The High Cost of Liberalism – 10 Million Jobs

By J.J. Jackson

President Barack Obama loves to talk about nebulous concepts while trying to convince Americans that he has been a successful Chief Executive.  For example, when discussing the economy he often talks about jobs “saved or created” or how things would have been much worse had he and Congress not spent our grandchildren into crushing debt.  Earlier this week I posted on my site a short comment that liberalism has cost America millions of jobs.  That immediately drew a barking response from a plethora of moonbats who adore the ground upon which President Obama walks.  They demanded I, “prove it.”  My response to each was, ok, wait for this week’s article if you are so eager to be shown a fool.

Just last week the Obama Administration proudly proclaimed that in January we added 243,000 new jobs to the economy and the unemployment rate dropped to 8.3%.  The facts however are quite different.  When you look at the actual, raw data, unadjusted and without being kneaded and massaged, the U.S. economy shed over 2.2 million private sector jobs as seasonal workers from the Christmas shopping season were let go.

You think I am making this up?  The source is the US Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics; the government itself. So riddle me this bat brains, how can the economy shed nearly 2% of the private sector labor force and the unemployment rate drop by 0.2%?  Ah, apparently with Obama all things are possible.

But it gets worse.  Those 2.2 million jobs that went poof are just the tip of the iceberg.  In fact, liberalism has cost the U.S. economy 10 million private sector jobs since Democrats and Republicans of the liberal persuasion secured power.  Then President Obama ascended unto Washington to be the left hand man for liberal ideology.  And things got worse.  To show how this is reality, all we have to do is look at the numbers; the real numbers of private sector jobs in America .  To be kind to liberals, I will even include in the analysis the economic downturn of 2001 and the recession that followed the terrorist attacks of September 11^th, 2001.  Doing this depresses the trend line of job growth and gives liberals every benefit of the doubt.

Here is the chart:

Note that I have divided the number of private sector jobs into four segments here to reflect changes in who controls the levers and switches of government in Washington .  The data in blue are the month to month private sector jobs under President George Bush and a Republican controlled Congress.  The data in pink are the month to month private sector jobs under President George Bush and a Democratic controlled Congress.  The data in yellow are a the month to month private sector jobs under President Barak Obama and a Democratic controlled Congress.  Finally, the data in light blue are the month to month private sector jobs under President Obama and a split Congress with a do-nothing Democratic Senate and a Republican House of Representatives. The dark blue trend line represents the set of data from 2001 through 2006 while the pink trend line represents the data from 2001 through the end of 2008.

So, what do we see here?  In the beginning we see that job growth.  This job growth happened even with the downturn of the economy in 2001 and even with the Democrats stalling the economy after taking control of Congress in 2006.  The U.S. was on pace to have, as of the end of January 2012, just over 118 million private sector jobs available for workers.  Where are we now after years of hard core liberalism?  Even despite the momentum of the early part of the new millennium carrying on for a year until a Democrat controlled Congress finally stemmed the tide of growth?  Well, the numbers do not lie.  After millions in bailouts to banks (which I remind you then Senator Obama supported so yes, he is responsible for TARP as much as President Bush was) and failing car manufacturers, after wheelbarrows of money printed out of thin air to ostensibly put Americans back to work and after oodles of dollars to be repaid by our posterity sent to Green Energy projects and for the purposes of blocking the development of America’s energy resources what do the numbers say?

Well, they say we are 10 million jobs short of where we should be in terms of real jobs that actually exist for Americans to occupy.  Liberals can tell us about how they have done such wonderful things for us by ignoring the pending housing crisis and stonewalling attempts to rectify the insanity of putting people in houses they could not afford.  Liberals can scream from the highest mountain about how their trillion dollar deficits have brought us back from the brink of oblivion while they and their cronies are pocketing the dough.  Liberals can blame it all on the Big Banks, the greed of Big Corporations and even President Bush. They can claim they are “creating” jobs until they are blue in the face.  They can say whatever they want.

But the truth is that with liberals in charge America is now nearly a decade behind in job creation from where we should have been. Welcome to our own lost decade courtesy of President Obama, Harry Reid and an a plethora of other know-nothings who believe themselves to be the smartest people in the room.

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J.J. Jackson is a libertarian conservative author from Pittsburgh, PA who has been writing and promoting individual liberty since 1993 and is President of Land of the Free Studios, Inc. He is the Pittsburgh Conservative Examiner for Examiner.com. He is also the owner of The Right Things - Conservative T-shirts & Gifts The Right Things. His weekly commentary along with exclusives not available anywhere else can be found at Liberty Reborn.