Posted on 05/08/2008 8:00:49 PM PDT by B-Chan
then why post left wing propaganda ?
what is the point ?
For the same reason I post (and read) right-wing propaganda: to help muself and others arrive at the truth.
"Objective journalism" is a myth. All journalists, writers, and authors are selling a point of view. All writing is, in a sense, propaganda. The point is to consider all the available propaganda fairly and equitably, then use one's judgment to synthesize from it an approximation of the truth.
he’s also Dan Rather’s “favorite conservative.”
The most obvious reason for this combined D/R conspiracy is the COLA built into Social Security, which I’ll bet a lot of politicians deeply regretted - and because it would be politically impossible to rescind, they “fixed” the problem by skewing the inflation numbers down. As we all know, senior citizens spend a lot of their free time and money shopping (while taking a discounted bus, of course) for microwaves, iPods, plasma TV’s, etc. They don’t eat much and are trim and healthy, so those pesky food and medical figures don’t mean much to them. /s
So, from what you're saying ...
Ping!
Bookmark BFLR
One reason is that Social Security is indexed to the CPI. If they used the real numbers SS would be bankrupt by now.
Actually, the original way statistics such as the CPI were calculated was just awful. For example, house purchase price was included even though most of us buy houses only once or twice in our lifetime. No adjustment was made for the fact that in the face of rising prices, substitution (or doing without) does occur. In other words, the same static-pie thinking behind all left wing economics.
Same for unemployment figures. Why on earth should a person who has stopped looking for work be counted as unemployed? The reason (”discouraged”) is a left winger overlay that is irrelevant. Similarly with a person who is already employed part time but is looking for full time work. Its ridiculous to count such a person as unemployed!
Remember, these “indices” were started under democrat administrations and they were specifically designed to serve left wing purposes. That’s why a left winger poop-wipe like Harpers would publish an article attacking long overdue corrections to these indices!
ping
But let me just say, I didn't like Kevin Phillips when he was a Republican (circa 1972?), and I have no use for him now that he's a Democrat.
Remember the Nixon administration? Kevin was big Nixon guy (silent majority and all that nonsense). Nixon invented affirmative action. Nixon imposed wage and price controls. Nixon gave use us OSHA. The only things Nixon did right were to defeat HHH and the bomber pilot. And now we're supposed to care what Kevin thinks?
The state of Wisconsin’s ur is under five percent. For much of the past five years it was close to four percent. This comes from the state’s own numbers crunchers. It would be an easy thing to check the ur of all the other states. If their numbers are high, then the nation’s ur would have to be high too. I think Harper’s is full of leftist twaddle.
You are correct, people should get info from a variety of sources. As well as their own observations. My own observations in my part of the country lead to me to believe that almost nothing has changed. Obviously the economy has slowed somewhat, but that doesn't translate into bad times for most people. Wherever I go people are still jamming the roads, the restaurants, and the malls. I don't see evidence that people are losing weight from cutting down on meals.
You got that right. Hysteria and panic. A slight downturn and according to Big Media we're headed for not just a recession, but another GREAT DEPRESSION!!! Baloney. We're not even in a recession. But that's our lib media.
As a non-economist I have to do what most non-economists do which is make local observations. If we were living in terrible times I would see deserted shopping malls and restaurants where I live (western Wisconsin). I don't see that. I would not see job listings in the local rag. There are lots of jobs being advertised. I was just in the Twin Cities for the past few days. Things look pretty prosperous there too.
You will never get Big Media to say things are still looking pretty good for average Americans as long as a Republican is in the White House.
I take great interest in local observations by people like you. It gives us a much better snapshot of what's going on in the country than all the bloated talking heads in media. Obviously some parts of the country will be doing better than others. But I still haven't seen the dire consequences of bread lines and food riots predicted by the doomists. The national economy might not be doing as well as the promoters might like, but it's still doing alright from what I (and apparently you and a few others) have seen.
The Household Survey came up with a number of over three hundred thousand jobs added last month. Now those numbers are subject for disagreement as much as the payroll survey. But I do have a daughter-in-law who quit her fulltime job to move across the state with her husband who got a job in another town. She is now listed as being unemployed.
But the fact is she's still doing some irregular work for her ex-company via the computer for which she will make about six thousand dollars a year. These people are not counted in the payroll survey even though thousands of people every day are making money via the computer.
In my experience people who lose jobs don't just stop looking for new jobs. They keep trying until they get something. People who lose jobs and quit looking are the permanently unemployed and usually unemployable.
Yes and no. The unemployment numbers, for example, are adjusted according to a formula that estimates job "births" and "deaths" in each industry that are not announced or counted in any other way. The April numbers for construction are something like 40k new jobs, not counted any other way. That estimate is almost certainly wrong because it uses a lagging formula. In the Bush recovery (2002/3) the numbers lagged the other way and more jobs were created than the released statistics showed.
“American households paid $60 each for a copy of Grand Theft Auto IV in the last week.”
Ya, but refused to buy “Hooked on Phonics” or some other learning tool...that’s the gubbemint’s job.
Make me want to vomit...!
This is one of the primary reasons I debate the validity of the common “definition” of recession as being 2 consecutive quarters of negative GDP. The GDP number is itself radically flawed. As someone pointed out today on another thread, if a product moves through enough middlemen with a sufficient mark-up at each stop, we have what appears to be growth, but it does not actually involve any real improvement in the economic strength of the nation.
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