Obama legacy middle class and jobs decline, Canada and North Dakota prosper, Embracing oil economy creates jobs and wealth, Canadian middle class better off than American
“For the well-off in this country, high gas prices are mostly an annoyance, but to most Americans they’re a huge problem, bordering on a crisis.”…Barack Obama May 2008
“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,”…Barack Obama May 2008
“Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it — whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, uh, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.”…Barack Obama
From Citizen Wells August 6, 2012.
“Obama’s “energy policy”, aka Chicago style pay to play politics, is destroying this country’s economy and jobs. Citizen Wells has kept you informed about the impact of high gas prices.
“Gas prices are going back up and currently average $ 3.49 in the US. One of the biggest reasons gasoline prices have not risen further is the downturn in the US and world economies.”
“In 2009 when Obama took office, gasoline averaged around $ 1.85 a gallon. Here is a chart of gasoline prices for the last 3 years.””
“TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline could mean 118,000 American jobs, if the U.S. government ever issues the permit.
A glimpse of what all this has cost the U.S. economy can be seen by looking north to Canada, where animal spirits have been unleashed in the energy sector. Canada’s close economic ties to the U.S. have traditionally meant that when the U.S. gets the sniffles, Canada gets swine flu. This time it’s been different. Part of the reason is that Canada’s housing market was not poisoned by a federal government push to put unqualified borrowers into homes they could not afford. After the 2008 collapse of the housing bubble in the U.S., the Canadian financial sector remained strong.
That alone was not enough to protect Canada from the effects of the U.S. recession. The manufacturing sector was hit hard, and in the first quarter of 2009 the economy contracted by an annualized 7.9%.
Yet Canada has outperformed the U.S. since then. In 2010, according to the International Monetary Fund, Canada grew at 3.2% versus 2.9% in the U.S. In 2011, the IMF estimates Canada will grow at 2.9%; unemployment is now 7.3%. The IMF’s U.S. growth forecast is 2.5% this year, and U.S. unemployment is 9.1%.
One explanation for Canada’s more robust growth is its strong commitment to energy, which has become more valuable in U.S. dollar terms under Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s inflationary policies. Alberta is now producing two million barrels per day but expects that number will grow to four to five million within a decade.”
From Zero Hedge April 23, 2014.
“The Middle Class In Canada Is Now Doing Better Than The Middle Class In America”
“For most of Canada’s existence, it has been regarded as the weak neighbor to the north by most Americans. Well, that has changed dramatically over the past decade or so. Back in the year 2000, middle class Canadians were earning much less than middle class Americans, but since then there has been a dramatic shift. At this point, middle class Canadians are actually earning more than middle class Americans are. The Canadian economy has been booming thanks to a rapidly growing oil industry, and meanwhile the U.S. middle class has beensteadily shrinking. If current trends continue, a whole bunch of other countries are going to start passing us too. The era of the “great U.S. middle class” is rapidly coming to a bitter end.
In recent years, I have been up to Canada frequently, and I am always amazed at how much nicer things are up there. The stores and streets are cleaner, the people are more polite and it seems like almost everyone that wants to work has a job.
But despite knowing all this, I was still surprised when the New York Times reported this week that middle class incomes in Canada have now surpassed middle class incomes in the United States…
After-tax middle-class incomes in Canada — substantially behind in 2000 — nowappear to be higher than in the United States. The poor in much of Europe earn more than poor Americans.
And things are particularly dire for those in the U.S. on the low end of the scale…
The struggles of the poor in the United States are even starker than those of the middle class. A family at the 20th percentile of the income distribution in this country makes significantly less money than a similar family in Canada, Sweden, Norway, Finland or the Netherlands. Thirty-five years ago, the reverse was true.
Even while our politicians and the media continue to proclaim that everything is “just fine”, the U.S. middle class continues to slide toward oblivion.”
Read more:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-23/middle-class-canada-now-doing-better-middle-class-america
From CNN Money March 19, 2014.
“North Dakota wants you: Seeks to fill 20,000 jobs”
“In a new recruiting campaign to be rolled out in May, the North Dakota Economic Development Foundation is aiming to fill more than 20,000 jobs — ranging from truck drivers and oilfield workers to receptionists and food servers.
North Dakota’s huge oil boom has spurred thousands of job seekers to flock to the state for years now. In some cities, the population has quadrupled.”
“”It is being developed to target people in states with chronic unemployment, and people in industries that are high-demand in North Dakota, including: engineering, healthcare, energy, skilled trades, transportation and information technology,” the foundation said in a statement.”
Read more:
http://money.cnn.com/2014/03/18/pf/north-dakota-jobs/
Citizen WElls 