Bush's One Trick Jobs Growth Story
More economic data on jobs show more holes in the Bush economic prosperity propaganda. Revealing data from BLS reports marshaled by Mike Mandel (BW, 9/25/06) show that health care employment has literally kept the anemic job generation of the Bush tenure in office from crashing. Health care and related industries (hospitals, nursing facilities, labs and pharma) created 1.7 mil. jobs since 2001. All other private sector jobs fell by 1.2 mil jobs including just over 0.5 mil in computer and electronic products
Let’s cast a skeptical eye on the propaganda of the Administration by tying these statistics to recent piece by Kissweb comparing European (EU) and US economies. The big two of the EU (France and Germany) unemployment rate is 8.9% and 8.2%, respectively. The health-care system there added few jobs from 1997-2004 (per OECD). Others have reported previously in this blog evidence of superior health care being delivered in those two main EU countries, obviously, with less labor expansion. That these countries might have a 1-2% lower unemployment rate with a health care expansion pace equal to that of the US, probably does not mean they would have a better (or even as good) health care system.
Let’s further reveal the irony and contradictions of the Administration by connecting with this bloggers previous reporting on HSA’s advanced by Bush. Under HSA’s as reported, “the number of people who would lose coverage due to actions that their employers would take under an HSA program would likely exceed the number of uninsured people who would gain insurance." This is because most Americans are not in a high enough tax bracket.
This means that demand for health care would at best level off and at worst decline. In turn, the health care system job creation very likely would slow considerably. That would blow the cover off the Administration’s fairy story about the robust job expansion under their regime much less their exaggerated depiction of their strong economic recovery.
Let’s cast a skeptical eye on the propaganda of the Administration by tying these statistics to recent piece by Kissweb comparing European (EU) and US economies. The big two of the EU (France and Germany) unemployment rate is 8.9% and 8.2%, respectively. The health-care system there added few jobs from 1997-2004 (per OECD). Others have reported previously in this blog evidence of superior health care being delivered in those two main EU countries, obviously, with less labor expansion. That these countries might have a 1-2% lower unemployment rate with a health care expansion pace equal to that of the US, probably does not mean they would have a better (or even as good) health care system.
Let’s further reveal the irony and contradictions of the Administration by connecting with this bloggers previous reporting on HSA’s advanced by Bush. Under HSA’s as reported, “the number of people who would lose coverage due to actions that their employers would take under an HSA program would likely exceed the number of uninsured people who would gain insurance." This is because most Americans are not in a high enough tax bracket.
This means that demand for health care would at best level off and at worst decline. In turn, the health care system job creation very likely would slow considerably. That would blow the cover off the Administration’s fairy story about the robust job expansion under their regime much less their exaggerated depiction of their strong economic recovery.
posted by Anonymous | 1:17 PM
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