Weekly Address: Ensuring Americans Feel the Gains of a Growing Economy
Source: White House
In this weeks address, the President highlighted the good news in Fridays jobs report that American businesses added 314,000 new jobs this past month, making November the tenth month in a row that the private sector has added at least 200,000 new jobs. Even with a full month to go, 2014 has already been the best year of job creation since the 1990s. This number brings total private-sector job creation to 10.9 million over 57 consecutive months the longest streak on record.
But even with this real, tangible evidence of our progress, there is always more that can be done. Congress needs to pass a budget and keep the government from a Christmas shutdown. We have an opportunity to work together to support the continued growth of higher-paying jobs by investing in infrastructure, reforming the business tax code, expanding markets for Americas goods and services, making common-sense reforms to the immigration system, and increasing the minimum wage.
Read more: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/12/06/weekly-address-ensuring-americans-feel-gains-growing-economy
Transcript
(snip)
Last month, our businesses created 314,000 new jobs. And thats not a fluke it keeps up the solid pace of job creation weve seen all year long. November was the tenth month in a row weve added more than 200,000 jobs. So far this year, our economy has created 2.65 million new jobs. Thats the most of any year since the 1990s even with a full month to go. All told, our businesses have created 10.9 million new jobs over the past 57 months. And thats the longest streak of private-sector job creation on record.
We also know that the upswing in job growth this year has come in industries with higher wages. Overall wages are on the rise. And thats some very welcome news for millions of hardworking Americans. Because even though corporate profits and the stock market have hit all-time highs, the typical family isnt bringing home more than they did 15 years ago. And that still has to change. And a vibrant jobs market gives us the opportunity to keep up this progress, and begin to undo that decades-long middle-class squeeze.
But first, we need the outgoing Congress to pass a budget and keep our government open. A Christmas shutdown is not a good idea. Then, when the new Congress convenes in January, we need to work together to invest in the things that support faster growth in higher-paying jobs.
Building new roads and bridges creates jobs. Growing our exports creates jobs. Reforming our outdated tax system and our broken immigration system creates jobs. Raising the minimum wage would benefit nearly 28 million American workers, giving them more money to spend at local businesses and that helps those businesses create jobs.
America, we still have a lot of work to do together. But we do have real, tangible evidence of our progress. 10.9 million new jobs. 10 million more Americans with health insurance. Manufacturing has grown. Our deficits have shrunk. Our dependence on foreign oil is down. Clean energy is up. More young Americans are graduating from high school and earning college degrees than ever before. Over the last four years, this country has put more people back to work than Europe, Japan, and every advanced economy combined.
rest at link
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/12/06/weekly-address-ensuring-americans-feel-gains-growing-economy
BumRushDaShow
(129,047 posts)Thanks for posting!
(also pinch-hit for ya last weekend )
The President also signed an EO Firday giving us feds 12/26 off.
cal04
(41,505 posts)Good for President Obama signing
Enjoy your day off
WhoWoodaKnew
(847 posts)in pushing every tiny negative thing for six years now. They'll shut up, of course, the next time a republican is president.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)How much do they pay?
Will they build our economy or are most of the newly employed just standing at cash registers in stores that sell imported goods, waiting tables, giving massages, etc.?
The numbers don't really say much.
We are already in the Christmas season. How many of these jobs are temporary or part-time?
We need to keep asking questions.
This speech looks like it is a response to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and a few other of our politicians' pressure about the fact that our economy is destroying our middle class and impoverishing more and more Americans.
But what is the substance? Remember, the devil as they say is in the details.
Looks like an attempt to pacify those of us who really don't see much of a future in the US unless the tax reform taxes incomes and money including stock market income and not just earned income. Our low wage structure means that taxable "earned income" is a smaller portion of the income earned overall from economic activity in the US than it was when we devised our tax code to draw such a large portion of our taxes from income earned from labor. I fear that tax reform is just going to worsen that unfair allocation of the tax burden on working people. That will make things worse.
These numbers make me happy for people who now have at least a little income and had none a few months ago. But it is not yet meaningful in terms of improvement in our economy overall. There are just too many questions about who is benefiting and who is losing out with this so-called "recovery."
Don't be fooled by this. Ask questions.
JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)riversedge
(70,238 posts)edhopper
(33,580 posts)help with job growth.
He and the Dems have done nothing, NOTHING, to stop the super wealthy from taking a bigger and bigger piece of the pie.
Income inequity has continued to accelerate under Obama.
pampango
(24,692 posts)A peculiar aspect of the Obama years has been the disconnect between the rage of Obamas enemies and the yawns of his sort-of allies. The right denounces financial reform as a vast government takeover and lobbies fiercely against it while the left dismisses reform as symbols without substance. The right accuses Obama of being a socialist stealing the money of hard-working billionaires, while the left dismisses him as having done nothing to address inequality.
On all these issues, the truth is that Obama has done far more than he gets credit for not everything youd want, to be sure, or even most of what should be done, but enough so that the right has reason to be furious.
The latest case in point: taxes on the one percent. I keep hearing that Obama has done nothing to make the one percent pay more; the Congressional Budget Office does not agree.
According to CBO, the effective tax rate on the one percent reflecting the end of the Bush tax cuts at the top end, plus additional taxes associated with Obamacare is now back to pre-Reagan levels. You could argue that we should have raised taxes at the top much more, to lean against the widening of market inequality, and I would agree. But its still a much bigger change than I think anyone on the left seems to realize.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/why-the-one-percent-hates-obama/?_r=0
edhopper
(33,580 posts)Krugman is right, and I did not realize it.
Thanks for the correction.
I fear what the current Repuke Congress will try to ram through, since lowering the top rat is their #1 priority.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)TPP? Because if that is the first order of business, I'm agin' it. agin' it. agin' it.
We are told all these wonderful things every time the oligarchs want to push another trade agreement over on us.
Remember how many jobs NAFTA was going to create?
CAFTA?
The World Trade agreement that opened our markets to the flood of Chinese junk?
It's great that jobs are being created. But what wages are these jobs paying?
Are they just service sector? Like masseuse? Waiters and waitresses? Or are they jobs in industries and sectors that lead to careers, steady work, don't require you to stay young and physically strong all your life and that pay well?
This speech sounds good but what is really going on?
pampango
(24,692 posts)other countries that have more "NAFTA's" than in your worst nightmare will be surprised to learn that they have been decimated by their "NAFTA's" and the WTO. It is the far right and Europe that wants to withdraw from their trade agreements.
candelista
(1,986 posts)Buncha McJobs.
QED
(2,747 posts)President Obama signaled Wednesday that, at least on international trade, he is willing to defy his fellow Democrats and his own liberal base to pursue a partnership with Republicans. Trade represents one of Obamas best chances for a legacy-building achievement in the final two years of his presidency, but he acknowledged that it is an idea he still has to sell to many of his traditional allies.
Speaking at a gathering of business leaders, Obama offered his strongest public defense of his administrations pursuit of a major 12-nation trade deal in the Asia Pacific, known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), that has been opposed by Democrats, labor unions and environmental groups.
The administration has argued that the trade deals will boost U.S. exports and lower tariffs for American goods in the fast-growing Asia-Pacific region, where the United States has faced increasing economic competition from China.
More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-says-he-willing-to-defy-democrats-on-his-support-of-trans-pacific-partnership/2014/12/03/25edcaf4-7b30-11e4-84d4-7c896b90abdc_story.html
Basically elevating corporations to nationhood status. More on that here:
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/23891-william-rivers-pitt-sick-of-secrets
840high
(17,196 posts)840high
(17,196 posts)Cha
(297,253 posts)Alkene
(752 posts)When do I get to skip my weekly food bank trips?