Posted on 06/13/2018 7:55:59 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
If he's really that good he can get hired by a defense contractor and work remotely from the house. How hard is he really looking?
We sent 65 off them from Louisville to Houston in the past week. And that’s just MY business group.
Not only did you see a record number of trucks, but 1) every truck had a “Drive With Us” sign on the back of the trailer, 2) the country is still SHORT 50,000 truck drivers (yes, 50,000),and 3) the Dow Transportation Index soared two days ago and is within spitting distance of the all-time high.
Paul Ryan and the Republican leadership’s claim that we need to import more immigrants to fill jobs is a damnable lie. But this is nonsense. The portion of adult Americans who don’t have jobs is fairly low by pre-Obama measures, but that’s because the number of elderly is skyrocketing. 20.8% of Americans 25-to-55 years old are NOT working, but most of those are women, many of whom are simply choosing to raise their kids. That 20.8% is only about 2% above the all-time low of 2000, and is therefore fairly consistent with U-6 unemployment being about 0.8% above the 2000 level.
I wish he would have put the “our planet is literally in the process of dying” at the start.
It would have saved me the time I wasted reading the rest of the gloom.
I like to use what I refer to as the “Graham Cracker Index.”
Not too many year ago, graham crackers were sold in a standard-sized package, stacked flat in the box.
Then, they were packaged on edge, so that only about 75 percent of the old amount of product was sold for the same price as before: INFLATION.
Then, the boxes were made ever so smaller, so that there is now only about 60 percent of the product available for the same price: MORE INFLATION. (They usually have a lower price on the new stuff to make us think we’re getting a good deal)
Now, the OPA price police are SUPPOSED to account for portion size, but they can’t really do this without a standard of comparison. In other products it even worse, like adding more gas to the potato chip bag so it looks the same as before, but has substantially less product.
I doubt the price police have caught all these things, but the BLS says that they take it into account. I WISH I had measured all these things, but who thinks to take a sounding at any given point in time?
The bottom line is that all the Keynesian-based economic data that are gathered in this country are pretty much garbage and have been for a very long time. I don’t think the numbers have enough signal to be adjusted to the true numbers. Just too high a noise-to-signal ratio.
Finally, they explicitly increase price on the 60 percent. It’s usually when a Repubican is in office and the career bureaucrats want things to look really bad.
See my comments about how companies view anybody out of a job for a year or more as a leper. Maybe in normal times I could sort of see it but given the awful Obama economy, I’d look at that as an economy issue rather than a “him” issue.
So does that mean I need to flog my 72 year old parents back into the workforce so we can get that rate lowered? My nieces and nephews in college should drop out and get a job?
That can be part of the problem.
You can be brilliant in your field but if you are not where they are hiring you will not be able to get a job.
RE: So does that mean I need to flog my 72 year old parents back into the workforce so we can get that rate lowered?
I don’t even think he is including retirees when he makes his observation.
This is one sentence to consider from the article:
” there are nearly 102 million working age Americans that do not have a job right now. “
Yeah he is. That 102 million figure is obtained by taking the number of people working and subtracting that from the number of people in the work force. Work force is calculated as all people over 16 and not in the military or institutionalized. So yes, that includes people who are retired, like my parents. People who are in school and who choose not to work, like my niece and nephew. People who are unemployed by choice, like stay-at-home parents. You want that 21.5 figure lowered? All those people will have to go to work.
They always leave out food and fuel in the inflation numbers. That’s how you keep the numbers low.
RE: They always leave out food and fuel in the inflation numbers. That’s how you keep the numbers low.
Do they include College Education and Healthcare in the mix?
How about transportation? Cars aren’t getting any cheaper.
How about rentals or home prices?
If you exclude these basic necessities and then simply focus on computers and smart phones, you will miss a huge chunk of what people need in your calculations.
RE: I wish he would have put the “our planet is literally in the process of dying” at the start.
It would have saved me the time I wasted reading the rest of the gloom.
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Do you disagree with the figures that the author cites? If so, which one?
RE: Work force is calculated as all people over 16 and not in the military or institutionalized. So yes, that includes people who are retired, like my parents.
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OK, what does “working age Americans” in the sentence mean?
If they include retirees and those in college, then either the 102 Million figure is skewed, or the use of the term “working age Americans” is undefined or has been redefined.
There is a lot of B.S. in this piece.
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A whole lot of BS but, there is some truth too.
The store closings are total BS, yes they are closing because Amazon has free shipping and lower prices. I’m not praising Amazon, I like stores but, The gas, wear and tear on the car and time cost a lot more than the $99 a year for Prime.
I don’t want to see the stores go but the money not being spent in the stores is still being spent. There are a lot of people not working because they make money outside of taxes. Tax takes close to 50% of our earnings. We have Property, excise, sales, income, SSI, FICA and other taxes that added up really bite hard. It is no wonder that people that can make money outside of a W-2 do it. If you do a job for $1000 on the side it is the equivalent of $2000 if you don’t have to pay any tax on the money. That is why illegals are willing to work for so little, they won’t be paying any tax on it.
If we got rid of all the illegals we wouldn’t have unemployment.
It does. College and high school. The Bureau of Labor Statistics defines the labor force as anyone over age 16 who is not on active duty in the armed forces and who is not in an institution (prison or mental facility, old age home, etc.) That figure includes retired, those not working due to choice like stay-at-home mothers, those on disability, and so forth. So yes, that 21.5% rate is skewed. That's why the government does not use it as a measure of unemployment.
Well, we need another major measure of labor force participation then.
It is NOT a measure of how good or dire the labor market is to include those who are in school and those who are retired.
That's exactly right. There are employers all over this country who can't even fill their open positions today. Knowing that, I'd suggest that the vast majority of the unemployed people in this country fall into one of two categories:
1. They aren't interested in working because they don't need to work for a living (i.e., retirees).
2. They are unemployed because they are unemployable for one reason or another.
So, 102 million working age not employed, golly, there are only 315 million in the USA, so, discount retired and underage, wouldn’t that be about the total working age population of the country? Numbers seem way out of proportion. No?
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