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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JakeStraw who wrote (438778)	8/6/2003 10:49:47 AM
From: jim-thompson	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

rumsfield is going to make a democrap out of me if President Bush doesn't push him out the door. Granted, he is a brilliant man, but so was mc namara. if President Bush doesn't push him out the door than at least make him keep his darn mouth shut. in addition to expressing my views on this board, i take the time to write a hard copy to the President. this is turning into a weekly process for me.

To: JakeStraw who wrote (438778)	8/6/2003 1:02:47 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

I wasn't talking about the problems in California. Some other posters here are choosing to say that California's economic problems are dragging the entire nomy down. My view is different, I think California is a bellwether for the jobs exodus coming or deepening in the rest of the country. I don't think there is much about California that is too different from anywhere else except the state job layoffs, which is a small, temporary problem in the general scheme of things. The issue for the national economy from my vantage point is jobs- white collar jobs leaving the country. These are not coming back, its not a "lagging indicator" issue as Elaine Chow likes to point out. Yesterday we had a terrible jobs number. The worst hit state was Texas. We have a regressive tax policy where we tax the first 80K of earnings dispropotionately. In other words we need low end employment to maintain the economy. Dumping a dividend tax cut on the system with no plan for jobs growth in this torrid offshoring envirnment is fiscally irresponsible imo. Inflation with no jobs is stagflation. The Recovery Is Here, but the Jobs Aren't Friday, the government said the manufacturing sector shed another 48,000 jobs in July, its 36th consecutive monthly decline. while, even as the unemployment rate unexpectedly dipped to 6.2%, the average workweek for all employees fell to its lowest level since 1964. Those figures contributed to Friday's weak stock market. More importantly, they reflected Banerji's theory about this recovery being unique, and in a way that should be disturbing to those betting on a robust jobs recovery. Higher productivity means less need for workers; outsourcing certainly does. Banerji noted the trend of jobs migrating to China has accelerated, citing "huge shifts in the pace of movement," not just from the U.S. but from Taiwan, Korea, the Caribbean and Mexico as well. "There appears to be a permanent shift in manufacturing employment [and] it's not clear when it ends." If there is a secular shift afoot, the cycle watcher isn't sure how either lower interest rates or tax incentives for spending on business equipment will boost employment, creating a big crimp in the virtuous-cycle scenario mentioned above. Currently, this possibility isn't being considered by most, but "the idea jobs aren't coming back will gain mainstream acceptance," predicts Brad Ruderman, managing partner at Los Angeles-based Ruderman Capital Partners. "There's going to be a seminal change in the thought process. People are going to figure out it's more secular vs. cyclical." In the meantime, however, there's a lot of pain at the micro (i.e., real people) level, which may not be ending anytime soon. Given those folks are potential investors and voters, such harsh realities could have widespread implications. thestreet.com