The below article was originally written in 2012.

I originally did an update in November of 2018 and now Sept 30th 2020, another slight update.  The advent of Trump’s economic success, combined with Obama telling the world that this economic boom is the result of his policies, the ensuing total shut downs due to Covid 19, I feel it’s important to understand not so much “who gets credit”, but rather what happened, why, and what the numbers really mean.  Without, at least, a rudimentary understanding of what actually occurred, we have no way to understand what policies actually promoted our economic interests…. i.e. what creates jobs and what doesn’t.  Many won’t like the implications of what follows… but facts are always facts.  GOOD POLICY CREATES GOOD RESULTS… BAD POLICIES?  Not so much.

WHAT A RECOVERY REALLY LOOKS LIKE-
It’s more than unemployment numbers.
On the economic front alone here are just some of the data from the first two years of Trump’s first term.
Was it really Trump? or is Obama right in saying his policies were responsible for all of this?

*  250,000 new jobs in October, in spite of the Hurricane.
*  *Realize, 70k of those new jobs* are in mining, construction, manufacturing… The very same jobs OBAMA said were never coming back!  Obama “Jobs not coming back”
*  3.1% actual wage growth. The best number in a DECADE!
*  Highest job participation rate in history… Most jobs in HISTORY, and that’s good for everyone because it means more taxpayers, more government revenue, less government payouts and soon lower deficits.
* Remember, Obama said 2% GDP is the new normal and he never even brought the economy to 3%.. The first such failure of any president in history!  How can Obama try to take credit for all of this when he actually said none of it would never happen again??

On the other hand… Trump has given us…
*   The last two GDP reports were 4.2 and 3.5 after the OBAMA administration said 2% was the new normal… 2% The New Normal
*   Lowest Black unemployment rate in history
*   Lowest Hispanic unemployment rate in history.
And this was accomplished in less than two years…

• HOW DID ALL THIS HAPPEN?  The Same Way Reagan did it…
  Trump implemented business friendly, job creating policies- it’s that simple;
  *  Deregulated, taking off some of the handcuffs of American industry, allowing them innovate again.
• *  Lowered personal income taxes putting money back in our pockets that we can spend?
  • Realize, virtually every dime we spend is a “taxable event” the gives the government more revenue…
    • i.e. buy ice cream it’s income to the store;
    • buy a computer, it’s more income to the store…
    • When they get more business they earn more, can hire more and the government takes in more revenue with every purchase!
• *  Yes, it also put money back in our employer’s pockets too…
  • in some cases it means we got a raise…
  • in others it means our bosses hire new employees to meet the demand…
  • sometimes it just means that our bosses can stay in business so we can keep our jobs!*
• *  He allowed overseas money to come back in the US at a lower rate, bringing in more government revenues and capital for new jobs.
•  * Lowered Corporate rates so that operating in the US, was not as expensive, so many corporations no longer felt the need to leave and in many cases corporations returned and new corporations decided to come to the US…

THAT’S WHERE ALL THOSE JOBS ARE COMING FROM?

I want to acknowledge that all politicians lie.  Even the ones I like.
I am not a big fan of Trump personally… he is not perfect, Far From It!…
But a lie is always a lie and the truth is always the truth… No matter who speaks it.

• OBAMA– I loved to listen to Obama speak… he is an incredible orator.  However, he has constantly touted as good policy, that which was not and is even now taking credit for good results that he did not cause.
• TRUMP–  In many regards, I believe he is a very flawed man. But like him or hate him, from the beginning, his policies were doing what they are supposed to do.  Create jobs and protect our citizens and our country.

NOW TO THE PURPOSE OF THIS UPDATE:
Under Obama the unemployment rate had been continually dropping and the liberal media and Obama did nothing but talk about what a magnificent impact his policies were having.  Most people believed it was a good thing because they did not understand what they numbers really meant… and of course, the media had not desire to rain on Obama’s parade.

What happened?  FACTS OF THE OBAMA “RECOVERY” and why it matters.
The original article from Sept 2012
The Unemployment rate went down.  Was that really Good News?  Absolutely not!  It dropped from 8.1%; this has to be a good thing doesn’t it?    No!  It’s more smoke and mirrors.  Whether someone is a democrat or republican, if truth matters, they need to understand this the reality.  TIME TO CLEAR THE SMOKE AND LOOK AT THE FACTS! 

• Fact– For every person that found work, 4 lost hope and stopped looking.
• Fact– This is now 43 straight months of 8% plus unemployment, the longest stretch ever recorded!
• Fact– We are now experiencing the worst recovery in history.  Yes, in spite of the great and inspiring speeches, this is a fact. (details to follow).
• Fact– This “drop” in unemployment, actually marks the lowest overall job participation rate in 38 years... and for men, the lowest in history!… and that includes the tragedy of the Great Depression!…

Should a Lower Unemployment by itself Equal Another Term?
Obama used the drop in unemployment to make his case for another term. And he knows better. He knows the real numbers and he knows what they mean (they will be explained below). He is not a stupid man. Rather, he is a man who has shown that he will do and say anything to keep power. He is using the new misleading unemployment numbers to fool America… He fooled us once, let’s not let it happen again. Please, let’s stop this!

THE NUMBERS THAT LIE– Lower unemployment… that’s good… right?
The unemployment rate dropped from 8.3 to 8.1. Normally you would think that’s a step in the right direction.  Well, this time it just isn’t. This is one of those rare times that a drop in unemployment is not just a bad thing… it’s heartbreaking!… and our president is telling us we are on the right track?…

WHY IN OBAMA’S ECONOMY, LOWER UNEMPLOYMENT WAS WORSE
Job Participation Rate-  We all know that if 50,000 people get a job, the unemployment number goes down. But what happens when 50,000 people get so discouraged that they drop out of the job market; i.e. they give up? The unemployment rate still goes down!  That was the Key to Obama’s low “unemployment” rate.  

And that is exactly what just happened… only worse, much worse!

Here are the actual numbers…
 In August- not 50,000, but a staggering 368,000 people just stopped looking! Our fellow Americans simply dropped out of the workforce. We now have the lowest job participation rate in a generation and for men the lowest EVER.  It’s even worse than the Great Depression!  That is a fact!   Did Obama forget to tell you that?  Must have slipped his mind.

The lowest Job participation, ever!… And Obama was bragging that the unemployment rate went down???  He was using the fact that 368,000 Americans, your neighbors, your friends, our children; all lost hope, they became so discouraged that they gave up…  their loss and despair was used as EVIDENCE that he deserved another term???

Oh, but there is a bright spot
In August 96,000 jobs were created. Great! But our economy requires about 130,000 to 150,000 just to keep up with population growth. It’s certainly better than nothing, but anything less and we are moving backwards.

UNDERSTANDING UNEMPLOYMENT- How to get 0% unemployment?
The unemployment number is a bit counterintuitive. It has little to do with the number of people actually working, but rather focuses on those actually looking for a job. If you stop looking, you are no longer considered “unemployed”. Consequently, a lower unemployment rate does not mean more people have jobs. It simply means that fewer people are willing to look.

An extreme, but easily understandable example of the unemployment numbers:
Assume the entire potential work force became discouraged with their current job and future prospects for worthwhile employment.  They’re discourage and the all quit.  They stopped or didn’t even bother looking for work… Obviously, under this scenario no one would have a job and no one would ever consider it a thriving economy… But what would the unemployment rate be? ZERO!

If the above actually happened, I wonder, would the Obama campaign proclaim that he is the greatest president in history? After all, for the first time in our history we would have achieved ZERO unemployment!  That would be analytically identical to what he is doing now.

The Obama Campaign was telling us unemployment dropped from 8.3% to 8.1% and that it proves the economy is improving under his leadership, that we’re going in the right direction, we just need more time to complete the job. What a croc.  The only thing this “improvement” proves is that we have millions of people who have lost all hope.  
Fact- if the people who had become so discouraged that they stopped even looking were factored into calculations, the unemployment rate would be 11.1 percent!… and they are trying to tell us we’ve turned a corner?  Which corner would that be, Mr. President?

Here are the bare factual numbers:
• Since January of 09- 240,000 fewer people are working today than when he took office.
• Just last month 368,000 gave up hope and stopped even looking for employment in the last month alone.
• 3,500,000 are no longer even counted in the unemployment numbers (they dropped out).
• Per Capita Median Income- Down $4,000.
• 46.7 Million Americans on Food Stamps.
• Real Unemployment Rate- 11% +
• Unemployed and Underemployed 14.7%
• Want a Job? You get one from a business—business startups are down 30% this last year.
• Labor force participation- the percentage of people have jobs or are at least looking work has fallen to 63.5% of the population! This puts the labor force at its lowest in 38 years and the lowest in history for men. This is worse than the great depression.
• National Debt over 16 TRILLION DOLLARS! If government spending “stimulus” actually worked, shouldn’t we be in a bit better economic shape?

But don’t worry. Obama said he is going to put us back to work!  He had a plan… the problem is that his plan was to do more of what has already proven not to work!

A SIMPLE FACT… GOVERNMENT CAN’T GIVE, WHAT IT DIDN’T FIRST TAKE!
We can never forget that for the government to “give” it to me, it must first take it from you!  This is a fact-  “The government can do nothing nor give anything… that it didn’t first take from someone else“.  See Economics 101 The government plays a never ending game of Robin Hood; take from the rich and give to the poor.  I’m sure many people were surprised to find out they were rich!  

We built this country, our businesses and our lives… and it is now being weakened by poisonous economic policies. It is only through our character and our strength that we are recovering. It is the essence of what our country is and who our people are that allows us to survive and even grow under these horrendous even  oppressive conditions. But no matter how great this nation is and our people are, there is only so much we can endure. We are fast approaching that limit.  This must stop.

Although our president wants the credit, , I want to make something very clear;  What little growth the economy is experiencing, the resilience we are demonstrating… is not because of what Obama and his administration has done for us… it is in spite of what they have done to us!

BUT HE SURE GIVES AN INSPIRING SPEECH!- and a pretty good athlete. 
Obama has shown himself to be all about style and little substance. Great speeches, soaring rhetoric; an inspiration to us all… and I mean that. He is truly gifted. But as president, at some point, you actually have to do something other vacation and play hoops or golf. You have to deal with the most pressing problems of the country. Passing Obama Care wasn’t it.  JOBS WAS and STILL IS!    Our health care system has issues. But how could that have been the priority?  I could be wrong, but I think, if given a choice, most families would prefer a home, a job and no insurance, over no job, no money, no home but  having a insurance…  but I could be wrong?

JOBS COUNSEL TO THE RESCUE
But he did do something. He created his jobs counsel. A great idea that again rekindled hope. It impressed the masses and showed that he cared, he was on a roll!  The problem is, in the end, it proved to be nothing other than more style; just more act in the show. What did he accomplish with this big idea, this counsel? Nothing, he rarely meets with them and even more rarely, pays attention to them. They make suggestions, he ignores them. Problems and potential real life solutions don’t seem to matter if they don’t comport with his world view…

One recommendation was to lower corporate Tax rates– Ours are the highest in the world—No wonder they move factories overseas! The immediate benefits of lowing these taxes are obvious, but will Obama do it?. Of course, not. In spite of the evidence of our country’s history and the economic history of the world, he seems to hold to the belief that high taxes are the solution to everything rather than an incipient pervasive problem.  Taxes Are Not the Solution!

The fact is there is only so much we can tax, and there is absolutely no mathematical possibility that taxes can fix our problems… but it sure makes for good class warfare.  See the Reality of Taxes.

THOSE DARN CORPORATIONS- It’s all their fault!
He rants about our companies going overseas, but he doesn’t mention the fact that corporate boards have a legal fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of their shareholders i.e. the investors, the retirees that depend on corporate dividends.  Failure to do so subjects them to legal liabilities and loss of their jobs!  As long as our tax policies make it more beneficial for corporations to go overseas, they have a legal obligation to do so!

Instead of blaming others for the natural result of his policies, why not just do the obvious?  What would you do if in India you made a dollar and kept 90 cents, but if you make that same dollar in the US you keep only 70 cents? You’d do what the corporations do. You’d move your company to India. It only makes sense. You have an obligation to keep your income for your family and charity; not give it to an inefficient government. The heads of corporations, the stock holders of corporations, they have families, charities, churches, organizations that depend on them too.  And yes… corporations are people!  Any economist will tell you this is how it works, high taxes cost jobs. There are no exceptions. But it doesn’t matter. His actions belie a big government at all costs philosophy and he lets nothing get in the way of its pursuit, not even reality. Is it any wonder that this is the worst recovery in the history of this country? That’s not hype, its fact!

THE WORST RECOVERY IN HISTORY
This is the single worst recovery in the history of our country. The numbers don’t lie. I wish I could say the same for our government.  The abysmal economic realities hit us in the face every moment of every day.  Even if WE have jobs, even if we’re fine, many of our friends and families are not… and if they are, they wonder, for how long?…  We see it everywhere. It’s as obvious as the air we breathe.  This is not the American I want to bequeath to my children!… but that is where this path of taxation, spending and bloated pervasive government leads.  

See Is Government the Answer?

THE HEIGHT OF ABSURDITY
In spite of the obvious, the Obama campaign has actually made the absurd assertion that Obama has created more jobs than Reagan!  He continually states we are moving in the right direction, that he just needs more time to complete the job. This is demonstrably untrue! It’s either denial, ignorance or another lie. Exactly how stupid they think we are?

HERE ARE THE FACTS– you decide.
We do not play number games with this information. We actually bend over backwards in an attempt to be generous to Obama.  We calculate comparative numbers during the recovery portion of each administration. We avoid including the time periods, in which,the respective economies were still hemorrhaging. Doing the latter would be even less flattering to Obama.

• The Obama recovery, it’s now encompassing a period of about 31 months and has resulted in the creation of 6,317,000 net new jobs, or approximately 203,800 jobs per month. But that’s only one side of the equation. Over that same period, the total number of people of working age who are unemployed or not in the labor force increased by 205,000 or approximately 6,600 per month.
• The Reagan recovery, encompassed a period of 72 months, resulted in the creation of 24,833,000 net new jobs, or approximately 344,900 jobs per month. The other side of the equation?  Over that same period, the number of people who were unemployed or not in the workforce decreased by 5,234,000, or approximately 72,700 per month.
• The contrast is actually even more striking. When you factor in the fact that during Reagan’s administration, the US economy and population was much smaller, the comparative difference between Obama and Reagan economy is a staggering, almost factor of 6!   See the comparative growth rates below. 
• Another Inconvenient Fact- By virtually any measure, we are now experiencing the single worst recovery in the history of our country. OUR CURRENT GROWTH RATE is about 1.2 percent… at this point in the Reagan recovery the growth rate was about 6.8%… almost 6 times that of Obama’s.
• More Facts on Obama’s economy- As of the beginning of September 2012, here are the Facts…
o Unemployed and Underemployed- 14.7 %
o Gave Up Looking– 844,000
o Total Current Unemployed & Underemployed– 23.1 MILLION
o 46.7 MILLION ON FOOD STAMPS!  The highest in our history; a 50% increase, just since Obama took office!

Obama is no Ronald Reagan… He’s not even Jimmy Carter.

Do we really want 4 more years?