Posted on 06/02/2017 10:00:23 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Back when Hong Kong was a largely autonomous colony of Great Britain, its leaders made a point to not calculate the city-state’s economic statistics. With good reason. The feeling was that if government were in the business of divining unemployment, GDP, and other supposed measures of economic activity, that those same measures would be used by politicians as an excuse for politicians to ‘do something.’
Of course, when it comes to economic growth and progress, there’s no need for politicians to do anything other than ensure individual freedom to succeed, fail, import, export, and to generally produce in order to get. Free of all the meddling that generally defines the doings of the political class, Hong Kong quickly soared from impoverishment to prosperity. When individuals are free, their natural state is growth.
Which brings us to the United States and its founding document. What’s crucial about the Constitution is that economic growth is never mentioned. The Founders well understood that free people would prosper, which meant the Constitution was written not to limit the rights of the citizenry, or to guarantee prosperity; rather it was written to codify freedom from an excessive federal government. Americans would be free to live as they wanted, and then their choice of state would amount to their choice of how much or how little government they wanted. U.S. states would essentially compete for citizens.
Which now brings us to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) monthly calculation of the rate of U.S. unemployment. Strategas Research Partners founder & CEO Jason Trennert pointed out in a recent report that the BLS currently has 2,500 employees, and an annual operating budget of $640 million. This needs to be fixed. More specifically, the BLS should be abolished.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearmarkets.com ...
Private companies ADP and Intuit presently produce monthly stats on U.S. unemployment, and they do so without cost to the U.S. taxpayer. Perhaps more appealing to those convinced that the U.S. would revert to the dark ages absent a federal employment calculation, ADP’s employment measure has correlated with the BLS’s “91% since it was introduced in 2001.” ADP is once again producing a stat that mimics (or arguably improves on) that of the BLS, only it doesn’t cost taxpayers $640 million annually.
Oh sure... NOW they want to abolish the unemployment report...
Because they rigged the system so much to make Odumbass’s numbers look better that it is making Trump’s numbers look phenomenal! (and they can’t have that)
The ADP report could possibly replace the business survey portion of the report, but the BLS provides a lot more granularity (industry, geography) than does the ADP report. The ADP report could not replace the household survey that is used to calculate the unemployment rate. Also, the BLS also produces the CPI and PPI reports. These could be done by the private sector, but again, not likely to the same degree of granularity
I don’t believe anything coming out of the fed where Obunghole LEFT overs still reside! The ADP vs BLS reports are so off this month it looks like sabotage against President Trump and his agenda!
Sir John James Cowperthwaite. a traditional Scotsman who called his policy "positive non-interventionism." He is one of those quiet heroes who was generally unrecognized at the time, in what was the backwater of Hong Kong, but had a huge, positive effect on literally millions of people.
During WWII, he was a British civil servant in West Africa. Immediately after WWII, his bosses sent him to Hong Kong with the mission that he and the colonial government would have to urgently manage the food supply after the collapse of the Japanese and without any functioning colonial government.
He arrived in late 1945, and found things were absolutely fine. Despite wartime bombing and brutal Japanese rule, there was no starvation and no riots. Prices for rice had briefly spiked, but by the time he arrived, local traders and distributors already had solved any brief shortages by bringing cheaper rice from surplus areas in China and SE Asia. He said it was his first experience of what Hong Kong people and the free-market could do for themselves with no interference from Government.
I'll be charitable and say that Tamny is ignorant.
ADP tracks only a tiny portion of what the BLS reports on and unemployment isn't part of it.
Note to President Trump.........
Here’s one you can/should eliminate.
I don’t believe the BLS or as you any federal agency now anymore than I did when Obumbler was in office. There isn’t 4.6% unemployment now anymore than it was in 2016. You can’t have 95 million people out of the workforce and claim there is great economic growth. Trump should have had the BLS tell the truth about the real unemployment rate.
My question is say that Trump gets the economy rolling and the 95 million number starts dropping off dramatically, what happens to the unemployment number then? Do we finally hit 0?
BLS currently has 2,500 employees, and an annual operating budget of $640 million.
What happened?
Are they still using hand cranked adding machines? 2,500 employees?
Now that’s Funny:-)
When someone runs out of unemployment benefits, then they remove that person from the ranks of the unemployed.
What a load of BS.
>>>When someone runs out of unemployment benefits, then they remove that person from the ranks of the unemployed.
What a load of BS.
That is not true. As long as the person remains actively looking for work, then they are considered unemployed.
As recently as the 1980’s they contracted out to the Census Bureau - they may still do that. The 2500 may be Census Bureau employees or maybe they’re BLS employees, then the Census “contractors” are not counted.
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