Economy Facts The Media Ignores (The Truth)

[stewert]

All you hear from Bush and the media is how many jobs were created each month and the unemployment rate. These numbers are virtually meaningless, and hardly a measure of the economy. The numbers you have to look at are real wage growth, the rate of inflation, and the type of jobs created not the numbers of jobs created. The unemployment rate is a fraud, especially since Bush changed the way it is calculated, and they do not even count people who had benefits run out or people who stopped looking for work.

The real unemployment number is anywhere from 10 percent, to 23 percent, depending on who you ask. The people at exilemm.com claim it's 23 percent, but underreported.com says it's 10.5 percent.

www.exilemm.com/e-sub-realunemployment.shtml

www.underreported.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1092

The quality of the jobs are more important than the numbers of jobs, about 80 percent of the new jobs being created under Bush are low paying service sector jobs with no benefits. Notice that Bush and the media never talk about the quality of the jobs, all they do is spew out the numbers.

Then you have to look at health care costs, gas prices, heating oil prices, food prices, etc. All of those costs have went up so even if you did get a small pay raise (if you have a job) the extra money you had to spend on health care, gas, heating oil, and food more than took care of your pay raise. Hell the extra gas prices alone ate up most pay raises, so unless you got a big enough pay raise every year to offset all those extra expenses you lost money and you are probably more in debt than ever.

Lets say you have a job and you get a small pay raise every year, and that raise is 30 cents an hour, at 8 hours a day and 40 hours a week that's $12.00 extra a week. Yet the extra gas money you spend is probably $15 to $20 a week, so you lost money just on the extra gas prices.

Unless you make about $100,000 a year the economy sucks, everthing cost more and your pay raises do not even cover the cost of inflation let alone the extra gas and energy expenses. If your pay raises do not match the rate of inflation you are losing more money every year, even though you are getting pay raises you are still losing money in real wages. And that does not even count the increases in gas, heating oil, food, etc.

Here are a couple good articles on the economy, they tell you what is really going on, it's all the information Bush and the media do not want you to know about.

The Economy in a Nutshell

Wages & Incomes Down, Poverty & Debt Up

1. Profits are up, but the wages and the incomes of average Americans are down.

* Inflation-adjusted hourly and weekly wages are still below where they were at the start of the recovery in November 2001. Yet, productivity-the growth of the economic pie-is up by 13.5%.

* Wage growth has been shortchanged because 35% of the growth of total income in the corporate sector has been distributed as corporate profits, far more than the 22% in previous periods.

* Consequently, median household income (inflation-adjusted) has fallen five years in a row and was 4% lower in 2004 than in 1999, falling from $46,129 to $44,389.

More.........

http://www.counterpunch.org/mishel12232005.html

The Straight Truth About the Bush Economy

by Gene Sperling (President Clinton’s National Economic Adviser)

It’s downright misleading to ignore the economy’s weaknesses so the White House can falsely claim their fiscally reckless tax policy is an unequivocal success. When it comes to economic policy, President Bush is like the football coach with a 4-12 record who wants to tell you how his strategy has led to the four victories while pretending he has had an immaculate season. So if the President wants to claim his tax cuts have been the primary cause of our current economic performance since the end of the recession in November 2001, here are a few more economic facts he might want to consider.

WAGES

American families have consistently seen their incomes decline during the Bush Presidency—even when calculating only from the end of the last recession.

• Real hourly earnings are down in the four years since the last recession—from $16.41 in November 2001 to $16.29 in October this year.

• Real weekly wages are down in the four years since the last recession—from $557.44 in November 2001 to $550.60 this October. This is the first time on record real weekly wage growth have been negative this long after a recession.

• Since the 2003 tax cut, real hourly wages have fallen 2.2% and real weekly wages have fallen 1.6%.

• Real median household income has fallen each year Bush has been in office and by nearly $1,700 since the recession 2001

More.......

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/12/07/straight-truth-economy/