It would be really, really helpful if wage/salary numbers were a part of this data. It strikes me as completely useless to consider adding jobs to the economy if you have senior software architects taking jobs as clerks at Home Depot.

I don’t know anyone who has lost their job, and subsequently found another that even remotely matches their capabilities and prior income.

Moving sideways? Another way of looking at it is moving in circles. Kind of like the toilet water.

Good Morning David

actually caught Ms Romer on MSNBC a few minutes ago -

There are a number of step we could take to help increase private sector job growth and put the economy on a path of steadily declining unemployment.

well it sure as fuck isn’t tax cuts !, sigh, I digress

Have been doing some reading on H.R. 2568 Fairness & Transparency In Contracting Act and it seems to be a non brainer – (well except for the part about US Chamber of Commerce opposing it)

Placing an extra $100B a year where 97% of the jobs are created sure sounds like it would go some distance to reverse said steadily declining path – deficit neutral, groovy bi partisanship, and you know, actual real help for small business instead of platitudes, let alone the current gamesmanship surrounding weak tea Small Business proposals

I wish Christina Romer would explain how using a tax cut to add to the $2 trillion in cash that US business already has but refuses to deploy (because of lack of demand)will be a “stimulus”. Indeed why Obama refuses to sponsor direct infrastructure work – forcing an increase in demand – might be another topic she could discuss.

The high unemployment has side effects, according to a recent Harris poll in southern California:
* Are you working harder than two years ago? 63%
* Are you working longer hours? 58%
* Has your on-the-job stress increased? 57%
* Do you think you’ll lose work benefits in the next year? 43%

hell, I wanna know how she could reiterate her ‘nobodycouldaanticipated’ comments without mentioning that Messrs Summers and Geitner have everything to do with how we got here

The unemployment rate was 9.5 percent when “Recovery Summer” got underway in June. Unemployment currently stands at 9.6%. Can we all agree that the administration’s economic policies have failed?

Democrats and Republicans alike have been exporting jobs to China, India, and other countries for the past 40 years. You want a job? Move to China.
This unemployment issue is not going to go away for a long time to come. Republicans are going to have a rough time of it after they take back the Senate and the House. The Tea Party is going to have to police them to make sure they don’t make the same old stupid mistake of tossing good money after bad. Yes, make the Bush tax cuts permanent. Yes, repeal Obamacare. But that is only the beginning.
Instead of promising the sun, moon and stars, Republicans will have to educate the American people and take steps to make international trade a fair game instead of what we have.
I would love to see the US pull out of WTO and NAFTA and go back to the system of favored nation status.
We shall see.

What economic policies? So far all this and the previous administration have really put any force behind is propping up an insolvent banking sector.

wage and hour numbers are a part of this data. They were basically flat in August.

I’ll support more tax cuts just as soon as someone shows exactly what jobs were created by Bush’s tax cuts for himself and his family.

Jon Walker has a fresh cross-post available: Yes on Prop 19 Still Leads 47% to 43%; Support For Marijuana Legalization Measure Drops Slightly

Until we increase demand we will get nowhere and demand will not increase if people have no damn money. Tax cuts for the rich don’t cut it as the rich are not going to buy any more goods and services than they already do. We need to get more money into the hands of the “lesser” people.

How about tax cuts for the middle class (what ever the hell that is anymore). How about tax cuts on Soc Sec. I know damn well I would spend the extra money every month if I didn’t have to pay taxes on my meager Soc Sec cheque.

Most of the contractors (building and landscaping) I know would be happy to employ more people if they had some damn business and none I know want subsidies or any of that crap they want work, with work they can make money and employ people.

The bloody solutions are so damned obvious but because they are so obvious it is easy to see that there is no interest at all in implementing them. The corporate whores in the WH are feathering their own nests and to hell with the people.

I wish Christina Romer would explain how using a tax cut to add to the $2 trillion in cash that US business already has but refuses to deploy (because of lack of demand)will be a “stimulus”. Indeed why Obama refuses to sponsor direct infrastructure work – forcing an increase in demand – might be another topic she could discuss.

I suppose the corporations that haven’t already outsourced their jobs and relocated in foreign countries could use the money to complete that process. Another exciting option would be to play the mergers and acquisitions game. Swallowing competitors in one big gulp and firing most of their employees apparently is the eleventy dimensional economic equivalent to hollering, “Gentlemen, start your engines.”

More Obamanomics, please!

…growth of private sector payrolls is below the level needed to keep up with normal growth of the labor force…

How is that growth, when the net result is negative? How is it even moving sideways? Those people who enter the labor force may go for years without finding jobs (some predict over ten years now to restore lost jobs), and we could be facing an entire generation of people who never find full-time jobs. That’s creating a permanent unemployed class, not moving sideways. It sure as hell isn’t recovery.

I’ve never understood why the “zero point” isn’t set based on the increase in new workers entering the labor pool each month. It seems like innumeracy to me, muddling the real situation the job numbers are supposedly being provided to explain.

How about tax cuts for the middle class.

You’ve heard the anti-Bush crowd say it so often you don’t even question “tax cuts for the rich”.

Check out this experiment. Go to:

http://www.moneychimp.com/features/tax_brackets.htm

The second calculator figures how much tax you would pay in a given year.

I entered 2001 (before the Bush tax cuts for the rich) and put in $50,000. I’d call that a round number for middle class.

Tax = $10,369 = 20.74% of income.

Then I entered $250,000 as a round number for the rich.

Tax = $76,565 = 30.63% of income.

Now change the year to 2010 (after Bush tax cuts for the rich).

$50,000 income.

Tax = $8, 681 = 17.36% of income.

$250,000 income.

Tax = $67, 617 = 27.05% of income.

So the “Bushes tax breaks for the rich” lowered the riches tax burden by 3.58% and lowered the middle classes tax burden by 3.38%.

Bush gave the middle class almost exactly the same tax cut as the rich. Check it out for yourself.

Other than China who was not “favored nation”?

“Favored nation” meant nothing other than normal trade. If you want tariffs and barriers to entry you need real laws – and if you want labor rights, minimum wage, and environmental protection you need to pull out of the WTO. And you get none of that with the GOP. You also don’t get it with the Dems. So the stay at home party grows (meaning vote 3rd party).

Yes, the outsourcing of jobs has been US policy for a long time. It has been enthusiastically implemented by the State, Commerce and Defense (by foreign military sales offset programs) Departments working with the US Chamber of Commerce in foreign countries. Robert Reich, Clinton’s labor secretary, has participated in outsourcing conferences and even given the keynote speech on at least one occasion.

It’s another form of corporate welfare which increases corporate profits and political contributions.

Nonsense-

could you be that uninformed to not know “income” does not equal “adjusted taxable income”. You used “middleclass = 50,000″ even after the link you used for calculation told you it was for “your taxable income (after deductions and exemptions)”.

Average individual income in this country is 40,000 – after deductions and exemptions it is approaches half that for individuals and around mid 40′s for family income. That is why 47% pay only a payroll tax based income tax.

Learn some economics – indeed go to the Dept of Treasury site and look at the average income distribution. Look at the papers that see who benefited from the tax cut. It was indeed the BUSH TAX CUT FOR THE RICH because the dollars went to the rich. The GOP tried to sell the Clinton rates as a tax increase on all of us back in 1993 – turned out what they hung that on was a $0.04 – 4 cent – increase in the gas tax. The riche’s tax burden (excluding the top i percent) as a percent of income is less than the middle-class percentage. How progressive!!! And at the top 1% where it should approach the 35% marginal rate we find most paying around 27% of reported income – with most income not even being reported because of trusts and foreign partnerships. Now my numbers are old – I have been out of the game for several years – but a quick check did not show much change to my eye.

Perhaps when you get good numbers you will re-post your results.

I should not be so hard on you – those in New York City making $200,000 say they are middle-class and private schools cut into their funds for investment, so they need to pay less in taxes.

Rather than re-post with “good” numbers, I’ll defer to you.

If you pay any income tax (and many people don’t), the rate for the lowest bracket went from 15%, to 10%. I think we can agree on that.

So reverting back would cost the people who only pay taxes in the lowest bracket 50% more.

Not progressive.

Here’s the wage data. $22.66 on average for August 2010, $22.60 in July, and $22.28 a year ago.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t19.htm

True – but the rich also benefit from the 10% cut more than any “poor” – indeed recall the 47% = that 47% IS the poor and lower middle-class who therefore get nothing from the 10%.

Besides the 10% is better designed as a tax credit that phases out the more income you make, if the goal is to max the amount going to the non-rich out of the total tax cut.

The short term solution to fixing the economy, which is a necessary prerequisite to developing an effective deficit reduction strategy, is to increase demand for goods and services. That requires lots of consumers who have money and enough confidence to spend it. That cannot happen without full time employment, job security, reasonable wages, and manageable debt. I’m talking about reanimating the middle class and that is not going to happen without a revolution because for the past thirty years the government has intentionally killed the middle class with economic and social policies that have bled all of its wealth by destroying jobs, eliminating bankruptcy protection from creditors, and dismantling most of the safety net creating massively increasing debt that can only be paid down by giving up all of its wealth.

The richest ten percent of Americans now own virtually all of the nation’s wealth and they do not intend to give back any of it. Instead, they will continue to use their money and power to control government policy and reduce the rest of the country to debt slavery. Paying for never ending wars and tax cuts for the rich together with eliminating social security, Medicare, Medicaid and eventually unemployment are the nails they intend to use next to forever seal the middle class in a coffin made of debt.

We will not see Obama do anything that is inconsistent with that goal and that is why he’s talking about reducing the deficit by cutting social security and has no real concern and certainly no plan to effectively create jobs.

Connect the dots. We are the intended victims of a shock and awe full spectrum dominance class war.

The 2010 figures also include the tax cuts for low and middle income taxpayers that were part of Obama’s Stimulus package (I think 2009 also includes those cuts). Those cuts were the biggest in history.

The last year that included only Bush’s cuts would be 2008.

What are those numbers, given your example numbers?

LOL, I had to laugh its sad but true. We are circling the drain.

At least Robert Riech had an sound idea, but let’s be more aggressive.

Instead of no Pay Roll Tax on the first 20K, how about 30K for individuals and 50K on families?

Let the Bush tax cuts expire. Fairly simple and almost plan less and the GOP can hardly justify keeping the Bush cuts but they’ll try. The rest of it will fall apart.

This would do more than allowing Small Business to borrow for customers they don’t have.

It will won’t result in the 300K + rate of hiring that would need to happen just to get back down to 6% by 2013.

No, I would not concede that the economic policies failed. Unless you are willing to concede that it was the republican obstructionism and unwillingness to work with Obama to stimulate the economy that created the hostile environment against success.If the unemployment benefits had been extended, demand would have increased, jobs would have followed. If the money for state govts had gotten out there, jobs for teachers, firefighters, police and pub transportation would be creating jobs and spending money by middle class earners. Obama’s plan could have succeeded, if the retardicans has done more than worked to “make Obama fail” at any cost.

Money McBags does not think the jobs numbers mean what the market thinks they mean.

The B(L)S (and the “L” is in parentheses because it should be silent) broke out their favorite data manipulator and juiced numbers by having the birth/death model show 115k jobs added. Take that out, take out the 17k temporary private sector jobs, and take out the 10k construction jobs that were just workers ending a strike, and you get another unhealthy number.

If you’re bored, Money McBags has much more analysis at: http://whengeniusprevailed.com/