Tuesday, February 10, 2004

Who are those other guys?

Bush's economic predictions--his riff about the benefits of international outsourcing of jobs, about the long-term benefits of privatizing social security, and particularly about the amount of new-job creation in the upcoming year--are absolutely nuts.

We've already seen one of his job-creation predictions go down the toilet. He told us when his tax-reduction package was passed that it would create 1.7 million jobs in 2003; instead we lost 53,000. And as has been noted elsewhere, the jobs that have been lost are in the high-paid fields (manufacturing, high-tech), to be replaced by retail and service jobs at much lower wages.

I'm waiting for one of the Democrats to drag out the "voodoo economics" slogan from Reagan's days in office. In the meantime, I like this comment by Senator Kerrey: "I've got a feeling this report was prepared by the same people who brought us the intelligence on Iraq."

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