mhaze

I think Trump’s economic policies will be a disaster for the USA and bad news for the rest of us (if he actually carries them out – his record last time round was that his actions were not quite as bad as his pre-election policies). Tariffs hurt the poor and working people most and will increase prices. Mass deportation will wreak havoc with the labour market. Weakening the independence of the Fed will probably make inflation worse.

But you are right that that Davidson’s misunderstanding of the employment data is factually and monumentally incorrect.

For the record the has been only one period since WW2 in which the USA recorded three consecutive years of falling employment – at the time at the dot-com bubble/crash in 2010.

http://data.bls.gov/dataViewer/view/timeseries/LNU02000000

I find it inconceivable that an academic whose job title is “Chair in Politics and Economics at Monash University”

a) Doesn’t understand what a fairly basic article on economic statistics is actually saying;
b) Didn’t have a half-competent colleague, student or friend to help with some fact checking; and
c) Was so unfamiliar with the US economy – or the developed economies in general - that he didn’t realise immediately that this cannot be true.

What no-one seems to draw attention to is the fact that this election was the pivoting point point of symbiosis vs parasitism !
Symbiosis won & the parasitic abhor the democratic outcome !

There is much to fear in Trump’s economic policies,
Rhian,
Going by past performance, the dread you express is nothing in comparison to where the Woke Democrats were leading !
In Australia it's Labor = Woke democrats & Coalition = Republican. The really funny part is that just about all Australians in favour of having a republic here are in fact Labor supporters !
The speech muzzling proposed by Labor is to gauge the apathy of the Electorate. This is far more scary than the Trump economic policies you're unnecessarily worry about unless of course you are from the parasitic half of the Nation !