via Gallup.com
The official unemployment rate, which cruelly overlooks the suffering of the long-term and often permanently unemployed as well as the depressingly underemployed, amounts to a Big Lie.This is what so irks me about the political, government and economic specialist in the United States. I'm sitting in my chair and I know this.
And it's a lie that has consequences, because the great American dream is to have a good job, and in recent years, America has failed to deliver that dream more than it has at any time in recent memory. A good job is an individual's primary identity, their very self-worth, their dignity -- it establishes the relationship they have with their friends, community and country. When we fail to deliver a good job that fits a citizen's talents, training and experience, we are failing the great American dream.
Gallup defines a good job as 30+ hours per week for an organization that provides a regular paycheck. Right now, the U.S. is delivering at a staggeringly low rate of 44%, which is the number of full-time jobs as a percent of the adult population, 18 years and older. We need that to be 50% and a bare minimum of 10 million new, good jobs to replenish America's middle class.
I hear all the time that "unemployment is greatly reduced, but the people aren't feeling it." When the media, talking heads, the White House and Wall Street start reporting the truth -- the percent of Americans in good jobs; jobs that are full time and real -- then we will quit wondering why Americans aren't "feeling" something that doesn't remotely reflect the reality in their lives. And we will also quit wondering what hollowed out the middle class.
Why don't the so called best and brightest?
Simple. They want the public to continue acting as if all is well instead of preparing for the worst.
Agree. The basic unemployment rate as stated is nonsense. How many of the population have full-time jobs? That and how much are they over-taxed? It is currently unsustainable. Need to start slicing and dicing federal government. Big time.
ReplyDeleteagreed. no external threat is as dangerous as our trade, tax, social spending and defense policies. we need to get our government to live within its means and stick to it.
Deletesequestration is a pathetic start but it is a start. we'll see if leadership can handle even tiny pain. if they can't then what comes next will change all our world's.
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ReplyDeleteOur government is overfocused on metrics. At the end of the day, metrics are based on statistics, and statistics can be massaged and played with for desired effects. There is a disconnect between the people measuring the metrics, and the reality that is on the ground.
ReplyDeleteAs military members and aficionados, this should logically make sense to us. During the Vietnam war the army and marines became infatuated with inflated body counts, meanwhile the AF was putting one bomb on 8 planes when each plane could individually carry 8 bombs. Why? Because the AF was low on ammo and someone was infatuated with high sortie rates. In many ways the civilian side of government is making the same mistakes.
My most favorite metric that you frequently hear about on the news, is "Consumer Confidence". Think about that for a sec. A metric based not on how the economy is doing, but on how people feel the economy is doing. Their willingness to spend money and go into debt, or as I like to call it, "The sucker index."
I think true unemployment, not just those seeking unemployment benefits, is probably double what the rate is i.e. closer to what Western Europe experiences e.g. double-digit unemployment.
ReplyDeletethe West has bought into the globalized free-marketeering of our economy and offshored tens of millions of manufacturing jobs to China, Vietnam, India, etc., thus eviscerating the middle-class of the industrialized world. Meanwhile, those corporation continue to make profits, but dodge paying taxes by incorporating overseas in places like Ireland, Cayman islands.
Meanwhile, banks keep offering waves of cheap loans in the form of mortgages and credit-cards which the very stressed middle-class has used to try to keep afloat because real income has stagnated for the past 40 years and new good-paying jobs are few and far between. Keep in mind, worker productivity in the US has consistently increased over the same period, yet share less in the profits.
But as long as corporations and financial institution keep writing checks to political candidates in the US, this trend will continue to hamstring the economy and the middle-class.
Make a point of buying domestically made goods, stop shopping at Target or Walmart and support local and domestic businesses.
Yup and the newest fad in right now is the outright flirtations behavior towards removing Frank-Dodd and other regulations enacted following 2008.
DeleteTalk about repeating the definition of "insanity".
With the industrial base and jobs eviscerated in favor of the "new economy" (money priesthood con artistry supreme!), you also dismantle your tax base. You dismantle your tax base, you have to borrow money because raising taxes to sustain the empire's costs would cause riots. So what happens? you have the largest wealth transfer in history flowing upwards.
1000 billionaires will never buy as many consumer products as 100 million blue collar workers. NEVER! In a economy dependent on 70 percent plus consumer spending, this is essentially taking a sledgehammer to the goose that lays the golden eggs.
But excluding-type capitalism works that way. Just ask the renaissance-era inhabitants of Venice.
Dodd-frank doesn't matter. It is the "too big too fail" attitude. Why should anyone worry about risks if they know they will get bailed out?
DeleteI also don't agree with Fannie and Freddie buying mortgages nor low or no money down mortgages. People were being given loans they couldn't afford.
The problem is not one of globalisation
DeleteChina didn't 'steal' high paying US manufacturing jobs.
Google Edmund Conway iPod
Its a but old now, but, for a $300 iPod, $100 went straight to apple, $100 went straight to the retailer, and $3 went to China.
$3. That's what China gets per iPod.
Do you consider $3 per iPod 'high paying', and that wasnt just wages, those three bucks had to cover factory costs too.
We live in a world where low end assembly is valueless, all making apple pay $20 per pod to a US mfger will do is make Samsung wildly richer.
We do need to come up with a solution for what people are going to do in the future, blame China isn't a solution.
It s exactly the same situation here. In France published unemployment is 10%, but it seems to be 20% in reality. They remove every people they can from count.
ReplyDelete10% are only in continental fFrance, only people That recieve jobless benefit.
Our government hasn't his citizen in mind, Just big firms interest.
Our président apply "liberalism" when he was elected on "socialism", si everybody here wanted hum out, until fucking terrorism.
Now ,fucking statisticians say he get 30% more popularity, without doubt false, so je want to continue.
Before terrorism he was below 10% ( in adjusted pools).
Its all about how you measure unemployment, really. Given certain parameters.
ReplyDeleteBut yes, 5.6 percent is utter bullshit. You should go to John Williams' Shadowstats for a better measurement of unemployment using the government's own data (which is a bit hilarious and telling).
The "unemployment is supposedly low, but where are the jobs and economic benefits/recovery?" line is common among both republican and democrat lines, both conservative and liberal. Dont believe me? you will read similar sentiment on Mother Jones as you would on Newsmax.
The only ones that dont believe it, really, are skeptics of neoliberal economic voodoo. As if the DOW jones is reflective on the incomes of blue collar workers in the midwest, or anybody not in the high tech google exclusive club (cesspool) in San Fran /rolls eyes/. So way to go america, i guess; you have an entire country ruled by the financial elite priesthood of Jordan Beltford/Bernie Madhoff-ish figures. Us who live in the realm of rationality call this "kleptocracy" when exchanged with "oligarchy", with neither word being incorrect.
At the risk of irritating some here, the healthcare issue was taken care of the wrong way. There needed to be a universal healthcare apparatus (much like Frances, rather than the UK or Canadas), rather than mandating a private insurance product, which obviously proves the incestuous relationship between corporate rulers and "our" government.
Now you have employers affecting full time positions to circumvent the mandates in the law. Well done.
Of course, PPACA wasn't a democratic creation. Mitt Romney signed a similar law into effect during his governorship in Massachusetts and such laws were conceived during Johnsons administration. Irony. Republicans should be taking credit rather than trying to snuff out their offspring.
"recovery", like "infinite economic growth", is cornucopian nonsense. The next person that argues "goods aren't scarce, they're only priced wrong" is going to get garrotted with my bootlaces. ;)