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Mitt Romney on JobsFormer Republican Governor (MA) |
A: I believe in domestic supports for our agriculture industry. I don't want to see our food supply be in the same kind of a jeopardy situation that our energy supply is in. And clearly there's a responsibility of government to make sure that our farmers are treated on the same basis as farmers in Europe & other markets that we compete with. The WTO talks [may] find a way to bring down subsidies around the world, & that'll be good news.
A: There are some good unions and some not so good. The good ones are those that say, "How can we do a better and better job helping our members have better and better skills."
Q: Can you name a few "good" unions?
A: Yeah, like the Carpenters Union, for instance, does a great job training their members and making them more effective and more efficient, and they get higher compensation as a result of it. There are also bad unions. I'm probably not going to name specific bad unions, but there are bad unions as well, which go too far and who forget that in order for them to be successful, the enterprise that they're involved with has to also be successful.
That miraculous sounding statistic is way off. It has taken since the end of 1978 for total employment in the US to grow by 50 million jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But total employment for the 15 core members of the European Union (those who joined before 2004) grew by well over 33 million between 1978 and 2005.
Romney was misquoting an outdated and highly dubious figure, which was used by an author who no longer stands behind it. Romney cited a 2005 article in The American Enterprise magazine, which said, "Since the 1970s America has created some 57 million new jobs, compared to just 4 million in Europe (with most of those in government)." The article's author told FactCheck.org he wouldn't use the figure today.
