places, basically. It went into the salaries of highly paid corporate and professional employees. And it went into higher profits (i.e., toward returns to shareholders and other wealth owners). This concentration of wage income at the top (growing wage inequality) and the shift of income from labor overall and toward capital owners (the loss in labor’s share of income) are two of the key drivers of economic inequality overall since the late 1970s.

https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

- I can listen to criticism and change my educational sources.

[Pack Rat]

Sad thing is, we have blue collar workers who work their butts off and live week to week struggling to pay their bills. Yet, mysteriously vote Republican.

The GOP is in the pockets of the Uber rich and play their lower class supporters against the minorities, immigrants, gays, lesbian, trans and others who might not believe that God has endorsed Trump for President.

[jusplay4fun]

If I was a real hard-core liberal I probably should just post a union response to why wages have stagnated while productivity and CEO pay have greatly increased.

Instead, I will post something from a nonprofit non-partisan research institute that has been researching this.

Starting in the late 1970s policymakers began dismantling all the policy bulwarks helping to ensure that typical workers’ wages grew with productivity. Excess unemployment was tolerated to keep any chance of inflation in check. Raises in the federal minimum wage became smaller and rarer. Labor law failed to keep pace with growing employer hostility toward unions. Tax rates on top incomes were lowered. And anti-worker deregulatory pushes—from the deregulation of the trucking and airline industries to the retreat of anti-trust policy to the dismantling of financial regulations and more—succeeded again and again.

In essence, policy choices made to suppress wage growth prevented potential pay growth fueled by rising productivity from translating into actual pay growth for most workers. The result of this policy shift was the sharp divergence between productivity and typical workers’ pay shown in the graph.

From 1979 to 2020, net productivity rose 61.8%, while the hourly pay of typical workers grew far slower—increasing only 17.5% over four decades (after adjusting for inflation).

A closer look at the trend lines reveals another important piece of information. After 1979, productivity grew at a significantly slower pace relative to previous decades. But because pay growth for typical workers decelerated even more markedly, a large wedge between productivity and pay emerged. The growing gap amid slowing productivity growth tells us that the same set of policies that suppressed pay growth for the vast majority of workers over the last 40 years were also associated with a slowdown in overall economic growth. In short, economic growth became both slower and more radically unequal.

If the fruits of economic growth are not going to workers, where are they going?

The growing wedge between productivity and typical workers’ pay is income going everywhere but the paychecks of the bottom 80% of workers. If it didn’t end up in paychecks of typical workers, where did all the income growth implied by the rising productivity line go? Two places, basically. It went into the salaries of highly paid corporate and professional employees. And it went into higher profits (i.e., toward returns to shareholders and other wealth owners). This concentration of wage income at the top (growing wage inequality) and the shift of income from labor overall and toward capital owners (the loss in labor’s share of income) are two of the key drivers of economic inequality overall since the late 1970s.

https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

- I can listen to criticism and change my educational sources.

I have already responded to Productivity gains (via technology) and you have not responded.

As far as pay for CEOs, those are definitely OUT of line and MUCH much too high; I would use the terms wasteful and egregious here. I have already posted about wage stagnation.

Your source (EPI) has a strong-left wing, pro-union bias. I hope that you realize this.

Affiliated with the labor movement the EPI is usually described as presenting a left-leaning and pro-union viewpoint on public policy issues.

Here is what they (EPI) says about themselves (from your same source):
https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

EPI is an independent, nonprofit think tank that researches the impact of economic trends and policies on working people in the United States. EPI’s research helps policymakers, opinion leaders, advocates, journalists, and the public understand the bread-and-butter issues affecting ordinary Americans.

To me, the term "bread-and-butter issues " tipped me off to their left-leaning, pro-union stance.

I will admit that trying to find more neutral, less biased sources is NOT easy. This is true of Political issues and Economics is often tied to Politics. Keep trying, GaryD.