"D Murphy" wrote in message
...
jim rozen wrote in
:

In article , Gunner says...

So because the price of oil has been raised by those willing to bid it
up..its the fault of Bush?

So, folks had to wait in line to buy gas, on even/odd days?

Was that Carter's fault?

Electorate said, "yep."


People have short memories. Oil was higher under Carter than it is today.
In todays (2005) dollars oil was 86 dollars per barrel in 1980. In the
70's
oil rose the equivelant of 71 (2005) dollars per barrel. Not even close to
the piddly couple of bucks that oil has gone up recently.

People spend less of their income on energy today than they did then as
well. Even with the recent increases taken into account.

GWB won't be running for re-election anyhow.

Dan,
I would like you to consider this, It's worth a moment.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/26/op...26krugman.html
For the last few months there has been a running debate about the U.S.
economy, more or less like this:

American families: "We're not doing very well."

Washington officials: "You're wrong - you're doing great. Here, look at
these statistics!"

The administration and some political commentators seem genuinely puzzled by
polls showing that Americans are unhappy about the economy. After all, they
point out, numbers like the growth rate of G.D.P. look pretty good. So why
aren't people cheering?

Some blame the negative halo effect of the Iraq debacle. Others complain
that the news media aren't properly reporting good economic news. But when
your numbers tell you that people should be feeling good, but they aren't,
that means you're looking at the wrong numbers.

American families don't care about G.D.P. They care about whether jobs are
available, how much those jobs pay and how that pay compares with the cost
of living. And recent G.D.P. growth has failed to produce exceptional gains
in employment, while wages for most workers haven't kept up with inflation.

About employment: it's true that the economy finally started adding jobs two
years ago. But although many people say "four million jobs in the last two
years" reverently, as if it were an amazing achievement, it's actually a
rise of about 3 percent, not much faster than the growth of the working-age
population over the same period. And recent job growth would have been
considered subpar in the past: employment grew more slowly during the best
two years of the Bush administration than in any two years during the
Clinton administration.

It's also true that the unemployment rate looks fairly low by historical
standards. But other measures of the job situation, like the average of
weekly hours worked (which remains low), and the average duration of
unemployment (which remains high), suggest that the demand for labor is
still weak compared with the supply.

Employers certainly aren't having trouble finding workers. When Wal-Mart
announced that it was hiring at a new store in Northern California, where
the unemployment rate is close to the national average, about 11,000 people
showed up to apply for 400 jobs.

Because employers don't have to raise wages to get workers, wages are
lagging behind the cost of living. According to Labor Department statistics,
the purchasing power of an average nonsupervisory worker's wage has fallen
about 1.5 percent since the summer of 2003. And this may understate the
pressure on many families: the cost of living has risen sharply for those
whose work or family situation requires buying a lot of gasoline.

Some commentators dismiss concerns about gasoline prices, because those
prices are still below previous peaks when you adjust for inflation. But
that misses the point: Americans bought cars and made decisions about where
to live when gas was $1.50 or less per gallon, and now suddenly find
themselves paying $2.60 or more. That's a rude shock, which I estimate
raises the typical family's expenses by more than $900 a year.

You may ask where economic growth is going, if it isn't showing up in wages.
That's easy to answer: it's going to corporate profits, to rising health
care costs and to a surge in the salaries and other compensation of
executives. (Forbes reports that the combined compensation of the chief
executives of America's 500 largest companies rose 54 percent last year.)

The bottom line, then, is that most Americans have good reason to feel
unhappy about the economy, whatever Washington's favorite statistics may
say. This is an economic expansion that hasn't trickled down; many people
are worse off than they were a year ago. And it will take more than a
revamped administration sales pitch to make people feel better.


--
John R. Carroll
Machining Solution Software, Inc.
Los Angeles San Francisco
www.machiningsolution.com