Lowered Expectations

Maybe being from New York City, I somehow perceive the economy differently from everyone else in the country—but I doubt it. The race seems to be on to lower expectations for this President prior to his re-election campaign, and we seem to be falling for it all over again.

How hard was it to see that this President presided over the worst job loss record in American history since Herbert Hoover? This while arm-twisting through tax cuts for the wealthy that drained the last vestiges of health from dozens of essential support programs for the needy.

Now that the economy is turning around—according to the Labor Department, the net job loss figure is down from 2.6 million to 1.1 million jobs—Bush wants to take credit for turning a corner that never should have been there in the first place.

Personally, I don’t see this improvement in the economy. My perception is that my neighbors suffered an increase of 25% to their cost of living almost overnight and wages and salaries are stagnating. Everything basic to living here has gone up drastically, subway fares, property taxes, insurance, food, clothing, electricity, health care—and that doesn’t include the recent flirtation with the $3 gallon of gas. So, even if you aren’t one of those 1.1 million who lost a job without a replacement, you are still hurting.

If you happen to be one of the other 1.5 million who lost a job and found another, chances are, you are making $9,000 less a year than you were before. Break out those party hats, folks. Aren’t you glad you got that $300 rebate to tide you over during those two years you were unemployed?

And the Bush team is arguing that this is good news. Why does he get to throw away two and a half years of bad economic news, while simultaneously using it as a baseline for measuring success? 1.1 million lost jobs ain’t chicken feed, and without the social support programs that the government used to pay for, those unemployed folks are leaning on their families, their churches, shelters, whomever, just to survive. That’s a drag on everyone else’s economy too.

Even if the job numbers even out tomorrow, I still think that this is the wrong measure to be using here. If you spent two months, or two years out of work, you know that it’s going to take you another two to get back to where you were before—assuming you are making a salary that’s on par with what you had before. To get to the growing economy we had shortly before the Bushies started talking down the economy (yes, that’s right, they started talking it down, BEFORE they got into office, knowing that the wealth distribution that was about to take place would displace jobs, they wanted to be able to blame Clinton for the downturn), we are going to need another two and a half years of forward growth. Can we really afford to wait for Bush to make it happen?