Those words, “It’s the Economy, Stupid!”, gave President Bill Clinton a second term, even though his administration was plagued by scandals. Voters voted their pocket-books.
Now we have a pivotal election next week. Here are the latest figures from the government’s October Jobs Report.
Wages increased 3.1%. Americans have experienced the biggest increase in take-home pay since 2008.
Not one single sector of the economy lost jobs.
Unemployment is at 3.7% which is the lowest since 1967.
Hispanic unemployment is at 4.4% which is the lowest ever–in history!
The unemployment rate for African-Americans, 6.2 percent, is near the all-time low of 5.9 percent set in May. The slight change may perhaps be attributed to the devastating hurricanes which destroyed businesses in areas with high African-American populations.
The number of employed Americans has never been higher. The 156,562,000 Americans employed in October is the twelfth record set under President Donald Trump.
250,000 new jobs were created versus 190,000 expected by the experts. 24,800 new jobs in transportation and warehousing. 5,000 new jobs in mining. Both Hillary and Obama said miners would have to find a different profession. 32,000 of those new jobs were in manufacturing, a sector which Barack Obama said was not ever coming back. “What’s he [Trump] going to do? Wave a magic wand?”
In October, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose by 5 cents to $27.30. Over the year, average hourly earnings have increased by 83 cents, or 3.1 percent.
Our GDP is growing at 3.5%. In 2016, Obama’s last year, it grew at 1.8%.
The point of this is, VOTE YOUR POCKETBOOK! All the peripheral issues are secondary. If our economy is humming along, the other things can be dealt with. President Trump’s policies are working. And if he holds the majority in Congress he can continue to push his agenda. If the Democrats take over the House, Pelosi becomes the Speaker and we will see gridlock until the next election. No more progress on the economy.
Prominent Democrats have stated, on the record, that they want to increase your taxes. Pelosi wants those “crumbs” back.
I, for one, benefited greatly from President Trump’s corporate tax cuts. No, I don’t own a corporation. But I work for a corporation and they gave me a substantial bonus and a HUGE raise in salary “courtesy of President Trump cutting the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. That means that for each million dollars we make, we get to keep an extra $140,000 that we formerly had to pay in corporate income tax.” That is a direct quote from the accountant when he called me in mid-January to tell me of my bonus and raise in salary.
Our next door neighbor has spent a half-million dollars the past four months improving the private roads which we use to access our property and doing some landscaping construction work on his property. I commented to him, “you must be doing pretty well in your business”. He confided that President Trump’s 14% corporate tax cut gave them “an extra $140,000 per million that we make.” He used almost the same exact words our corporate accountant used. His construction projects are still ongoing and employ/employed many people the past four months. I look out my office window as I write this and see two dump trucks, a flat-bed truck with some kind of equipment on it, a backhoe working away, and a really tall crane-truck to lift culverts into position. He put a lot of people to work with that tax break.
My Prediction: The Republicans will gain seats in both the Senate AND the House. That is really going out on a limb. The reason I make this outlandish prediction is…. I believe people will vote their pocketbooks. I believe the polls are wrong.
“It’s the Economy, Stupid!”
Please vote Republican to make my ridiculous prediction come true.
Jonesy
