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Last post 13 years ago by jpotts. 31 replies replies.
Let's see if this is Bush's fault.....
ray_mysterio Offline
#1 Posted:
Joined: 05-08-2008
Posts: 48
US poverty on track to post record gain in 2009

WASHINGTON - The number of people in the U.S. who are in poverty is on track for a record increase on President Barack Obama's watch, with the ranks of working-age poor approaching 1960s levels that led to the national war on poverty.

Census figures for 2009 - the recession-plagued first year of the Democrat's presidency - are to be released in the coming week. Demographers expect grim findings.

It's unfortunate timing for Obama and his party just seven weeks before important elections when control of Congress is at stake.

The anticipated poverty rate increase - from 13.2 percent to about 15 percent - would be another blow to Democrats struggling to persuade voters to keep them in power.
vrodrider Offline
#2 Posted:
Joined: 10-07-2007
Posts: 7,748
hear that giant sucking sound????

That is your good paying jobs leaveing USA to foreign soil all started with Mexico now it is China
HockeyDad Offline
#3 Posted:
Joined: 09-20-2000
Posts: 46,069
It is Bush’s fault.

GWB economic programs pushed poverty levels down to a point where he knew they would be unsustainable by a Democrat administration and their insatiable desire to raise taxes.
vrodrider Offline
#4 Posted:
Joined: 10-07-2007
Posts: 7,748
Bull**** it started long befor even the first Bush
HockeyDad Offline
#5 Posted:
Joined: 09-20-2000
Posts: 46,069
It is true that Reagan set it in motion.
vrodrider Offline
#6 Posted:
Joined: 10-07-2007
Posts: 7,748
HD Try Carter
HockeyDad Offline
#7 Posted:
Joined: 09-20-2000
Posts: 46,069
No thank you.
snowwolf777 Offline
#8 Posted:
Joined: 06-03-2000
Posts: 4,082
Stupid Abe Lincoln did it.
MARKQ Offline
#9 Posted:
Joined: 10-04-2004
Posts: 2,392
It's Bush's fault! Hope and Change! I'd like my change back.
donutboy2000 Offline
#10 Posted:
Joined: 11-20-2001
Posts: 25,000
"Communism does not work."
Fidel Castro
Homebrew Offline
#11 Posted:
Joined: 02-11-2003
Posts: 11,883
It was started by the signing of NAFTA, championed by the first Bush administration, and signed during the Clinton administration. It was the beginning of the end of the American Middle Class.

Dave (A.K.A. Homebrew)
donutboy2000 Offline
#12 Posted:
Joined: 11-20-2001
Posts: 25,000
google Creative Destruction. Here is a taste:


Capitalism, then, is by nature a form or method of economic change and not only never is but never can be stationary. And this evolutionary character of the capitalist process is not merely due to the fact that economic life goes on in a social and natural environment which changes and by its change alters the data of economic action; this fact is important and these changes (wars, revolutions and so on) often condition industrial change, but they are not its prime movers. Nor is this evolutionary character due to a quasi-automatic increase in population and capital or to the vagaries of monetary systems, of which exactly the same thing holds true. The fundamental impulse that sets and keeps the capitalist engine in motion comes from the new consumers, goods, the new methods of production or transportation, the new markets, the new forms of industrial organization that capitalist enterprise creates.

Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York: Harper, 1975)
vrodrider Offline
#13 Posted:
Joined: 10-07-2007
Posts: 7,748
President Jimmy Carter,
whose vision of hemispherical development gives great energy to our
efforts and has been a consistent theme of his for many, many years
now

Sorry Homebrew from Slick Willys speach
HockeyDad Offline
#14 Posted:
Joined: 09-20-2000
Posts: 46,069
It is good that Obama is willing to fight fo rthe poor since he is creating more.
donutboy2000 Offline
#15 Posted:
Joined: 11-20-2001
Posts: 25,000
Only the rich will be sent to the re-education camps.
ZRX1200 Offline
#16 Posted:
Joined: 07-08-2007
Posts: 60,477
#11 hit it on the head. But I believe the govt controlls on business from both Nixon and carter didn't help.
HockeyDad Offline
#17 Posted:
Joined: 09-20-2000
Posts: 46,069
You people all need to embrace globalism.
itsawaldo Offline
#18 Posted:
Joined: 09-10-2006
Posts: 4,221
I agree 11+16
donutboy2000 Offline
#19 Posted:
Joined: 11-20-2001
Posts: 25,000
By Every Reasonable Measure, NAFTA Has Been a Success

by Daniel Griswold

Daniel Griswold is the director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute.

Ten years ago this month, leaders of the United States, Canada, and Mexico signed the historic North American Free Trade Agreement. Although NAFTA remains a lightning rod for critics of free trade and will be debated anew as Congress soon considers a free-trade agreement with Chile, by any measure it has been a public policy success.

As a trade agreement, NAFTA delivered its principal objective of more trade. Since 1993, the value of two-way U.S. trade with Mexico has almost tripled, from $81 billion to $232 billion, growing twice as fast as U.S. trade with the rest of the world. Canada and Mexico are now America's No. 1 and No. 2 trading partners, respectively, with Japan a distant third.

One reason NAFTA remains controversial today is that advocates and opponents alike were guilty a decade ago of exaggerating its impact. Advocates claimed it would create hundreds of thousands of jobs because of a dramatic rise in exports; opponents claimed far more jobs would be destroyed by a flood of imports and a stampede of U.S. companies moving to Mexico to take advantage of cheap labor. During a presidential debate in 1992, H. Ross Perot famously predicted, "You're going to hear a giant sucking sound of jobs being pulled out of this country."

In reality, NAFTA was never going to have much of an impact on the economy. America's gross domestic product at the time was almost 20 times Mexico's, and U.S. tariffs against Mexican goods already averaged a low 2 percent. Its biggest dividend for the United States has been in foreign policy.

NAFTA has institutionalized our southern neighbor's turn away from centralized protectionism and toward decentralized, democratic capitalism. The economic competition and decentralization embodied in NAFTA encouraged more political competition in Mexico. It broke the economic grip in which the dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) held the country for most of the last century, and set the stage for the election of Vicente Fox in 2000 as the first opposition-party candidate to win after 71 years of the PRI's one-party rule.

With a decade of hindsight, there is no evidence of a "giant sucking sound" of jobs, investment and manufacturing capacity heading south. After passage of NAFTA, in fact, the U.S. economy created millions of jobs. Civilian employment in the U.S. economy grew from 120.3 million in 1993 to 135.1 million in 2001--an increase of almost 2 million jobs per year--the unemployment rate fell steadily, and real wages have risen up and down the income scale. Blame for the recent rise in unemployment belongs to the relatively mild recession of 2001--a recession brought on not by NAFTA but by rising interest rates and energy prices and a falling stock market.

Despite predictions, NAFTA did not cause an exodus of manufacturing investment to Mexico. U.S. investment in Mexico did increase after NAFTA, along with trade, but those flows are a trickle compared with what we invest domestically. In the eight years after the implementation of NAFTA, from 1994 through 2001, U.S. manufacturing companies invested an average of $2.2 billion a year in factories in Mexico, a fraction of the $200 billion invested in manufacturing each year in the domestic U.S. economy. The small outflow of direct manufacturing investment to Mexico has been overwhelmed by the net inflow of such investment from the rest of the world--an average of $16 billion a year since 1994.

Nowhere were the predictions about NAFTA more apocalyptic than in regard to manufacturing. The critics warned that NAFTA would "deindustrialize" the United States, but between 1993 and 2001, U.S. manufacturing output rose by one-third, and output of motor vehicles and parts rose nearly as fast. Since 1993, manufacturing output in the United States has risen at an annual average rate of 3.7 percent, 50 percent faster than during the eight years before enactment of NAFTA. The number of Americans employed in manufacturing grew by more than 700,000 in the first four years of NAFTA, from January 1994 to January 1998. Of course, this is not an argument that NAFTA was the primary cause of the acceleration in manufacturing output, but it does knock the wind out of the myth that NAFTA has somehow "deindustrialized" our economy.

By every reasonable measure, NAFTA has been a public policy success. It has deepened and institutionalized Mexico's drive to modernize and liberalize its economy, society and political system. It has spurred trade, investment and economic integration in North America. And it has enhanced American productivity and prosperity--refuting the critics who were wrong 10 years ago and are just as wrong today.

cato.org
Homebrew Offline
#20 Posted:
Joined: 02-11-2003
Posts: 11,883
RE#19,
Pretty dated article. 2004 was a long time ago. The true effects of NAFTA have really just been realized. How much has the middle class contracted since 2004? How much has the gap widened between the rich and poor, since 2004?

Dave (A.K.A. Homebrew)
chemyst Offline
#21 Posted:
Joined: 05-29-2006
Posts: 1,674
Saw a post somewhere that documented the 10
wealthiest members of the US Congress. 7 were
Dems, 3 Repubs.

I don't see Kerry, Pelosi and the Dems giving
back their 'ill-gotten' gains from the 'evil'
Bush policies.

Oh, that's right, they voted FOR them!

Just sayin'.
It's all BS in the end. No more 'professional
politicians'.

Clean the US House and US Senate in 2010, 2012, 2014.
Impose term limits.
Balance the budget.

Chemyst
Homebrew Offline
#22 Posted:
Joined: 02-11-2003
Posts: 11,883
RE#21,
I gotta agree. But I think we should all vote for any third party candidate there is. No more big two. Neither the republicans, or the democrats care about what is best for the US, just what is best for them.

Dave (A.K.A. Homebrew)
DrMaddVibe Offline
#23 Posted:
Joined: 10-21-2000
Posts: 55,309
Homebrew wrote:
RE#21,

I gotta agree. But I think we should all vote for any third party candidate there is. No more big two. Neither the republicans, or the democrats care about what is best for the US, just what is best for them.



Dave (A.K.A. Homebrew)



Drive a spike through both of their hearts.
!@$#&% Offline
#24 Posted:
Joined: 10-18-2009
Posts: 3
ray_mysterio wrote:
US poverty on track to post record gain in 2009



WASHINGTON - The number of people in the U.S. who are in poverty is on track for a record increase on President Barack Obama's watch, with the ranks of working-age poor approaching 1960s levels that led to the national war on poverty.



Census figures for 2009 - the recession-plagued first year of the Democrat's presidency - are to be released in the coming week. Demographers expect grim findings.



It's unfortunate timing for Obama and his party just seven weeks before important elections when control of Congress is at stake.



The anticipated poverty rate increase - from 13.2 percent to about 15 percent - would be another blow to Democrats struggling to persuade voters to keep them in power.

DrMaddVibe Offline
#25 Posted:
Joined: 10-21-2000
Posts: 55,309
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results"
Secondz Offline
#26 Posted:
Joined: 03-10-2010
Posts: 789
Id rather just blame congress
teedubbya Offline
#27 Posted:
Joined: 08-14-2003
Posts: 95,637
I totally agree that Obama owns all that happens on his watch. None of this blame bush crap. Everything that happened on bush's watch he also owns and can not blame on Clinton. Etc.
Stinkdyr Offline
#28 Posted:
Joined: 06-16-2009
Posts: 9,948
Homebrew wrote:
RE#21,

I gotta agree. But I think we should all vote for any third party candidate there is. No more big two. Neither the republicans, or the democrats care about what is best for the US, just what is best for them.



Dave (A.K.A. Homebrew)



That's why I have been voting Libertarian for 20+ years.
drywalldog Offline
#29 Posted:
Joined: 06-19-2007
Posts: 5,536
And exactly how many people you have voted for have been elected?
teedubbya Offline
#30 Posted:
Joined: 08-14-2003
Posts: 95,637
drywalldog wrote:
And exactly how many people you have voted for have been elected?


I voted for bush and he got elected. since when is the person you voted for winning a good thing? It's better if they lose so you can sit back and bitch (bitch gets edited so les just say female dog) from day one.
jpotts Offline
#31 Posted:
Joined: 06-14-2006
Posts: 28,811
Homebrew wrote:
RE#19,

Pretty dated article. 2004 was a long time ago. The true effects of NAFTA have really just been realized. How much has the middle class contracted since 2004? How much has the gap widened between the rich and poor, since 2004?



Dave (A.K.A. Homebrew)


Any contraction of the Middle Class has more to do with automation and tax policy than NAFTA.

Back in the 70s it was possible to have middle-class unskilled laborers, but now increasing levels of technology have replaced a VAST number of those workers, and thereby shrinking their numbers in the middle-class ranks.

And, because long-term unskilled workers do not have the advanced educational credentials or appropriate work experience to move into higher-paying jobs, their finances soon stagnate, and then decline. This is further reinforced when they are subsidized by the government though either getting more back in their tax refunds then they pay in in taxes, and/or easing of qualifications for their enrollement into programs like WIC and ADC.

If jobs were being sucked down into Mexico, we'd see less drug crimes, and less illegal immigration. We don't.
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