Old Doom friend mtnmike was kind enough to send this link around. He’d seen our recent post on statistical hanky panky, and was struck how his thoughts were moving in a similar direction from ours.
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Greg Easterbrook said, “Torture numbers and they will confess to anything.” Barrack Obama said, “Americans don’t torture.” Either Barrack Obama doesn’t count number-torturing as a crime or his nose is growing.
Let’s talk about unemployment numbers. . . real unemployment numbers. The announcement that the unemployment rate declined slightly to 9.4 percent in July while only 247,000 additional jobs were lost has been greeted as good news. Really?
How is it possible for the unemployment rate to essentially remain unchanged when 247,000 jobs have been lost? The reason is simple — the number of people who stopped looking for work rose dramatically. Six hundred thirty-seven thousand additional people no longer consider themselves looking for work.
If we include the normally counted number of unemployed as well as those who have recently given up looking for work and those who have taken a part-time low paying job because they can’t find full-time work, the implication is that the unemployment rate for July would be at 16.3 percent! And our president stood in his cocky stern manner and announced that employment is getting better on his watch?
What about the cash for clunkers program? To begin with, what right does the federal government have to give $4500 of our tax money to each person who has a junk car to trade in? What? You say the federal government owns the car business and is using our money to subsidize their business!
Why would we ever accept such a ridiculous expenditure of our precious tax dollars as cash for clunkers? So is it really a good program for anyone other than the federal government? No! Most of these people trading in their clunkers for your tax money owned their older cars outright and now they own a big old hairy car payment, higher taxes, higher insurance costs, higher license costs, and an asset that is depreciating faster than Barrack Obama’s ratings.
What about our government giving new home buyers $8000 as down payment assistance? What right do they have to dole out our tax money for broke people to buy new homes? I have had two of my real estate friends say that if you aren’t in the first-time-home-buyer loop, you are out of the loop altogether as the federal assistance program represents the balance of home buyers today. But then, the federal government also now owns the mortgage companies.
Wasn’t the housing bubble created by loaning people a 100% or more on their home purchases? Isn’t this a re-run of that same program? Well, not exactly, the $8000 is a gift from the federal government that won’t have to be paid back. Interestingly enough, the federal government doesn’t have any money to give out as gifts without taking it from someone else.
Even more interesting is that most of those taking advantage of our newest housing scam are in an income bracket where they pay little to no federal taxes. This newest give away is insane! Talk about torturing numbers, if it were a real crime Obama would get life without the possibility of parole!
So what about the reports that real GDP losses are slowing? And that our economy is getting better every day under the steady hand of Barrack Obama and company. Please read this excellent article [1] by fellow blogger Pete Murphy to shed a little light on that subject.
The current government daylight heist is our healthcare. The definition of Communism is, “A system of government in which the state plans and controls the economy and a single, often authoritarian party holds power, claiming to make progress toward a higher social order in which all goods are equally shared by the people.” You decide how or if that definition fits our young president.
It’s all smoke and mirrors aimed at an ulterior motive, directed, produced, and copy written by the best government that money can buy. Its time to make some changes and I’m not talking about the changes that Obama promised.
[1]: "Stimulus Spending Masks Huge Decline in 2nd Qtr. GDP", by Pete Murphy, "Five Short Blasts" Forum, August 1, 2009.
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Breaking News
Easy 16.3 %. Probably higher then that.
“And our president stood in his cocky stern manner and announced that employment is getting better on his watch?”
News Flash: Politicians lie, cheat, steal, fondle House pages in the restroom and “minister” (Hillary-speak) to nubile White House interns.
Who knew?
I agree that focusing on the unemployment rate is misleading, as is using it as a single metric to show things are “improving”. But there is no “cooking of the books” going on. The recording and tabulation is transparent at the BLS. That the main stream media reports the numbers as gospel goes to the failure of the media, not the BLS. The problem is that there are multiple unemployment rates (U1 through U6), none of which have ever been considered by themselves to be an accurate representation of people out of work. The monthly reported rates have huge variances that are not smoothed out for three or four months too. The unemployment rate(s) are best viewed as indexes. An index taken in context of other rates and indicators at that.
IMOHO for economic employment strength the payroll tax base has been the best indicator of monthly “work hours”. But the MSM does not mention this as it comes out three weeks after the UERs.
I agree that focusing on the unemployment rate is misleading, as is using it as a single metric to show things are “improving”.–Tobby
If “unemployment” is defined as “involuntarily idled labor resources” then unemployment is not “improving”. It is getting worse–a trend that many Austrian school economists expect will continue for another year, at least.