New number ... 7.5 % !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"There are lies, damned lies and statistics.
Mark Twain "

Taxcutter says:
Actually Benjamin Disraeli said it first. But Disraeli and Twain are more or less contemporaries.

 

Exactly, this is like scratch ticket people who spend a thousand dollars on tickets and finally hit for 200 bucks and they shout I won! Ummm no actually you still lost. Also, the reason they put paper up over the windows when they calculate this number is because they dont want anyone to see how they actually got the number until they are sure they have the bases covered.
Can anyone provide the actual calculation they used?

 

Iriemon says: There are two types of statistics to conservatives. Those that reflect negatively on the economy, which to them are true and reliable, and those that reflect positively on the economy, which to them are made up and fabricated.

It makes it much more convenient for those invested in failure for political purposes.

 

Unemp is over 50% for black males without high school diplomas and over 30% for all black hs dropouts.

But that doesn't matter to the first black president. Go figger.

 

The Obama regime clings to the BLS's U3 report as "gospel", even though it has completely lost relevance in our economy since 2008. The U6 report is probably the most accurate, but even it fails to capture a lot of people who simply say "**** it!", and leave the work force, one way or another. U6 reports on the basis of people who are still "marginally attached" to the workforce -- but all the people who go on Social Security disability through one pretext or another are not counted... neither are all the others who simply leave the pool of available workers forever....

Here's a website that all of us, Left and Right, should bookmark: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm

 

Another conservative interjecting irrelevant racial comments into a thread that has nothing to do with blacks.

Go figger.

- - - Updated - - -

Your post is misleading because it implies the Obama administration was the first to refer to U-3 for unemployment.

As you know, that figure has been the standard used for the unemployment rate for many decades.

I don't recall conservatives arguing that the rate was irrelevant when Republican presidents were in office.

 

No, I said the the U3 report has lost relevance to our economic/employment reality since 2008! Go back to my post and you'll see. But you're right, the U3 report was used as "gospel" for many decades. Here's an interesting short history of the U3 and U6 reports during the Great Depression (FDR's): http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/u3-and-u6-unemployment-during-great-depression

Truth? I think that "they" are trying to rearrange the "normal" paradigm for the large majority of American workers. Going forward, more and more of us will be part-time workers, and we will be poorer, with lower standards of living. In return, we'll have a lot more support in the form of handout welfare from the government, and thus, more security in the downsized jobs that will be accompanied by lower expectations and achievements.

 

Via Goldman Sachs,


The second half of 2012 saw a decisive shift in US monetary policy. One aspect was the move to open-ended asset purchases of $85 billion per month.

The other aspect - and our focus today - was the adoption of a 6.5% unemployment rate as a threshold for the first hike in the federal funds rate. The motivation for the move from calendar-based guidance to outcome-based guidance is simple and compelling. It is much more sensible for a central bank to guide expectations about future policy actions in terms of an economic criterion than in terms of a particular date.

...
But the 6.5% threshold for the unemployment rate is not an ideal outcome-based target.

...
The reason is that the unemployment rate is increasingly distorted by the decline in labor force participation.

...
Labor force participation has fallen by 2.7 percentage points since the start of the 2007-2009 recession.

...
Some of this decline is clearly related to the aging of the US population. Population aging shifts the composition of the over-16 population - which forms the denominator of the participation rate. The chart below shows that changes in the composition of the population account for 1.2 percentage points of the decline in labor force participation.

This decline is clearly structural, and it will continue at an estimated pace of about 0.2 percentage points per year for the foreseeable future.



Ignoring the participation rate is a mistake. Goldman's regression shows the unemployment rate and participation gap are of similar magnitudes when related to slowing growth - a 1pt rise in unemployment or the participation gap equals around a 0.16% YoY drop in wage growth

...

the shift of jobless individuals from unemployment into inactivity is making the unemployment rate a less appropriate measure of broad labor market conditions. This has important implications for Fed policy because it implies that the committee might still be quite far from reaching the jobs side of its mandate even once the unemployment rate is back at 6%. After all, the Federal Reserve Act calls for “maximum employment”, not “minimum unemployment.” This distinction did not matter much in the past, but it is becoming increasingly important.

 

That's because the U6 unemployment number wasn't a huge factor in our employment/economic landscape until late in 2008. After that, except for a couple of weeks in January, there haven't been any Republicans in the White House.

But you're right, it is somewhat misleading, as is the following cartoon from the magnificent, incisive mind of brilliant political cartoonist, Mike Lester, of the Washington Post Writers Group. I say somewhat misleading, because Comrade Obama's fraud-balloon "recovery" has produced (for a while) a good number of full-time jobs, along with part-time ones. I still maintain that the thrust of what "they" have planned for us is more people employed, but in part-time jobs:



Notice how the "news" commentator is about to go into a "leg-tingling", bug-eyed frenzy.... -- "What'sa matter? You Cons don't like half-a-loaf, either?!"

 

Of course. Up to that point, a Republican was in office. We wouldn't want to make him look bad by using a higher UR figure.

There are 1/2 million fewer people working part time for economic reasons (ie they want full time work) and fewer overall people working part time than in Jan 2010 (about about 200k. With 6.8 million private sector jobs created since Jan 2010, that means there have been 7 million overall full time positions added, with about 200,000 moving from part time to full time.

Why would you think that Obama has "planned" for more part time people to be employed? Bigger and bigger numbers of workers are approaching their senior years and so we will see more and more people working part time because of choice. But I can't fathom a reason why Obama would plan for such a thing or think it somehow advantageous politically.

 

No, Iriemon, none of this is any invention of Obama's. Far from it. Remember, Obama's the song-and-dance "front" man who plays Pied Piper for the government's burgeoning Welfare State... the governmental "assistance" smorgasbord that will compensate American workers for having to work crappy, low-paying jobs. This whole thing is, IMHO, constructed and run at a far higher and more sophisticated level than that of the former junior-senator from the welfare ghettos of South Chicago.

No, I sense the radiant, effulgent presence of Ben Shalom Bernanke, the illustrious Federal Reserve Chairman and his "insiders", permeating all of this, Iriemon. The man is brilliant to have been able, so far, to pull off a fraud this big while simultaneously thrusting us into nearly 17 Trillion Dollars in debt. Thus, the masses will have more and more crap-jobs, with crap-pay, crap-benefits, and yes, I really do believe that a LOT of them will be part-time jobs.

The masses will be "helped along" with plenty of food-stamp credit cards, help with the rent, help with the utility bills, tax breaks (but only for "families"), and supplemental welfare handouts for all other contingencies. In this "new reality" the unemployment rate, fact or fantasy, may indeed go below Bernanke's announced 6.5% target, and then, finally, the Fed may stop kicking people in the face every stinking day, who SAVE money instead of blowing it and going stupidly into endless debt. And as long as we don't have stupendous, runaway inflation boiling up out of all of Bernanke's bogus money-creation, the kind-of, sort-of "happy ending" will be intact....

 

So your argument is that Obama and Bernanke are deliberately messing up the economy so that that more people will need Govt assistance.

Because everyone knows the best way for the party in power to win elections is to have a crappy economy.

That doesn't even make sense.

I save money, and I can guarantee you that Ben isn't kicking me in the face. I'm feeling better every time I check my portfolio.

 

In my eyes, it doesn't really matter what the number is because even at .1%, it's still too high to me. The reality is folks are still hurting everyday, we're not in recovery mode, far from it. They are continuing to have to find crap work, for crap pay, with crap benefits, to barely hold up their family. They, then, need to go to the government for assistance as they're unable to pay for their daily expenditures. With this, you see a bigger increase in needing more governmental spending. This is where folks clamor that cutting spending isn't an option right now. To a degree, I agree with them.

In believing this, this is where I believe government assistance should be one of the last things we abolish. The climate, some of these folks have to deal with, is just to unbearable for some people. I've seen many more people out of work, I've seen many more people begging for money, I've seen many more people unable to find work. Then, those who find a job, are stuck working insane hours, for hardly any money, and benefits that aren't worthy to even consider giving them that name. In yet, the government feels like they have the answer to all of this. I disagree with this notion and why I believe a freer market will be better for those who are unemployed, among other things.

In the end, this is where political & philosophical differences will come into play. I don't believe we need 'invisible hands' controlling the market, it works for itself. Folks say that you need a government propping it up, you only need a government interfering with it when you are a big corporation and you want to tip the scales in your favor. Government won't be able to fix this problem, they need to let the market fix itself. Tack this on with the Federal Reserve messing around with the monetary policies, folks will have a hard time getting anywhere in life.

 

The 1% are doing great. They control double the share of the nation's income (20%) and wealth (40%) than they did 30 years ago.

I got an idea. Let's cut their taxes even more and eliminate the estate and cut investment taxes like Romney wanted, so they can take even *more* of the nation's income and wealth. That'll do it.

 

Yep and not one thing did I say said anything about the rich, outside of those wanting to control the market, of which they do, thanks in part to the politicians that folks "vote" for.

You run with that idea, see how it works out for you.

 

Thank God we didn't.

 

None of my candidates made it into office. In fact, I didn't even get my ballot counted towards the election. Had I did, all of my votes were for Libertarian and/or Green party candidates, none of which made it into office. So yeah, I didn't vote for any corrupt politician. I'm sure everyone felt good about voting for their 'lesser of two evils'.

So which do you prefer them to be called, Satan or Devil?

 

We thank you for your support.

 

I'm glad. Now, I'd appreciate it if you would join the cause as well.

 

Thanks, but I don't approve their platform and I don't plan on throwing away my vote.

 

All you can do at this point is hope the sheeple finally reach a level of despair that they finally wake up. Keep up the good fight, we need more folks who are actually using their heads for something other than a partisan hat rack.

 

If you are voting for either of the two major corporate owned parties, and elections actually do count (which they probably never have), you are not only throwing away, you are flushing it down the drain.

 

Thanks for sharing your opinion. And for not voting for Romney and helping Obama get re-elected.

 

The thing is, what platform do you speak of? The Libertarian platform doesn't have a set 'agenda', as some folks wish to state. I have a different view and many other Libertarians have different views. You can say this is where the agenda gets lost, but it really doesn't. Folks wish to pin folks down to one thing, why? I don't generalize you as a modern liberal, why should I be generalized as a libertarian? My views speak for itself, just as yours speak for you.

You already throw your vote away. You truly don't have a choice, it's only what the big corporations want to give you the person to vote for. You put in one person, you prop up one set of big corporations, you put the other, you get the other set. As George Carlin stated, you have a choice in the type of bagels you want for breakfast, you don't have a choice in your politician.

If you want true change, then change your routine. Not directly implying to you or insulting you but, a great quote in regards to voting, 'Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results'.

 

Same stick I hear from the republican drones. If you vote for them it is you who is responsible. I voted for neither of the corporate owned butt buddies. My conscience is clear. Too bad you cannot say the same.