KHH1

Topics: Jobs Labor Entitlements PennAve Economy Unemployment

The Department of Labor reported Thursday that 283,000 workers filed for unemployment insurance...
The number of workers filing initial claims for unemployment benefits again beat expectations, adding to a downward trend and lifting economists' projections for job creation in the month.

The Department of Labor reported Thursday that 283,000 workers filed for unemployment insurance benefits in the week that ended Oct. 18, slightly below projections.

That number was an increase from the extremely low tally of 266,000 claims the week before, but nevertheless sent the four-week moving average for claims further down to 281,000.

That marked the lowest four-week moving average since May of 2000. The moving average better portrays developments in the labor market by reducing some of the week-to-week volatility that affects claims.

The Department of Labor did not report any special factors affecting Thursday's numbers. There were 2.1 million people in total receiving unemployment benefits as of Oct. 4.

Combined with a recent increase in advertised job openings to pre-recession levels, falling unemployment claims suggest that net job growth will continue to accelerate in the months ahead.

The U.S. economy has averaged just under 230,000 jobs created a month in 2014, with 248,000 added in September.

Early projections from Wall Street economists Thursday morning placed the October jobs number that will be released Nov. 7 at 225,000 to 250,000, despite signs of turmoil in financial markets and gathering economic headwinds from slowing growth overseas.

robert66

Not to worry for the conservatives out there. If you guys get the senate you can get back to ruining the economy.

KHH1

** and that is just what they will do.....we will go from adding 200,000+ jobs/month to losing 750,000/month again and the righties in here will place some kind of "spin" on it and say that the jos created on Pres. Obama's watch were not long-term or some similar bulls**t. They need to go ahead and admit that Pres Obama has done a great job, especially despite the r****t southerners obstructing and actually coming out to say that they wanted this man to be a one-termer as their first priority....which implies that the state of the country's economy does not rank as high.....i'm loving this**

Airforceone

No not true they will just take the credit. GOPTP are very good at blaming the left on there failed agenda and when the left is successful they just take the credit. They are very good at deception there corporate elite spend millions at deception.

Super Dave Loc: Realville, USA

Damn those Republicans for trying to get people jobs instead of welfare.

What's up with them?

robert66

I haven't done it yet today but what do you think the odds are if I turn on Fox news right now they will have their knotheads on there saying how Obama fudged the numbers and that actually everything is getting worse ? How long will it take the tea parties on this site to start quoting them ?

Super Dave Loc: Realville, USA

Not as long as it will take for people to start getting back the wages they had before Obama took office.

Viet Nam Vet 67-68

khh1 Reagan turned the country around in two years and didn't spen $8 Trillion to do it and didn't set the world on fire like your GAY IMAM muslim.

Super Dave Loc: Realville, USA

It's going to be funny watching Obama run around America patting himself on the back and singing "Happy Days are Here Again".

But the funniest part will be watching the media. Many of them have to start worrying about their own credibility and might start committing journalism.

KHH1

**Reagan cut things like Pell Grants and made so many Americans drop out of college it was amazing**


The Sad Legacy of Ronald Reagan

by Sheldon L. Richman

On August 2, 1988, President Ronald Reagan announced that he had changed his mind about the pro-union plant-closing bill. He had vetoed it three months earlier, but now let it become law without his signature after intense pressure from p**********l nominee George Bush and former Treasury Secretary James Baker, now Bush's campaign chairman. Reagan claimed that only this action would enable him to sign a Congressional trade bill almost unequaled in its anti-consumer protectionism.

Ronald Reagan's faithful followers claim he has used his sk**ls as the Great Communicator to reverse the growth of Leviathan and inaugurate a new era of liberty and free markets. Reagan himself said, "It is time to check and reverse the growth of government."

Yet after nearly eight years of Reaganism, the clamor for more government intervention in the economy was so formidable that Reagan abandoned the free-market position and acquiesced in further crippling of the economy and our liberties. In fact, the number of free-market achievements by the administration are so few that they can be counted on one hand—with fingers left over.

Let's look at the record:

Spending

In 1980, Jimmy Caner's last year as president, the federal government spent a whopping 27.9% of "national income" (an obnoxious term for the private wealth produced by the American people). Reagan assaulted the free-spending Carter administration throughout his campaign in 1980. So how did the Reagan administration do? At the end of the first quarter of 1988, federal spending accounted for 28.7% of "national income."

Even Ford and Carter did a better job at cutting government. Their combined p**********l terms account for an increase of 1.4%—compared with Reagan's 3%—in the government's take of "national income." And in nominal terms, there has been a 60% increase in government spending, thanks mainly to Reagan's requested budgets, which were only marginally smaller than the spending Congress v**ed.

The budget for the Department of Education, which candidate Reagan promised to abolish along with the Department of Energy, has more than doubled to $22.7 billion, Social Security spending has risen from $179 billion in 1981 to $269 billion in 1986. The price of farm programs went from $21.4 billion in 1981 to $51.4 billion in 1987, a 140% increase. And this doesn't count the recently signed $4 billion "drought-relief" measure. Medicare spending in 1981 was $43.5 billion; in 1987 it hit $80 billion. Federal entitlements cost $197.1 billion in 1981—and $477 billion in 1987.

Foreign aid has also risen, from $10 billion to $22 billion. Every year, Reagan asked for more foreign-aid money than the Congress was willing to spend. He also pushed through Congress an $8.4 billion increase in the U.S. "contribution" to the International Monetary Fund.

His budget cuts were actually cuts in projected spending, not absolute cuts in current spending levels. As Reagan put it, "We're not attempting to cut either spending or taxing levels below that which we presently have."

The result has been unprecedented government debt. Reagan has tripled the Gross Federal Debt, from $900 billion to $2.7 trillion. Ford and Carter in their combined terms could only double it. It took 31 years to accomplish the first postwar debt tripling, yet Reagan did it in eight.

Taxes

Before looking at taxation under Reagan, we must note that spending is the better indicator of the size of the government. If government cuts taxes, but not spending, it still gets the money from somewhere—either by borrowing or inflating. Either method robs the productive sector. Although spending is the better indicator, it is not complete, because it ignores other ways in which the government deprives producers of wealth. For instance, it conceals regulation and trade restricdons, which may require little government outlay.

If we look at government revenues as a percentage of "national income," we find little change from the Carter days, despite heralded "tax cuts." In 1980, revenues were 25.1% of "national income." In the first quarter of 1988 they were 24.7%.

Reagan came into office proposing to cut personal income and business taxes. The Economic Recovery Act was supposed to reduce revenues by $749 billion over five years. But this was quickly reversed with the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982. TEFRA—the largest tax increase in American history—was designed to raise $214.1 billion over five years, and took back many of the business tax savings enacted the year before. It also imposed withholding on interest and dividends, a provision later repealed over the president's objection.

But this was just the beginning. In 1982 Reagan supported a five-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax and higher taxes on the trucking industry. Total increase: $5.5 billion a year. In 1983, on the recommendation of his Spcial Security Commission— chaired by the man he later made Fed chairman, Alan Green-span—Reagan called for, and received, Social Security tax increases of $165 billion over seven years. A year later came Reagan's Deficit Reduction Act to raise $50 billion.

Even the heralded Tax Reform Act of 1986 is more deception than substance. It shifted $120 billion over five years from visible personal income taxes to hidden business taxes. It lowered the rates, but it also repealed or reduced many deductions.

According to the Treasury Department, the 1981 tax cut will have reduced revenues by $1.48 trillion by the end of fiscal 1989. But tax increases since 1982 will equal $1.5 trillion by 1989. The increases include not only the formal legislation mentioned above but also bracket creep (which ended in 1985 when tax indexing took effect—a provision of the 1981 act despite Reagan's objection), $30 billion in various tax changes, and other increases. Taxes by the end of the Reagan era will be as large a chunk of GNP as when he took office, if not larger: 19.4%, by ultra-conservative estimate of the Reagan Office of Management and Budget. The so-called historic average is 18.3%.

Regulation

For all the administration's talk about deregulation (for example, from the know-nothing commission which George Bush headed), it has done little. Much of what has been done began under Carter, such as abolition of the Civil Aeronautics Board and deregulation of oil prices. Carter created the momentum and Reagan halted it. In fact, the economic costs of regulation have grown under Reagan.

Some deregulation has occurred for banks, intercity buses, ocean shipping, and energy. But nothing good has happened in health, safety, and environmental regulations, which cost Americans billions of dollars, ignore property rights, and are based on the spurious notion of "freedom from risk." But the Reagan administration has supported state seat-belt and federal air-bag requirements. This concern for safety, however, was never extended to the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) rules, which, by imposing fuel-efficiency standards, promote the production of small cars. The shift to small cars will cause an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 highway deaths over the next ten years.

Bureaucracy

By now it should not be surprising that the size of the bureaucracy has also grown. Today, there are 230,000 more civilian government workers than in 1980, bringing the total to almost three million. Reagan even promoted the creation of a new federal Department of Veterans' Affairs to join the Departments of Education and Energy, which his administration was supposed to eliminate.

Trade

The Reagan administration has been the most protectionist since Herbert Hoover's. The portion of imports under restriction has doubled since 1980. Quotas and so-called voluntary restraints have been imposed on a host of products, from computer chips to automobiles. Ominously, Reagan has adopted the bogus fair-trade/free-trade dichotomy, and he was eager to sign the big trade bill, which tilts the trade laws even further toward protectionism.

Results

Reagan's fans argue that he has changed the terms of public-policy debate, that no one today dares propose big spending programs. I contend that the alleged spending-shyness of politicians is not the result of an ideological sea-change, but rather of their constituents' fiscal fright brought about by $250 billion Reagan budget deficits. If the deficit ever shrinks, the demand for spending will resume.

This is the Reagan legacy. He was to be the man who would turn things around. But he didn't even try. As he so dramatically illustrated when he accepted the plant-closing bill, there has been no sea-change in thinking about the role of government.

Viet Nam Vet 67-68

Robert666 you already have and its $17 Trillion in National Debt an additional $230 Billion American TAX Payers dollars in interest on the additional debt of $7 Trillion wasted dollars. Wait till January 2015 when they raise the interest rate we will be paying a Trillion Dollars in interest. By the way your wonderful figures of ONLY 281,000 lost jobs is quite impressive for spending $7 Trillion dollars saving Wall Street, the Corrupt Mafia Unions, Big Banking and keeping the Lobbyists happy screwing the working man, by the way the huge gap between the worker and the big wigs and Corporate Bosses are bigger now than ever an obamination promise to reduce that spread, another LIE. The 281,000 sounds small to an i***t who has a job but to the 46 Million unemployed its no joke. Poverty is at an all time high, so is Food Stamps, State Aid to I*****l A***ns, Welfare and to you and the other i***t this is good news. Only a black Sunni muslim who think this is good. My allah grant you your 1 72 year old virgin when you die and soon I mhope.

Thunder

A few say our Fearless Leader The Gay Muslim has failed to say these 250,000 + are NEW claims this wk . as always . As I add it up that's over 1 million a month . Oh Chit isn't he such a Fearless Leader . We should all should be liking his boots more . VOMIT !!! Wake up SHEEPLE !! BAHA -- BAHA

KHH1

Cognitive Dissonance 101-When I do something it is great, when YOU do the very exact same thing...it is f-ked up. Example-Obama versus others with debt celing increases or even vacation days. He has done both LESS..but is held to task about it MORE**

Viet Nam Vet 67-68

khh1 moron $7 trillion in more debt in 5 3/4 years is not less maybe in muslim it is but not in American you dumb assed black muslim.

KHH1

**Such an intellectual response to good news from the left-all Hillary got to do is take advice from Presidents Obama and Clinton...and this s**t (e******n) will be a wrap...once we get two consecutive Democratic presidents, I will watch Republicans fade on the horizon....which should have happened after Reagan**