2012 State of the Union address: on Jobs

Jill Stein: Economic Bill of Rights: unionize; fair taxation; fair trade

This means that everyone willing and able to work has the right to a job at a living wage. All of us have the right to quality education, health care, housing and utilities. Each of us has the right to unionize, to fair taxation, and to fair trade.

The promise of an Economic Bill of Rights came out of the last period of widespread, extreme economic hardship, the Great Depression. In 1944, FDR said that "true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence." And 20 years later, Martin Luther King raised up the call for an Economic Bill of Rights once again.

Jill Stein: Full Employment Program: green jobs and community needs

Our Full Employment Program will create 16 million jobs through a community-based direct employment initiative that will be nationally funded, locally controlled, and democratically protected against conflicts of interest and pay-to-play influence peddling. The program will directly create jobs in the public & the private sector. Instead of going to an unemployment office when you can't find work, you can simply go to the local employment office to find a public sector job. These 16 million jobs are 8 times the number sought in Obama's recent jobs proposal.

Barack Obama: FactCheck: Jobs increasing, but still lower than in 2008

Between Feb. 2010 & Dec. 2011, private sector employment climbed from 106,772,000 to 109,928,000. That's an increase of nearly 3.2 million jobs. And private sector employment increased by 1.9 million in 2011. That's the largest annual increase since 2.3 million jobs were added in 2005. There was also a net increase in manufacturing employment in 2011, when 225,000 jobs were added. The last time that happened was back in 1997.

But--what the president didn't mention--total employment remains nearly 1.7 million below where it was the month Obama took office, and more than 6 million below where it was at the best point in the Bush administration, in Jan. 2008.

Newt Gingrich: Bigger government lead to more food stamps, not more jobs

But bigger government and higher taxes will not lead to jobs and growth. Bigger government and higher taxes will instead lead to more people on food stamps, a situation which the President and his party defend as a fair outcome.

Economic growth and prosperity is not really at the top of Obama's agenda. He will always prefer a food stamp economy to a paycheck economy and call it fair.

For the president and a large part of the political class, it's about their power, their right to rule. That's why so much of that nearly trillion-dollar stimulus didn't create jobs but just went into the pockets of special interests who support Obama and the Democratic Party.

Ron Paul: Government picking winners and losers kills jobs

Tea Party: Real unemployment is 18%, counting under-employment

Unemployment: The December unemployment rate was reported to be 8.5%. But if you add in the people who have been looking for so long that they have stopped looking and they are discouraged, and you add in the 8 million people that are underemployed, the real rate of unemployment is 18%. It's a matter of how you want to count it.

Economic growth: Our economic growth in the last 3 years has been anemic. In 2011 alone, it was less than 2%. If we were really in a recovery, our GDP growth should be around 5% per annum. And that's still only half of what countries like China are experiencing in terms of their economic growth.