Hi doma,
Or put another way: when the statistics suit you, you use them; and when they don't, they are lies, damn lies!!
But actually, would you mind pointing me to the source of your jobs numbers. They don't seem to match the recent government-released reports, so I am curious who is creating them. Or maybe I have missed some part of the report you are referencing. Here's the table I am using from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm
By the way, the use of seasonal adjustments is not controversial. But if you are concerned by them, I suggest you compare January 2011 with January 2012. That way you can look at non-seasonally adjusted comparisons which make sense - because the seasonal fluctuations are comparable. From January 2011 to January 2012 the number of the seasonally-unadjusted employed has risen from 137.6m to 139.9m over the year. That's an increase of 2.3m. And a long enough period to result from a policy rather than a season.
The employment to population ratio is 58.5%. Now this is a ratio. And a ratio has a numerator and a denominator. The number of people working is going up (see previous paragraph). So the numerator is increasing. I guess that is not where your issue lies. Indeed, the employment trend is our friend.
So that tells me that the issue you are worried by is in the denominator. The population is growing. Why is the population growing? One reason - the number of elderly people is increasing. So as a proportion of the population, there are more retirees. The paradox of a successful medical industry: you end up with greater life expectancy. For you, this is a bad thing - the cause of wars and economic misery. For me, it poses a question about retirement ages and medicare costs. Fortunately, social security is working well from a financial perspective.
Now since a good proportion of all retirees who retire during any year quit working in December, the good news is that the population denominator is unlikely to deteriorate further through 2012. Indeed, if the number of jobs keeps increasing, the employment-population ratio will likely improve during the rest of the year. If things continue along this path, it will likely also improve year over year, as it did (just) between January 2011 and January 2012. In January 2011, the employment-population ratio was 58.4% (vs 58.5% now).
How do debts get repaid? Well, fortunately, interest rates are very low right now. So the interest obligations are small for newly issued debt. When it comes to repayments of principle, you have the choice of rolling over the debt, or repaying it. Fortunately,over longer periods, even low rates of inflation tend to reduce the real value of principle. But hopefully, in the meanwhile, the US economy will produce the growth which provides the surplus which reduces debt as a proportion of GDP by a decent amount.
How do taxes get lowered? I am hoping they get raised on higher incomes so that such folks get to pay their share of the costs of the economy. US taxes as a proportion of GDP are small by comparison with those in the UK and the rest of Europe.
How does spending get increased? I thought you wanted lower taxes. If you want more spending, I suggest you adopt a higher tax budget for the US. The notion that lower taxes yield higher tax receipts is unfortunately a myth. This can only really work in a punitively high tax economy.
Less people are contributing tax? Not so.
More are sucking on government teats? Government employment has dropped. The encouraging rate of jobs growth in the US emanates from the private sector. Are you talking about the elderly sucking on government teats? The social security system works pretty well. But maybe as people are living longer, the US has to consider raising the age of retirement.
Time to start another war? I think the US' President, whose skin colour is not entirely white just like the folks you are talking about, is quite keen to avoid doing so these days. He prefers his drones and his strikes against terrorists, so as to avoid, as best as possible, the costs and casualties of another war. And other than Neocon Republicans, as I read it, most US folks don't wish to see a war either. Post Iraq, they are keen to exit Afghanistan and focus on the homeland if they can. So I don't see the electoral advantage you presume.
At the same time, I think no country can accept that Iran should be allowed to close the Straits of Hormuz to international shipping. There's a difference between elective wars, and wars that are forced upon a country.
I tend to agree that wars have an economically productive Keynesian effect. But this can be achieved more beneficially via government infrastructure projects. US infrastructure could do with a makeover so I think this would be a good idea. I'd try to set them up so they wind down in four or five years, by which point the private sector should be employing the bulk of the spare capacity in the economy.
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