Where are the jobs?

[CaptainHaplo]

Platypus,

I can't "show you the data" on what they based the claim on, but I can give you some info on where it was derived from. I think I posted about this previously.

I have a friend who owns his own business. He got an order that came with a single page questionaire from some "department" of the government - it wasn't labor, I just can't recall the name of it right now. I will check and get it for you if needed.

Anyway, the form just asked how many jobs were created, how many jobs were saved with the order, how many jobs were sustained by the order, etc. The firm placing the order needed him to fill it out because they were using stimulus money to pay for it. His business was doing fine without the order, so he answered as honestly as he knew how, and put 0 for "saved", "sustained" and 0 for "created" as well.

A couple of weeks later, he got a phone call from someone with that same "department" that told him he obviously misunderstood the questions because he filled them out all wrong. After he assured them that his business was firm without the order, they accepted that no jobs had been saved. They struggled over the "creation" part a litle, continually asking him if he had hired anyone during the time the order came in to when it was filled. He had, though the position (sales rep) had nothing to do with filling the order, yet they insisted that met the requirements for a "job created" by the order. The real sticky one was "jobs sustained" - because they wanted to know how many people "touched" the order, for the secretary who answered the phone, to the person who set the box on the dock for the delivery carrier to pick up. According to this department's criteria, every person's job involved was "sustained" because it took them some time - from seconds to hours - to do the job.

Needless to say, the criteria for what amounts to a "sustained" job are set in such a manner that no matter what the real result was, the numbers look good for those that want them to.

[longam]

http://jobsearch.usajobs.gov/a9recoveryjobs.aspx

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) Jobs

[jumpy]

Dunno about you yankey-doodles, but us stiff-upper-lips are faring well, according to the guy in my sig (and you all know what I think of him).

There's 'thousands' of jobs every week apparently... As I'm currently waiting to receive income based Jobseekers Allowance (I've been waiting for a decision for the last 6 weeks) I have access to the fabulous range of exciting opportunities for the financially challenged.
These 'thousands of jobs' mostly include weird positions that require such a narrow skill-set that the mind boggles as to who actually has the qualifications for such jobs - Diversity Manager? wtf is that?
Other jobs are the sort that only bored housewife's, who's husbands are the bread winners and who have grown-up children and need something to occupy a couple of hours a week to supplement the housekeeping money. Not the kind of thing you could actually earn a living from...

Not to mention all of those fantastic job adverts that are what I call 'non-jobs' - when you get the advert from the jokecentre and ring the number to apply for the job, you discover that what has just cost you time and a half hour phonecall later (sitting in one of those 'your call is important to us cues') is not actually a job at all! What you are in fact doing is applying for a potential job, not an actual job; you're applying to register for notification of jobs that don't actually exist yet How cool and forward thinking is that? I'm sure it looks great for the figures that are thrown about like so much confetti by over-paid politicians, but it's damn annoying for anyone who actually wants a real job.

Our current DWP employment system is like the emperors new clothes; all of the sycophants and government and departmental toadies extol the virtues of how great the system is (having no direct experience of it themselves) but the rest of us who futilely try to navigate its tortuous byways, see right through it to the rather sad and dangly soft under-parts.

[Aramike]

Originally Posted by Stealth Hunter

Well yeah- he did inherit the problem. You forget that the economy went sour when Bush was in office in 2008, after the housing market and subprime mortgage crisis in addition to the dollar's decline in value; which led to record unemployment levels and a huge decline in the country's GDP. For that matter, NBER announced that the recession had officially began in December 2007.

You're absolutely right. Bush was president. And the DEMOCRATS had control of congress. AND Obama was a Senator.

I'm trying to figure which legislation the Democrats passed that would have helped prevent any of this from happening, that Bush vetoed.

Frankly, I think the problem goes beyond politics. Government only has SOME influence regarding our economic system.

My problem is that the Democrats are quick to lay the blame squarely at Bush while completely ignoring their own contributions to the problems

[Platapus]

Why do people try to assign blame to one person or one political party?

Everyone in the government F-ed up the economy and everyone in the government will be involved in the recovery effort.

No one has their hands clean, and no one or group can take any moral high ground in this mess.

The important thing should be working together to fix the problem and making sure it does not happen again.

[Stealth Hunter]

Originally Posted by Platapus

Why do people try to assign blame to one person or one political party?

Everyone in the government F-ed up the economy and everyone in the government will be involved in the recovery effort.

No one has their hands clean, and no one or group can take any moral high ground in this mess.

The important thing should be working together to fix the problem and making sure it does not happen again.

Well said. Especially on the last part (pity that the only real long-term solution would involve government intervention, which you'll have plenty of people bitching and complaining about; you can't expect people or businesses to fairly or correctly take care of themselves, so the only way to do it is to bolster the national laws on the matter and hand over the responsibility for management to the highest authority: the national government, not to say that the federal governments should, or need be, excluded from it). For the record, I did not intend to insinuate that Bush was all to blame. Just that as far as presidents are concerned, Obama inherited the mess from Bush. Or the Republicans or Democrats for that matter.

The economy is a complicated thing, due to its size, massive number of transactions, etc. And screwing it up this badly takes a lot of cooperation on the part of many players. I blame the Federal Reserve for making credit so cheap, Congress for supporting mortgage tax deductions that allowed for consumers to have more incentive to buy more costly homes, the Reagan and Clinton and Bush Administrations (Sr. and Jr.) because of their support and pushing of lesser downpayment requirements and stringent credit whilst at the same time not providing more oversight into the matter, firms on Wall Street because they paid hardly any attention to the risky loans and bonds they were handing out left and right that they also bundled with MB Securities, mortgage brokers for going along with Wall Street's plans and obscure accounting rules, and the general populace of home buyers who were taking advantage of the easy credit they could earn to boost the prices of homes to an excessive level. That's a short and brief list on my part.

[Aramike]

Originally Posted by Platapus

Why do people try to assign blame to one person or one political party?

Everyone in the government F-ed up the economy and everyone in the government will be involved in the recovery effort.

No one has their hands clean, and no one or group can take any moral high ground in this mess.

The important thing should be working together to fix the problem and making sure it does not happen again.

Now you're talking my language... Good, unbiased, accurate assessment.