Will the real capitalists please step forward?

Warren Buffett and President Obama (White House) and Mitt Romney (Reuters) Shhhh. Don't tell anybody on the political right about this, but with today's jobs report, private sector employment has now finally moved into net positive territory under President Obama.

When President Obama took office, there were 110,985,000 workers in the private sector, and the number was dropping fast thanks to the Bush economic crisis'more than 800,000 jobs had been lost in the previous month alone.

Today, there are 111,020,000 workers in the private sector. Now I know that's just an increase of 35,000, and that's nowhere near enough, but don't forget that it took a little more than a year to finally stop the bleeding from the Bush recession, and since February, 2010 we've added 4,247,000 private sector jobs.

Now, compare Obama's record of 35,000 private sector jobs created despite inheriting the worst economy since the great depression with George W. Bush's private sector jobs record. When he took office, there were 111,631,000 private sector jobs. Eight years later, that number had shrunk by 646,000.

As it turns out, the weakest part of the jobs market under President Obama is the public sector. Since he took office, we've lost 608,000 public sector jobs. In Bush's eight years in office, we added 1,741,000 public sector jobs.

Oh, and the stock market? Under Bush, the Dow dropped from 10,578 to 7,949'a 24 percent decrease. Under Obama, it's gone from 7,949 to 13,045, a 64 percent increase.

To recap, under Obama:

• Private sector jobs: Up by 35 thousand
• Public sector jobs: Down 608 thousand
• Stock market: Up by 64%

And under Bush:

• Private sector jobs: Down by 646 thousand
• Public sector jobs: Up by 1.7 million
• Stock market: Down 24%

Now, I'll admit I think it's very bad for the economy that public sector hiring has dropped by so much, and I believe President Obama deserves some of the blame because he took too long to challenge the foolishness of Republican austerity demands. But if somebody forced you to say which of these two records looked more like the Republican fantasy of what socialism would look like, you have to admit, it's the record belonging to Bush.

To put it another way: there's a reason Warren Buffett supports President Obama, and it's not because "Forward" is Euro-Marxist slang.