Bush tax cuts and unemployment

[Narkos]

Okay, I have fairly constant arguments with wingnuts in my head, and I really like to hone my arguments well in order to debunk conservative economic talking points. I can imagine wingnuts who are pushing the tax cut meme, and will point to the Bush tax cuts and the decrease in unemployment numbers thereafter. Any retorts to this line of reasoning?

[Warpy]

1. If tax cuts worked

We'd have full employment at high wages and everybody would be putting granite countertops into their kitchens.

Since we have extremely high unemployment, depressed wages, record foreclosures and record bankruptcies, I think we all know beyond a shadow of a doubt that tax cuts don't work to better the economy.

And you can lift that for yourself, just as it is.

[Yavin4]

2. Bush Got $2 Trillion In Tax Cuts

And he had the worst job creation of any president. Here's the source, and it's the WSJ. The same guy that owns it. Owns Fox News:

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/01/09/bush-on-jobs-the-worst-track-record-on-record/

[JohnnyRingo]

3. Bush lost fewer jobs everytime he found a crative way to count the unemployed.

In 2002, he switched from the "Payroll survey" to the "Household Survey" as a means to find the unemployment rate. He went from a 2mil job defecit to a 2mil job surplus overnight. That's 4 million jobs he "created" in one day.

http://www.thestreet.com/p/_tscs/rmoney/barryritholtz/10178197.html

Here's a less "wordy" explaination:

[pinqy]

4. Bull

The household survey has been used to count unemployment since 1940. Bush made no changes to how unemployment was counted. The article is about counting Employment, not unemployment. And it doesn't in any way support your claim.

The Employment Situation contains two seperate surveys. The official Employment level is based on a payroll survey...always has been, going back to 1915. The payroll survey is a survey of non-farm payroll employment. This excludes agricultrual workers, the self employed, domestic workers, unpaid family workers. The Unemployment rate is more expansive and the employment figures used for the Labor Force data include everyone left out from the payroll survey.

There haven't been any significant changes to the definitions of employed and unemployed since 1967.

And the clever picture is also wrong. I've corrected it at least twice already.

[JohnnyRingo]

5. Our government kept track of unemployment figures using the Payroll Survey since the '30s

In early 2002, George Bush decided to switch to officially publicizing the Household Survey because it suited him better.

Here's a link:
http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/webfeatures_viewpoints_job_creation_numbers/

excerpt:
The administration wants the public to believe the economy is strong and jobs are being created. So it has tried to muddy the issue by highlighting the slightly better trends in the household survey since the beginning of the recovery in November 2001.

Its argument is simply bad economics. Nonpartisan experts including the Bureau of Labor Statistics (the people who compile both sets of numbers), the Congressional Budget Office and the President’s Council of Economic Advisers are unanimous that the payroll survey provides the better measure of employment trends. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan concurs. He testified before the Senate Banking Committee on Feb. 12 that “the payroll series is the more accurate number.”


This is the reason why Bush had to do it:
http://usbudget.blogspot.com/2008/07/job-growth-under-bush-and-prior.html
excerpt
As explained in my post of March 16, one must be careful in comparing changes in employment using the Household Survey. This extends to changes in the population and labor force, also from the Household Survey. Still, the job growth of nonfarm and private jobs (from the Payroll Survey) in Bush's first term was the worst since at least 1941. Taking both of Bush's terms together (through June 2008), the average monthly growth in household survey, nonfarm, and private employment were 91.2, 58.1, and 39.9 thousand, respectively. For nonfarm and private employment, this was the second worst since Eisenhower with Bush's father's term being the worst.

Here's an article from The Heritage Foundation in which they attempt to throw weight at the Household Survey, but they actually make a stronger case for the Payroll method:

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Labor/CDA04-03.cfm
excerpt:
Ben Bernanke, a prominent academic economist and recently appointed Governor of the Federal Reserve, commented on the survey disparity on November 6, 2003. His views are a fair reflection of the academic economists, and he confesses, "e do not fully understand the differences in employment reported by the payroll and household surveys, and the truth probably lies in between the two series." Nevertheless, Bernanke was quick to emphasize the conventional wisdom that "greater reliance should probably be placed on the payroll survey."

I suspect your revisionary math on the unemployment chart was also faulty at best (even on your second attempt).

(on edit)
After reading through your past posts, I think I'll avoid your usual long drawn out arguments, and accept your recurring theory that George Bush is an economical wizard who fixed Clinton's economy, everybody who wants a job has one, and unemployment is at a record low.

I have a harder time with your staunch disapproval of the Lilly Ledbetter Act though. It must have been a tough pill for you to vote for Obama last November.

[pinqy]

6. Your links don't agree with you.

You first said "In 2002, he switched from the "Payroll survey" to the "Household Survey" as a means to find the unemployment rate." Which is a lie. And none of your links support you. They're only talking about the Bush administration preferring to use the Household Survey when talking about changes in Employment (NOT UNEMPLOYMENT). Which is a little dishonest. The articles are NOT talking about any changes in BLS methodology. The Unemployment rate, since 1940, has been based on a household survey. Before that there were some attempts by the Census to estimate, but there were no regularly published figures.


And I did no math...I told the proper definitions.

[pinqy]

8. hmmm wondering

If you actually did the research and realized you were wrong, or if you refused to believe you could possibley be mistaken, decided I'm an idiot and just ignored me. Either way I get to feel superior, since I know you won't respond.

[barb162]

7. Bush said his tax cuts would create 320,000 a month. It never happened.

Job creation has been worse than dismal under Bush. As I recall, over the 6 or 7 years since those tax cuts, only one month had job creation over 320,000 and almost all were low-pay service jobs. The Republicans are totally full of shit.

http://econ161.berkeley.edu/movable_type/2004_archives/000253.html