Journal zogger's Journal: Unemployment rate-before it gets spiked 14
One of the fed fatcats let it slip that the *real* unemployment rate is 16%, that's the one that matters, not 9.8 as they try to push officially. He admitted what a lot of contrarian bears have been saying, you have to include "underemployed" or part time workers who don't make enough to really live on to get a true feel for the economic situation. I have noticed after a quick perusal of several similar articles that his comments are disappearing fast from some of the larger news outlets, they include *some* of his luncheon speech highlights but not that part.
The number has been ambiguous for a while (Score:2)
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Actually, the "out of work, and not looking" includes drug dealers, drug runners, prostitutes, "illegal" immigrants, and a whole bevy of others.
Remember, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. And the government, in other words all of us, is best at using them to PREVENT PANIC.
I hope you have been enlightened. Don't panic. If you can work for the benefit of others, you will contribute to the economy, no matter what category you "fall" into.
Ciao!
James
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He's right. Don't let this brownshirt asshole fool you. Instead, examine reality and think.
I've assumed that.... (Score:1)
..this sort of thing is more common than not, but I can deal with it, reality or unreality. The conversation is more important to me than the "nom de net" is. Plus ME being able to cheaply and quickly get what I write out there "for whomever".
Been doing it my whole adult life, just the net makes it cheaper and easier. Now I only use one basic name on the net, but I've known since forever the multiple personality deal is more common than not, having access to logs at this or that big forum I h
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...this sort of thing is more common than not, but I can deal with it, reality or unreality.
I think it's just silly myself. I'll use different nicks in different forums (i.e. Web sites, IRC services, etc) for the same reasons I don't have cookies turned on, but pretending to be different people is a wee bit too "normal" for me (one of the few things in life that I was never accused of being). And it creates unnecessary amounts of FUD when really it's just a bunch of strangers "talking". I wish "science" could be done anonymously; it would save on the prejudice, but that's another story.
The conversation is more important to me than the "nom de net" is.
Agreed.
Any
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And that group of people, you imagine, don't need to earn their food, clothing, and shelter?
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Ah, my point was somewhat unclear. It is my belief that drug dealers employed by a cartel, prostitutes employed by a pimp, and illegal immigrants employed by citizens "off the books" are counted in the statistic of "unemployed, but not looking" since they give the impression that they are not employed yet are not looking for work.
Whether that is true or not, my meta point is that you have to look very closely at the numbers you get from others to see what they actually measure, before you can draw up meani
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I was going to say; that "unemployment" has a specific statistical meaning for economists that probably elude most people's casual perusal of the daily tabloids. And so to "poverty" is a highly refined statistic that there are political pressures to redefine. (But I hadn't, and still haven't, read the whole article yet, so I'm not sure how "unemployment" is defined in this case).
It works out anyway (Score:1)
Those sorts of folks are wealth rearrangers, not wealth producers, so including them or not, either way it is an economic negative. In fact, I'd like a clearer set of employment stats that don't include government employees, or most of them anyway.Some create wealth, most just are part of the wealth rearrangement that goes around, and it gives a skewed and overly rosy picture of the economy. Heck, you could have theoretical zero unemployment and still have a rather dismal economy.
I think we are down
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Those sorts of folks are wealth rearrangers, not wealth producers
GDP is (generally) defined as a good or a service. Marijuana (in the "Drugs" example) is a good and the "Drug Dealer" is the service, as well as the intermediate industries that create goods and services in support of the industry (i.e. accountants, gun dealers and manufacturers, trucking companies, etc). Whether these "wealth rearrangers" have any negative attributes (moral or otherwise, is besides the point). Though I think the point is that "unemployment" doesn't actually measure unemployment (in the col
My simple defintion (Score:1)
I've posted this several times before here and could give a lot of examples I guess but will limit it.
Wealth is grown, harvested, mined, extracted from the planet somehow, then if it needs it, achieves a higher value added component that increases it's worth by any of the above combined into a manufactured good. That is wealth, and wealth production. All other is rearranging in some way, servicing it, governing it, entertaining it, or just receiving it by governmental diktat. All of that. As such, t
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We (as a country) let manufacturing go, and now we're letting our information worker economy go. Middle-man jobs (and not enough to go around) will soon be all that there's left. I want to write code (produce something), but there's tremendous pressure to just take a paper-pusher job. Esp. at my level and age -- as a senior software engineer at the age of 43, I'm apparently somehow much more valuable in a skimming role than a production one.