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by take_a_breath 2116 days ago
Most job losses ever? Or highest deficits ever? Or highest unemployment rate ever?

Does that win anyone over?

1 comments

>Most job losses ever? Or highest deficits ever? Or highest unemployment rate ever?

>Does that win anyone over?

How can you blame Trump for that when the unemployment rate was the lowest in over a decade before 2020, and the job losses / fall in unemployment was due to lockdowns he didn't support? Overall the unemployment rate is much better in Red states, which have weaker or no lockdowns: https://www.aier.org/article/unemployment-far-worse-in-lockd...

==Overall the unemployment rate is much better in Red states, which have weaker or no lockdowns==

This data is from May 9th. Do you think anything has changed in Teas, Arizona, and Florida since then?

Well we can find out: https://floridajobs.org/workforce-statistics/workforce-stati... shows 11.3% as latest numbers for Florida, https://apps.texastribune.org/features/2020/texas-unemployme... shows 8.4% for Texas (fallen for the third month in a row), and https://www.azpm.org/p/home-articles-news/2020/8/26/179229-n... shows 10.6% for Arizona. https://patch.com/new-york/new-york-city/nyc-unemployment-ra... shows New York is at 20%, and https://edd.ca.gov/newsroom/unemployment-august-2020.htm shows California's is 13.3%. So those three are still doing better (although it wasn't Trump who pushed them to lock down so again I don't see how it makes sense to blame him for the effects of lockdown).
Getting the blame is part of being the country’s chief executive. There are two main categories here, economy and health. We are performing worse than Europe on both accounts (higher death toll and higher unemployment rate). Does that tell you we are doing something wrong as a country?
I think it's a bit unfair to blame him for the unemployment rate having gotten so high, but it is fair to blame him for how long it has lasted. If he'd shown the tiniest bit of competent leadership through the pandemic, we could have locked down for 2 months, suffered the high unemployment, and then largely gotten back to normalcy(+masks) by now. Most jobs could have come back, especially if we had done something like furloughs like the UK did. Instead, it got completely out of control entirely due to his incompetence.

Unemployment being higher in locked down states makes sense. But the flipside of that statistic is that daily deaths in red states are reaching new peaks now while they've flatlined to lows in blue states.

>If he'd shown the tiniest bit of competent leadership through the pandemic, we could have locked down for 2 months, suffered the high unemployment, and then largely gotten back to normalcy(+masks) by now.

Then why haven't the Blue states that have been locked down for months gotten back to normalcy? Like California and New York? Why hasn't Melbourne gotten back to normalcy? Almost nowhere that prevented a first wave by shutting down has managed to avoid a second wave.

Oddly, you failed to mention all of Europe. they have a lower unemployment rate than the US [1].

[1] https://www.aa.com.tr/en/economy/unemployment-rate-in-eu-ris...

Looks like from your link it's 7.1%. For the no lockdown states on https://www.aier.org/article/unemployment-far-worse-in-lockd..., it's around 6%.
A single percentage point difference in unemployment data versus versus thousands of deaths. And comparing dense European countries to rural red states. Your data is devastating to your point.
The data you are giving is from early-May, it’s almost September.
Blue states can't go back to normalcy since diseased red staters can still travel freely within the country and ruin it all over again. Also because Americans are too stubborn to mask up for the privilege of normalcy.

Places like Australia have gone back to normalcy(+masks) now. Japan can pack a train full of people(+masks).

> Blue states can't go back to normalcy since diseased red staters can still travel freely within the country and ruin it all over again.

Yeah, because everyone flocks into NY and CA nowadays, and it's not the other way around.