Obama's tax cuts helping the recovery

[jem]

one other tax cut...
which was exchanged for the 99ers money.

the death tax has an exemption to 5 million and it is portable for 2 years.

This typically doesn't mean anything to most people until it hits them directly... which it is now doing for my siblings and I.

So, let me say to Congress and Obama. Thank you for acting on this issue in a timely manner with very responsible legislation.

 

[Tsing Tao]

here you go, ricter. this is a semi-decent editorial on jobs from bloomberg:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-...opped-so-fast-commentary-by-alan-krueger.html

this is the last section, which is particularly insightful (for alan).

Here’s something to think about. At the end of this year, extended unemployment benefits will expire, while other people will exhaust their benefits during the course of the year. Once that happens we might start seeing more people give up looking for work, restoring the pattern where people unemployed the longest leave the labor force at a higher rate than others.

After all, the prospect of finding a job after looking for two years is small, and it probably won’t improve much even if the labor market continues to heal.

So we might well see the labor force shrinking more even as the measured unemployment rate falls. Nonetheless, we still will have a serious joblessness problem even as the unemployment rate falls.

Instead of focusing on the unemployment rate, it may be better to look at the employment-to-population ratio, or the share of the population that is employed. This rate isn’t affected by whether someone is counted as in or out of the labor force.

Tellingly, the employment-to-population rate has hardly budged since reaching a low of 58.2 percent in December 2009. Last month it stood at just 58.4 percent. Even in the expansion from 2002 to 2007 the share of the population employed never reached the peak of 64.7 percent it attained before the March- November 2001 recession.

What this indicator tells me is that we weren’t creating enough jobs long before the recession that began in December 2007. If this pattern holds, even in recovery, it points to a much deeper and disturbing problem for the U.S. economy.

indeed. that is what i was referring to when you look at the labor participation rate that the BLS provides. it is telling all in itself of a problem far greater than seasonal factors. there is a structural problem beneath the surface.