liberty, individual freedom and the free-market are the only thing to bring us real hope and change. we will be back next week to give third-party candidates a chance to say how they make america better. they give for watching. [cheers and applause] [cheers and applause] style, off the field. >> clayton, clayton! >> thank you. >> brenda: forget the balloons and confetti dropping because job growth is still stalling and our debt keeps soaring. president obama and governor romney both saying they can fix it, but whose plan will actually do it? hi, everyone, i'm brenda buttner, this is bulls and bears. here they are, the bulls and bears this week, gary b smith, tobin smith. jonas max ferris along with larry glazier and susan, welcome to everybody. so, larry, unemployment still

above 8%, what is it going to take to get the job market roaring back? >> sure, well, the president's jobs plan is just not cutting it, and you know, we know when we dig beneath the surface, the situation is much worse than the headline data suggests. we know that the underemployment rate, a comprehensive data level is 15 mers in this country and know that the labor participation rate, a reflection of whether people are actually looking for jobs is at its lowest level since the early 1980's, their wages are barely keeping pace with inflation. >> how are we going to get better, larry. it's only a half hour show. >> how we're going to make it better by getting the unskilled workers skills for. that's how we're' going to make it better. >> brenda: this is the 30th month of job growth and--

>> and we're better off, for people who forget fall of 2008, 2009 we were losing 800,000 jobs a month and gdp was contracting and we were on the brink of financial armageddon. to think that we're not better off, is revisionist history. that's not to say the growth is where we need it to be, but we're in a much better place. >> brenda: gary b, you read something different from the numbers? >> exactly, and i just read the numbers. it's easy for the left to say, oh, my gosh, if obama hadn't stepped in, you know, the world would have ended up in ashes, but we don't know what would have happened if the government didn't do tarp and the stimulus plan. all we have are the numbers and if, when obama took office, as larry mentioned, the real unemployment right factoring, people that stopped looking for jobs was 11%, now it's 16%, so the real unemployment rate has gone up

30%. now, you can make up stories, tell tales, whatever, but those are the numbers, so for anyone to say i'll take the opposite side of what susan says, we're better off, has me straching my head. >> let's talk at numbers, such as the stocks and bonds numbers, they're clearly saying things aren't that bad. >> yeah, maybe only 10% of the people actually own stocks. the other 90% don't feel better. look it, sort of the let's beat the heck out of the number and go back to the real numbers. gary's right, that the real number that count is the unemployment rate and the underemployment rate. and that is the optimism goal and people are starting to lose optimism. the idea that the number we got on friday, shows 95,000 jobs, clearly says that maybe obama was the greatest of all time, but right now we're slowed down the last three quarters and decelerating and the same stuff the last three

years, it's not going to happen. >> jonas out there in las vegas, you can bet on this one. you're actually looking at weekly jobless claims. you see some trend to the positive there. >> and it's marginally improving. it needs to be more, like, wow, we're-- and laughing like the unemployment people don't matter in the world. stock holders matter, too. they're doing a lot better than four years ago, if you own a business, publicly traded or not. in all likelihood you're doing a lot better than four years ago, corporate profits are higher by a wide margin. now, the unemployed are worse off. much of the labor force is worse off than they were four years ago, but that's not everybody of concern as we're going to focus on it here, but there are parts of the economy that are significantly better, notably, people that own businesses and that's an important part of the economy, they're people, too. so, yeah, right now, the labor market's weak and sluggishly improving. the stock market is doing well and-- >> but, larry, small

businesses are not hiring, they may have cash and big businesses do, too, but they're not using it to invest and hire. >> i beg to differ with jonas, it could be worse, not the greatest strategy and economic plan. we need-- >> you don't-- you go into business to hire people. let's not pooh-pooh the cash, that's why you go into people to hire people, that's not your goal. you want to make a the lot of money. >> brenda: isn't that how you grow? >> profits are high. >> and wages can grow and can help grow profits and-- >> and the job creating in the '90s, that was bad, that was it? i don't follow that. >> and to have a good. >> the president's plan has been effective. the president's plan has been effective for boosting the stock market and stimulus has boosted the stock market, but little to help americans, that's a failed policy.

>> brenda: go ahead, gary. >> and again, we talked about the stimulus and susan made the point that by gosh, if boll hadn't stepped in things would have been worse. well, in theory, obama knew what he was stepping into and yet at the time when he was elected and when they passed stimulus he stayed at this point in time right now here in late 2012, the unemployment rate, with all the stimulus that was passed, will be about 5 1/2%. we now know, as we spoke earlier, it's 8%, so, even given all that mess that he knew was happening, he said the unemployment rate would be much lower and-- >> it's a lot higher. >> gary b, you're smart on the numbers, you know nobody predicted how bad that crisis really was at the time. >> so that's the next argument. oh, it was bad, but didn't know how bad, i got it. >> you knew both sides got it wrong. >> how donning does he get it keep making that argument is my question. >> look, this is-- excuse me, this is september 2012, so in the here and now,

we all -- i mean, the numbers, you can't fight with. we are decelerating. the question is, we have new plans to accelerate. my point is, your old plan has run out of gas and what's the new plan? do the old plan again. it sounds like a "who" song. >> give it more time. >> i don't know if we're decelerating it looks like the jobs figures more people are hired. seven months ago we were worse off as an economy than we are today. >> and manufacturing is like 500,000 jobs. >> no, no. >> hold on. >> and actually contracting. >> decelerating. >> and manufacturing. >> and maybe in july they didn't have the manufacturing shutdowns they were supposed to have and we're seeing it now. you can't start ticking up the numbers, the overall trend is 30 months of job growth we haven't had job loss and the major drag you guys know is government jobs. >> why does the unemployment

rate keep going up, with the jobs growth? >> that's down, because people dropped out of the job market. >> let's return to the decelerating comment, what industry is worse off than a year ago, what industry has less employees than a year ago, what's decelerating? >> and the gdp growth, decelerating is the job creation, decelerating is every measure that the economy has started, has slowed down. from the last, you know, nine months. those are the facts and the acceleration is in stuff that, you know, really is leading to long growth. >> oh, no, are you starting to-- >> susan, you mentioned that manufacturing is the strong suit of the economy. if you look at the data. dehe spite the talk about the gm bailout, and all of those data points, manufacturing is slowing in this country. >> after huge increase that nobody thought we would ever get back to again. >> everybody said that manufacturing is dead in the united states and came back and so you think it's going to

come back, even though the trend is going down a bit? >> absolutely. >> okay, that's got to be the last word. thanks, guys. coming up, neil's just back from the conventions and after speaking to nearly everyone on both sides of the aisle, he says the choice is crystal clear. both parties are embracing who they are, but forget red or blue, what does that mean for your green? that's at the bottom of the hour. but up here first. >> the tale of two states, one taking a step towards making collective bargaining a constitutional right and the other getting its financial house in order after reigning in the power of public unions. first day at school.

what's in there? he's about to fall over. just anything he might need.

there's a box of tissues on the bottom and some band-aids; there's a whole first-aid kit, actually. mom, i can handle it from here. announcer: you don't have to be perfect... bye-bye. have a great day. that's too much pressure. have the day you have. to be a perfect parent. yes! timothy: there are two people in the world who want you more than anything. they'll make some mistakes, but they will love you more than you can ever imagine. announcer: there are thousands of children in foster care who will take you just as you are.

bulls be and bears, on the fox news channel. keep it here. >> brenda: unions beginning a big in their battle making collective bargaining a constitutional right in michigan. the state supreme court ordering that referendum to be put on the ballot this november, but over in wisconsin, they're starting to see the badger state's budget improving after governor scott walker rolled back the power. and toby, which state has it right? >> and i'm looking at the numbers here. and my gosh, wisconsin, they're not that far apart. i don't know if you know the geography there. >> thank you, toby. >> and number one, and any way you measure it, unemployment rate, the debt, the way that they-- the taxes have gone up, by

dropping rate and they're the quintessential state like the mind warp. and somehow michigan's gone into a time warp and just gb back to the 1960's, we're going to do greatere or maybe through the 1990's, i don't know. but wisconsin up. michigan needs a brain check. >> brenda: what do you think, susan? >> well, i think michigan is looking at what happened in wisconsin and is saying, we don't want to see the rights of our workers stripped away by the whim after politician and toby, when you look at the wisconsin budget and pick apart what they did to close the gap, the majority of it was cuts in education, which is a real shame when you think of wisconsin has one of the best public school systems in the nation and they're cutting their education budget back. >> by a small percentage. >> no, cutting a large part of it, a large part of the budget decrease. and cutting programs for poor people. >> if you look at the numbers, if you were a corporation, would you go to wisconsin or michigan? >> well, i think the answer is

easy, it's wisconsin. you know, the left always thinks, you know, they always paint this picture like it's marlon brando and on the waterfront and the beleaguered workers, we must stand up for them. that hasn't been that way for 06 years now, maybe 70 years, for crying out loud. basically what michigan wants to do is mandate monopolies and it's funny because this country has been so anti-monopoly for so long. that's what a union is, it's a monopoly, artificially high wages for those lucky enough to get job. when the companies have to pay higher wages than normal they don't have enough to pay other people. at gm if the wages were half of what they were in the heyday, they would have had the same number of workers? no a lot more workers, when you have more workers, you have a bigger tax base, you have more revenues coming in, it's all good. wisconsin is going to win this war. michigan is going to be

looking back like they're in the be stone age. >> brenda: jonas? >> a lot has changed in the auto industry. a long time ago they had high wages, too, relative to the rest of the country and the auto industry was very successful. there's more going on than just the union wages. you know, and also, wisconsin is a very different economy than michigan and we'll say, yeah, they're close together. and one is making cheese and the other is making cars. the point is, unions in theory could close a budget gap if they do what garrisi saying, raising the wages, by the state tax rate and in the short return, that could help close a gap. in the long run, the jobs are going to states that aren't like michigan, which would be wisconsin and other states. so it couldn't work for the state. michigan has to get on board with the people, i mean, through those that don't have unions. >> does it matter? union participation rates are going like this. >> you used my-- and you know, brenda, the measures have no place in the the political process and no

place on the ballot, but let the workers decide if they want to join a union nell' do it. the reason why union participation is less than 50% of what it was in this country. unions need to reinvent themselves to make themselves relevant to the process and fighting and spending, now, over 100 million dollars was spent in wisconsin, that could have been the poor education student and 10 million of taxpayer money, michigan cannot afford to waste that money in a political debacle like they did in wisconsin. >> we've got to learn from these mistakes. >> that's the last word and toby, you did, you invented that. >> this is my temple-- right mere. >> the last word. did you hear this? >> mitt romney is the guy who said corporations are people. no, governor romney, corporations are not people. >> someone here

>> mitt romney is the guy who said corporations are people. no, governor romney, corporations are not people. people have hearts. they have kids. they get jobs. they get sick. they die. they dance. they live. they love. and they die. and in fact-- >> okay, gary, we heard it. that's the democratic senate

candidate in massachusetts, right, corporations are not people? >> absolutely not, brenda. this is the most anti-business screed that has come out of the the left. you can basically put the chyron the name things on the screen, under elizabeth warren and put business is evil. she talked about what people are. what do you think that corporations are? it's a collective of people that build things, provide services, they provide us food. they take care of us when we're ill, for crying out loud. that's what corporations are. they're not some evil borg floating into space and trying to fire missiles at it and nothing can knock it out of the sky for crying out loud. corporations are people like everyone on the panel working for a good. and i hate that speech that she made and i'll hate it until the day i die. >> brenda: and jonas, you

didn't hate it quite as bad. >> the u.s. corporation is wonderful, it's the basis of capitalism, why our country has been more successful than any other country. you don't want the state to consider it a people. it's contracted by people and owned by people, but lives forever, i don't know if she meant this, but the state put people to death when they do crimes. in america, the state can't shut a corporation down just because some people there broke the law. we wouldn't want them to do that. a corporation can live forever, and some people might go to jail in the company, but you don't want it to be treated as a person. >> brenda: let's talk about it legally. toby, it is a culture, right, what does that mean. >> corporations and companies have their own culture and in that sense, that culture is how people act, when the boss is not there and into their communities. let's not be literal here, for crying out loud, this is a shareholder business and those

are employees, and people and see never had a job and that's why she's boo-hoo, hoo. >> there's a corporate structure and personhood, but it does not imbue all the rights of a corporation on to a person. and this is what people think of mitt romney, they think he cares more about corporations than-- >> that was obvious. >> well, it plays really well and sometimes the things have a kernel of truth in them. >> brenda: larry respond. >> look, blaming corporations does not solve the problems in this country and blaming-- you can't say that government is a person. the people-- people blame government, why not? >> so go, so go the genera, so goes the economy and welfare and that's len electric and general motors. company rely on hiring people and people need companies. >> brenda: all right. what do you think, gary? >> well, look, this is in fact, and i believe it is an attack on business, and by virtue then, an attack on mitt romney. i'd like to know, okay, let's just say that mitt romney is a

business man. good for him, i say! he created jobs, he brought us services. look, his motive undeniably profit. so what? that's what makes people do things, that makes the farmers go out and grow food. if we didn't have that, do you think the farmers would say i'm growing the corn for free? >> the middle class is afraid that he'll look out more for of his interests than-- >> well, look who is employment the middle class. >> brenda: thanks, guys, thanks so much. we've got to go. and special thanks to susan for joining us. so, a weak jobs report. a weak manufacturing report,

>> predictions and gary b, you're up. >> brenda, the only way to beat gas prices, rising gas prices at this point, start shopping online, continue shopping online. amazon up 36%. >> brenda: larry do you like amazon, bull or bear? >> i'm a bear. the stock already priced at accessful kindle fire launch. >> brenda: what is your prediction? >> epa, overseas markets are where the real action is and continue to be, more stimulus is on the way, like it or not. >> brenda: gary b, bull or bear on that. >> i am bearish on that one. >> brenda: jonas your prediction. >> stocks have reclaimed the pre-crisis high this week except financials, but t