Thank You, President Obama

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
1

Obama inherited a national unemployment rate of something like 9 - 9.5% from GW Bush and the Republicans with their policy of cutting taxes while launching full scale foreign military invasions. Seven years later, that unemployment rate is down by at least half and the country is approaching full employment:

msn.com/en-us/money/markets/ … ailsignout

Still, we’ve got Trump advocating protectionism with the false promise to “bring back jobs” to a subset of disgruntled, unemployed Americans, who have failed to adapt to changes in industries and markets, and who prefer to scapegoat immigrants - legal, illegal and otherwise - for their personal failures and inability to change as the economy evolves. So, which jobs will Trump bring back, and who will pay for them? Obsolete, inefficient and prohibitively expensive factory jobs that US companies no longer require and are no longer willing to pay for? Lawn mowing and fruit picking jobs currently filled by illegal immigrants that no self-respecting Trump supporter would ever take on of their own volition? When it comes to Trump, i suppose such specifics are forever besides the point . . .

2

Corporate shill upf says local population is to work for low wages who shall be kept low by importing new fresh labourers from other countries.
But to be clear here the replacement of the local population is already a done deal.
People have to embrace the brave new future. As we all can see, life is still pretty good in California, if you are among the upper 10%.
Towards a worldwide shithole ruled by a hostile elite, onwards comrades! The revolution can’t be stopped!

Obama says Thank You and shows off his lover -

3

Claiming to be the one who has reduced unemployment is almost always a lie.

4

There is an increasing number of lost jobs.
There is an increasing number of machines that replace the jobs of humans.
There is an increasing number of immigrants that replace the jobs of natives.
There is an increasing number of women that replace the jobs of men.

According to this facts there can only be an increasing number of unemployed humans. The said machines, immigrants and women have never been a part of the employment-market before entereing it. So, for the Western societies, it is not possible anymore to add so many jobs that are needed to - at least - hold the number of enemployment on the same level. The politicians of this societies have no other choice than letting the number of unemployment increase more and more. Or do you believe in wizards and wonders? It seems that only a catastrophe can stop this insane politics.

5

Don’t bother Arminius as nobody listens to reason anymore if it is not apart of the corporate controlled script.

6

In the Bush administration the unemployment ratio was a lot higher than the official government released number just as it is right now under Obama. The United States economy really is in a death spiral and nothing you quote from HuffingtonPost or Bloomberg is going to change that.

Failure to adapt? With technological automation replacing all segments of societies where there is no margin of biological adaptation that is just a bullshit cop out by technocrats.

The influx of global immigration is a mechanism of driving down wages of native or indigenous workers keeping them stagnant which is why corporations everywhere have adopted the neo-liberal and multicultural political script. It’s good for their financial bottom line. Of course they won’t admit that it’s all about greed or profit where rather conveniently they hide behind social justice, multiculturalism, and historical revisionism in masquerade. Fuck the workers! Let them eat global melting pot and depreciated wages instead.

There needs to be a serious public discussion or discourse on how global immigration is a financial tool or policy by corporations to depreciate domestic wages of nations. Americans are sick of it and Europeans don’t want any of it.

In the future historians will note that the decline and death of union jobs or occupations with some level of security for its workers died with the advent of enacted global immigration policies.

7

Okay. But I find it very silly or cheeky when those lies are always repeated in a webforum that claims to be a “philosophy” webforum. :wink:

8

In the world political deception is becoming the norm suffocating, silencing,and choking everybody. We’re just supposed to get used to it, right? :wink:

9

Trump and other conservatives have been claiming a lie that the unemployment is around 40%. This is something touted often on conservative talk radio, meant to undermine confidence in the government and BLS as well as create fear and disaffection in people. They claim that the BLS numbers are incorrect because they don’t count a lot of people, including people who stop looking for work… but that’s another lie. The statistics don’t count people who retire, obviously, since those people are no longer in the labor pool.

Due to baby boomers retiring there are around 10,000 people every single day who are turning 65 and potentially retiring and leaving the labor market. Many of these are people who formerly worked and no longer will be working, so you have a natural draining of the total labor pool due to this effect. Therefore with immigration and new jobs being created this needs to offset around 300,000 people a month who are leaving the labor force to retire.

When you calculate unemployment you don’t count children, elderly who aren’t working or are retired, or disabled people who can’t work. If you counted those people in “unemployment” statistics you wouldn’t get an accurate number, since those people aren’t potential workers. It’s true that some people in their 50s, 60s and 70s might retire earlier than planned due to having a hard time finding a job, but regardless you don’t count people who aren’t looking for work in your statistics to determine how many people are unemployed.

It’s just more misdirection and lies from Republicans. It’s very common for them to manipulate people’s feelings and ideas around these issue. Even Trump’s son was on TV talking about the “46% unemployment”, tying to paint a dire picture of the economy. It’s simply not true.

And it’s similar to their lie about taxes, when they say that X% of people in the US pay no taxes. They say this as a means to make conservatives angry about so many people “on welfare” or whatever; this is something Romney talked about last time around when he was caught on hidden camera at that fundraising event… problem is, this is another deliberate misdirection: many of those people “not paying taxes” (they really mean only income taxes, but they rarely admit that stipulation) are children, disabled people, veterans who don’t work, and the elderly retired.

Yeah, kids don’t pay income tax. Neither do you pay income tax if you’re retired or cannot work. But the Republicans use these figures to create more lies and distortion to try and sow discontent and anger among their political base. Sad thing is, it usually works.

10

Yes. Of course.

Yes, and machines and women too. The meaning of feminism has not to do with females but with female work, which means the replacement of expensive male work by cheap female work. If you compare feminism and immigration with the machine revolution we have been experiencing since the last third of the 18th century, then you will see that both feminism and Immigration have the same economical and demographical function as the machines have: replacing the espensive occidental male workers by cheap workers, destroying the occidental patriarchalism, thus destroying the occidental families and reducing the occidental birthrates.

Maybe we should or we should not tolerate this till the castrophe, the great chaos. But we certainly should not tolerate the lies in a forum that is called “I Love Philosophy”.

11

You are right. Deception is everywhere, because it is a part of life in general. So decpetion is in nature as well as in culture. But the most deception can be found among humans, especially human cultures, more especially: civilizations. In other words: There has never been more deception in the world than today.

12

"The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers.

The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment."

So U3 is the number you hear from the glorious government, U6 is also an official number but it includes short-term discouraged jobless which are simply not counted as jobless under the U3 and the SGS number is an estimation, using pre-1994 metrics.
I think it’s safe to say that the unemployment, if it were counted the way it was pre-1994, it would be upwards of 20%.

As for Trump saying unemployment is 40%, I don’t know where he claimed that specific number. I’ve heard him claim 20 to 25% and when he mentions higher numbers he is talking about certain regions and not nationwide.

13

As far as I can tell he got it from Limbaugh.

Yeah, seriously.

14

K: depends on how you decide that there is more deception in the world today…
I mean which stat are you going to use to decide this?
If everyone in 1900 told two and just two deceptions and everyone
in the world today told one and just one deception, we would have
more deception today because the population has more than tripled in
the years since 1900, so yes there is more deception because we have billions
more people than we did in 1900…

Kropotkin

15

Yes. Certainly.

The unemployment rate in the United States is currently about 23% (tending upwards - of course), I guess. So about every fourth US citizen has currently no job.

16

Thank you, President …, X, Y, Z.

17

It’s true, but all presidential legacies are built on such lies. Honestly, Obama’s greatest achievement in the economic recovery was not fucking it up. Fact is though, the economy is, for the moment, just about where it needs to be in a capitalist economy. Since the global recession hit its nadir around 08-09 the US has basically enjoyed the most robust economic recovery of any advanced nation in the world.

18

Well yeah, duh. The more jobs get added the more jobs will be lost.

Yup, that’s how technology works.

Now this is bullshit. Back it up, i challenge you.

That’s so hilarious that you would say that. Seriously. Because women fill positions previously occupied by men just as well as men, and often better than men, that is framed as some kind of injustice, or a problem with liberalism. The fact that women are just as, if not more, capable than men of fulfilling traditionally masculine roles means men are fucking victims of . . . idk, liberal worldviews? Fuckin ridiculous.

Which facts? i mean, yeah, as the overall population rises, so will the population of unemployed, but by no means the overall percentage.

Uh, the unemployment rate has fallen. Steadily and continuously for the last 7 to 8 years.

19

It’s not Huffington Post or Bloomberg that generate unemployment statistics.

It’s not a cop out, it’s a point of fact. i realize what a great tragedy it is everytime some assembly line worker at the toothpaste factory is replaced by a robot, but you know what? That’s life. Find another line of work. You know how many encyclopedia salesmen lost their jobs after the internet was created? Basically all of them. Does that mean it was a bad thing that the internet was created? A nefarious scheme launched by technocrats? Funny, the only place you can find people saying such crap is . . . wait for it . . . ON THE INTERNET!

Protectionism is not a solution to depreciated wages. At least historically speaking, it never has been.

Yeah they do, they’re just too thick to realize how much they need and rely upon it. They will find out though, as the consequences of Brexit and President Trump start to materialize.

Fucking anarchists. They’re convinced they know the future despite their 100% track record of being wrong in their past predictions. The holy church of anarchy.

20

Uh, i call bullshit.