Fellas, the economy has a mind of its own and has always been cyclical. The government can nudge it around and give it incentives, but in the biggest sense it is the result of a complex of factors not entirely controllable by any government. Like COL Gene, many keep harping that the jobs that are being created are lower paying jobs than the ones that were "lost" (whatever that means), the implication (or explicit claim) being that that's Bush's fault.
Perhaps an analogy with the stock market is fair to make. Many felt, during the early 1990's, that unimpeded growth and a continually rising stock market were inevitable, but we found out that the market had wildly overvalued the tech stocks and they came crashing back down, wiping out a lot of spurious wealth with them. That's partly because the stock market, and our economy in general, doesn't exist in a vacuum. The fact that many of the "new" jobs are lower paying is just a reflection of a similar phenomenon, the overvaluing of labor, which is now going through a correction. We can't just "wish" for high-paying jobs. Someone has to be an employer first, meaning the economy has to pick up enough steam for new venture capital investment, and these jobs are being created in a buyer's market. Further, the growth in self-employment in small business has been rather dramatic since 2000 and, if I remember correctly, isn't reflected in the jobs numbers that COL Gene and others keep complaining about, which, it turns out, haven't been as god-awful as have been claimed ad nauseum.
The deficit matters and should be responsibly dealt with, but I believe the job situation and the economy in general are in far better shape than many are willing to admit. If we use the late 1990's as the standard against which we measure things economically, we're going to be disappointed for some time to come, but that should be understood for what it is, an unrealistic standard.
Cheers,
Daiwa
