The Middle Class Economy Under George Bush

   Stats, stats, and more stats. I just love statistics, especially when they happen to make the spin machine from Bush and company look worse than idiots.

   Family Health Insurance has gone up 80.8 percent since the year 2000. the average premium for family health insurance comes in at $11,480 per year. It was at $6,348 in 2000.

The number of uninsured Americans is also up to 46.6 million in 2005 compared to 39.8 million in 2000.   Source

  The Wall Street Journal, “Since the end of the recession of 2001, a lot of the growth in GDP per person – that is, productivity – has gone to profits, not wages.   

The real median earnings of both male and female full-time, full-year workers declined between 2004 and 2005 by 1.8 percent and 1.3 percent, respectively.[15]  Median weekly earnings have risen only 0.9 percent between 2000 and 2006 compared with 7.1 percent growth between 1996 and 2000 under the Clinton Administration.[16]

   Job creation? Not hardly.

   Non-farm payroll employment up by only 5.2 million since Bush was elected while it rose 22.7 million under President Clinton. Employment growth has averaged only 70,000 per month under Bush which is much lower than the roughly 150,000 per month job growth needed to keep up with the population growth.  Previous administrations have been known to have had gains of 300,000 to 400,000 per month job growth.

Private sector job creation has been especially poor during the Bush presidency, with an average annual job growth rate of only 0.5 percent per year since 2001. Just 3.8  million private sector jobs have been created during the Bush presidency, compared with over 20 million private sector jobs during the Clinton presidency.   Source

    Check out this fact on our United States poverty levels.

More American families and children face severe financial problems.  The average annual increase in the poverty rate during President Bush’s first term is second only to that during George H.W. Bush’s administration and contrasts sharply with the declines in the Clinton and Kennedy-Johnson Administrations.[35]  The poverty rate has increased 12 percent to 12.6 percent since 2000.[36]  Nearly thirty-seven million Americans were living in poverty in 2005,[37] an increase of 5.4 million over the 2000 level, the year before President Bush took office.[38]  Poverty has hit America’s children particularly hard.  According to the latest Census report, almost one out of every six American children lives in poverty.[39]  The number of children living in poverty has increased 6.5 percent during the Bush Administration.[40]  

   Democratic Policy Committee for more stats and info.

   Though I generally try to stay away from statistics provided by any political party, I went to their sources, and they are valid.

 

Tags: George Bush middle class poverty jobs income Bill Clinton   employment