Jobs
CNN has a Breakdown of unempoyment rates by state. It seems with a cursory look, that red states tended towards the top, having the least unemployment. Blue states mostly fell below the average of 5.4%.
Yet Ohio has a horrible 6% unemployment rate, and still 150,000 people thought terrorism and antiquated morality was more important than getting a job.
Holding the president accountable for economic cycles that are often out of the control of the office may seem unfair. However, Bush and his Republican congress did not extend unemployment benefits. Unemployment is something that is earned and is representative of credit given to employees from their salaries. It is also meant to ensure that people continue to spend money [and propel the economy] even in as an economic cycle spins downward.
In this sense, the American people certainly should have held the president accountable for failing to address the fairly dramatic increase in the unemployed.
Today of course, the labor department revised their numbers of unemployment claims. Is the economy turning around? Probably not.
Low paying jobs in retail may be growing, and they will take people off unemployment. But earning less than $10 an hour--earning closer to half that-- will not encourage people to spend frivolously at the mall. At best, a retail economy is one of subsistance. But more likely, hard work and long hours will not be enough to allow the next generation to move from poverty to middle class. For that, red America deserves what it voted for.
Yet Ohio has a horrible 6% unemployment rate, and still 150,000 people thought terrorism and antiquated morality was more important than getting a job.
Holding the president accountable for economic cycles that are often out of the control of the office may seem unfair. However, Bush and his Republican congress did not extend unemployment benefits. Unemployment is something that is earned and is representative of credit given to employees from their salaries. It is also meant to ensure that people continue to spend money [and propel the economy] even in as an economic cycle spins downward.
In this sense, the American people certainly should have held the president accountable for failing to address the fairly dramatic increase in the unemployed.
Today of course, the labor department revised their numbers of unemployment claims. Is the economy turning around? Probably not.
Low paying jobs in retail may be growing, and they will take people off unemployment. But earning less than $10 an hour--earning closer to half that-- will not encourage people to spend frivolously at the mall. At best, a retail economy is one of subsistance. But more likely, hard work and long hours will not be enough to allow the next generation to move from poverty to middle class. For that, red America deserves what it voted for.
2 Comments:
I don't understand Ohio, I really don't. I think I read somewhere that under the Bush Administration (god, that sounds perverted) they lost 220,000 jobs!
You would think that would mean something to them. It's unbelievable. And WV is just as bad!
People scare me. 51% of the people (ok, the voters) in the US, to be specific.
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