Do you know that many working people, say 30s-40s? These people, which is the typical group of friends of mine, are doing much much worse under Bush than they did under Clinton. Clinton had an optimism about him that encouraged capex expenditures and hiring from our largest companies. Bush is the opposite, he peddles fear. We haven't had any capex expenditures nor will we have any in 04, nothing meaningful anyway. The employment statistics are only relevant as far as "jobless claims" and who is working, whether it be at Safeway or Lucent or Cisco. It doesn't tell you who used to make 100K and now only makes $38K.
The republicans used to blame the stock market bubble for the carnage in the high tech industry, the problem with that is that here we are 3 years later and a bunch of the bubble stocks are back to their old highs with more revenues than they had in 2000. So the "bubble bursting" excuse doesn't really work.
We had a huge surplus and now a deficit, what did we spend it on? Now that the market is back we are going to have a surplus again right.... well, no actually because the workforce is devastated and Bush enacted all these tax cuts for passive income.
The companies I work with have moved most all of IT to india so this is a permanent change affecting the up and coming workforce, these people are unhappy and I don't think they want Bush in for another 4 years. I sure don't, I think he is economically devastating. But if the dems can't put up anybody but Gephardt he might win anyway.
If Bush had an aire about him like Arnold does, one of optimism and a sense of accomplishment, I think he would win irrespective of his policies many of which are unpopular. Too bad Arnold can't win the presidency! |
