Obama talked about “investing” again in this week’s address. And about himself.
Hi, everybody. Next week marks seven years since a financial crisis on Wall Street that would usher in some hard years for working families on Main Street. Soon after that, I took office. And we set out to rebuild our economy on a new foundation for growth and prosperity by investing in things that grow our middle class – things like jobs, health care, and education.
To translate once again like I did last week, he means things like spending, spending, and spending more tax dollars.
Today, our businesses have created more than 13 million new jobs over the last five and a half years. The unemployment rate is the lowest it’s been in more than seven years. Another 16 million Americans have gained health insurance. Our high school graduate rate is the highest it’s ever been, and more people are graduating from college than ever before. We are coming back – and stronger.
He said a lot of these same things in his previous address to the nation. He really loves to repeat statistics that make him look like a hero. Dude, you won re-election. You don’t need to campaign anymore.
But what’s this “we” and “our” talk? Whatever recovery we’ve had has been in spite of this administration’s efforts. The many laws and regulations and codes and rules that have come to pass have been a hindrance, not a help, to businesses. 13 million new jobs might have been created over the last five and a half years, but the labor force has lost eleven million workers in that same time. The percentage of our nation’s laborers working part-time is still higher than it was before the recession, so let’s not get too excited.
I’m still skeptical whenever Democrats throw out numbers regarding the newly insured. If it is 16 million, at least twenty million people are not yet insured. We haven’t seen the full implementation of the employer mandate, so we still don’t know the full effects that Obamacare will have on businesses.
As for Obama’s statement that the high school graduation rate is the highest it’s ever been, there is some doubt over the veracity of that figure.
The One continues…
Still, in an economy that’s increasingly based on knowledge and innovation, some higher education is the surest ticket to the middle class. By the end of this decade, two in three job openings will require some higher education. That’s one reason why a degree from a two-year college will earn you $10,000 more each year than someone who only finished high school. One study showed that a degree from a four-year university earns you $1 million more over the course of a lifetime.
One study. I’m guessing it’s this one done by Georgetown University in 2011.
While it’s elementary that going to college should mean that you will make more money than you would have if you did not, I had to find out where he got that “two in three job openings will require some higher education” by 2020 tidbit. He had also mentioned it in the State of the Union address earlier this year. It seems that he got that idea from a report produced by Georgetown University (yes, them again) in 2013. That’s odd, though, since the Bureau of Labor Statistics–of which Obama is the buck where it stops–had a much different projection for the year 2022:
Although a growing proportion of jobs is projected to require a postsecondary education, occupations that typically require no more than a high school diploma or equivalent are expected to add more jobs, 8.8 million, than the 6.8 million jobs projected for those requiring at least some postsecondary education.
In 2012, two-thirds of existing employment required a high school diploma or less. According to BLS projections, that fraction will barely budge by the year 2022.
Georgetown University took issue with Obama’s BLS over its methodology, and perhaps GU had a point since the bureau’s projections for the previous decade weren’t on the mark. However, Georgetown’s ability to see into the future isn’t foolproof, either. So the university’s dispute over BLS’s numbers mainly came off as sounding like an “our way is better than your way” diatribe.
Weird how Obama would go with Georgetown’s projections instead of the numbers that his own Department of Labor put forward. He must not have much faith in his government.
Once Obama was done self-affirming his great legacy, he spoke of the importance of finding the right college that suits the financial and educational needs of students and their families. That brought him to the point of his address this week, which was to plug some new government website called College Scorecard where “Americans will now have access to reliable data on every institution of higher education.” I checked it out, and it’s actually not a bad website. It gives a thorough list of colleges and universities and provides some useful information about them, allowing visitors to search for postsecondary institutions based on criteria such as location, size of the student body, types of programs, and so on. Over time, users are supposed to be able to grade the quality of the institutions, helping future prospective students decide where they want to attend.
While I don’t dislike the site, I’m sure there are many other websites that provide similar information. So again, it’s probably an excess use of taxpayer dollars, for the most part. One of the features of the website shows the general cost of attending those institooshins of hire lernin, though I don’t know why they would bother to show the costs of attending community colleges. Those colleges are going to be free, aren’t they? Free for the students, anyway.
This week’s address to the nation was essentially an infomercial to promote this new government website, but not before Obama could promote himself a little first. It might have been handier to have the site up before the school year started. At least I didn’t get a 404 error when I went to it–an improvement over the other big government-run site Obama has wanted us to visit.
