And not to forget how the US slipped down the Transparency International and HDI league tables. Can’t wait till the IMF reports (which is a thing I never heard squat about anywhere but here). It’s a failed fucking state, come in and put it under UN trusteeship. You may have to ruin it financially first, that won’t be hard.

Posted by: …—… | Jan 11 2009 3:37 utc | 3

Billmon’s numbers come from the Bureau of Labor & Statistics. I wouldn’t trust the raw start and stop loci at all since that particular agency seems to be a follower of the Enemy Body Count School of Fudging Per Capita Data (“What? You’re still unemployed!? I’m sorry, we counted you already in the last fiscal year. Movel along.”)
His work does point to some useful trends in the final columns (% change), but these data are really more of a reflection of how aggressively the BL&S were fudging things during the period in question. Eisenhower’s record, for example, can be attributed to many factors, not the least of which being slightly less selective reporting.
Statistics are always open to a certain amount of interpretation since there are always the effects of outliers to consider. With Presidential performance, however, we have to consider the effects of out-and-outliers.

Posted by: Monolycus | Jan 11 2009 5:14 utc | 5

Top Ten Reasons To Think More Than Billmon Would Like You To
Billmon is basically correct, and it is not a surprising revelation — especially for the man who was once considered the best and most insightful writer on the web — that Democrats are, at least on the surface, somewhat more friendly to workers — a large section of their voting base — than Republicans. However, despite his partisan cheering, he neglects some of the larger points, among them:
1) Domestic considerations are one half of the coin. Presidents often win office based upon their foreign affairs posture.
1a) This posture may effect domestic results even more than their ostensible domestic policies. That is to say, that voters may often be, unwittingly perhaps or as a knowing trade-off, selecting these outcomes.
1b) The effects of foreign policies, like many other criteria, may have very long lag times before they fully effect other statistics. One administration may easily be blamed for its predecessor’s policies.
2) Job Creation & Unemployment are two markers, among many. Other more accurate stats would include plotting both statistics against population growth, and, better yet, employable population growth; and monitoring longer range statistics such as lifespan and happiness, health and well-being, and shorter range statistics like confidence.
3) This still doesn’t take into account the fact that many people, if secure enough in their savings and retirement plans, will choose to be “unemployed”; conversely, people who lose that level of savings and net wealth, suddenly become insecure and enter the workforce and Billmon’s statistics. This factor operates inversely to Billmons statistics.
4) Billmon is describing a cyclical pattern.
4a) If a Democrat were to follow a Democrat, they could not further lower unemployment. And if a Republican were to follow a Republican, they could not significantly increase unemployment without risking severe social unrest which could ultimately backfire for the ruling class, resulting in a more actively engaged populace, or worse.
4b) That is to say, he does not refute the argument that the two parties remain set pieces in a larger game, operating within set parameters.
5) Unemployment is but one statistic in general well-being.
5a) If we take into account worker’s security, we must account for the fact that de-regulation of the workplace, and hence the erosion of union and worker influence and well-being began under Carter — a Democrat.
5b) If we take egalitarianism to be an important indicator of societal well-being, we must admit that the data flew off all previous US historical charts during the go-go Clinton years, when CEO’s increased their percentage of the pie unconscionably.
5c) If we are concerned with the less fortunate among us — what we call the poor (when we are forced to refer to them at all), we must admit that Clinton’s “reformation” of welfare has worsened their status and increased their insecurity. Clinton, by his “War on Drugs”, among other tactics, greatly increased the incarceration rate of the poor, particularly minorities who supported him — now the highest incarceration rate in the entire world. I assume that the incarcerated no longer count as unemployed. To many they don’t even count as human.
6) Billmon does not take into account that the unemployment rate only tracks those who are actively looking for jobs. If one gives up hope and ceases looking they are no longer unemployed. Despite Billmon’s cheerleading, many people fell into that category during the Clinton administration due to “economic restructuring.”
7) Clinton was the principle beneficiary of a once-in-an-historical-era technical advance similar in scope to the industrial revolution, namely computerization and the coming-of-age of the internet.
8) Neither statistic accounts for the quality of jobs available at any given time. Clinton oversaw the rise on “down-sizing and “off-shoring,” combined with the destruction of the US’s manufacturing capacity. This was offset by the rise in service jobs. Overall, the US went from a society where unionized garbagemen made $40k/yr. and sent their kids to college, to one where non-unionized Walmart workers made minimum wage and powerlessly were unpaid for their overtime labor. Read Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Nickel and Dimed.”
9) Neither statistic accounts for the security of the jobs available at any given time. Economic restructuring changed the reality from one job lasting a lifetime, to single careers, to multiple careers, to a form of completely insecure “transient opportunism,” whereby it is commonplace, if not the accepted norm, for people to climb the career ladder only to fall back to square one, need to re-train (often losing house and spouse), and start again, commonly, many times.
10) Finally, according to elite theory, one could argue that Bush’s aim was to concentrate wealth. Therefore, he did not fail in that aim. What was damage to one sector of society was gravy to another. This argument benefits the Democrats, but weakens Billmon’s premise that Bush somehow “failed.”
Bonus) Neither “Job Creation”, nor “Unemployment,” normalized historical data used by ruling classes to monitor and control their citizenry, have any effect on emerging processes of far more importance to their populaces, including, but not limited to: 1) Environmental degradation, 1a) Global warming, 1b) the collapse of Biological diversity, including food fish stocks, 1c) Corporate ownership of the food supply through GMO and terminator seed technology resulting in an historic loss of food crop diversity, 1d) widespread pollution, including the biological dead-zone plastic circling island the size of Texas in the Pacific Ocean, 1e) spreading nuclear contamination from reactor and spent fuel leaks and DU waste, mining tailings 1f) hormonal confusion from chemical waste, particularly plastics, resulting in mood alteration, and sex/gender confusion among myriad species, 1g) deforestation and myriad other self-reinforcing vicious cycle loops, 1h) radiological poisoning from cell phone and weaponry resulting in exploding cancer rates, 1i) burgeoning planetary toxic loads, such as coal slurry, toxic chemical waste, acid rain; 2) Approaching of over-shot to the “Limits to planetary growth”, beyond the ken of infinite growth structural capitalism, any one of which can result in sudden, “unforeseen,” collapse and even catastrophe, 2a) Corporate ownership of all resources necessary to life: food, water, air, land, minerals, and tools resulting in an impovershed population greater than the entire human population of the globe fifty years ago, 2b) Population, food supply, arable land, water, energy, and recoverery curves.
Billmon is intelligent and knowledgeable enough to know all of this. As to why he choses to over-simplify matters and shill for the Democrats — well, your guess is as good as mine.

Posted by: Malooga | Jan 11 2009 7:28 utc | 7

@ Monolycus:
While we know that the concept decends from the ancient Greeks, Aristotle, etc., you certainly give a whole new meaning to having a supposition.
Note that the statistics I put forth are more to the point than those he hypothesizes.
Good morning to you. It is good night for me.

Posted by: Malooga | Jan 11 2009 8:58 utc | 9

Bravo, Mono!
I have often felt there was a covert methodology to keeping these things loose and open ended, and you have just expressed it in the most concise and pithy way exposing their wide range of sub rosa techniques, Instrumentation and pathology.
Sharp as a tack, you are!

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 11 2009 10:40 utc | 11

I am attempting to post another post addressing data manipulation, comparison of US vs European outcomes, and real standing bi-partisan US rates of over 15%, ignored in favor of partisan hackery by Billmon, but Typepad has flagged it. Hopefully b will let it through.

Posted by: Malooga | Jan 11 2009 16:16 utc | 13