Obama's Economy

 

While looking through barackobama.com I found the below chart that he uses to show how all his stimulus and jobs programs have been successful. I added the unemployment rates for those years. The graph can only point out that the landslide of job loss slowed and began to maintain. We must always remember that while looking at unemployment rates it only reflects the number of people who are signed with the unemployment office or receiving unemployment benefits.

Some of those people who returned to the workforce did so by taking lower paying jobs, these are called the underemployed. Some people, like me, are attempting to earn a living for themselves through self employment. Some are living off IRAs.  For any number of reasons people have dropped out of the workforce.

China, The West’s Greatest Threat

We cannot walk into most department stores without seeing the shelves filled with products made in China or Mexico. Many people want to enact tariffs to allow American manufacturers to compete. It’s been proven in the past that tariffs only start trade wars. There are many goods in which Americans can only get from other countries. There are also many goods that that we no longer make in this country, and might never be made profitably in this country again.

We often think of cheap goods that are made in China, but it’s much more than that. Today I learned that California is putting a new 2050ft bridge over the San Francisco bay. That bridge is being made in China and shipped in sections for $500 million less than it could be made in the USA. -American workers are assembling the bridge.

Quote from NY Times:
Pan Zhongwang, a 55-year-old steel polisher, is a typical Zhenhua worker. He arrives at 7 a.m. and leaves at 11 p.m., often working seven days a week. He lives in a company dorm and earns about $12 a day.