tx! Heard rush mentioning it but econ’s not Rush’s forte...
But David Stockman forte is the economy. Here is the article Rush mentioned.
The Warren Buffett Economy——Why Its Days Are Numbered (Part 4)
http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/the-warren-buffett-economy-why-its-days-are-numbered-part-4/
Quote from article:
“At the present time, there are 210 million adult Americans between the ages of 16 and 68—to take a plausible measure of the potential work force. That amounts to 420 billion potential labor hours, if we accept the convention that all adults are at least theoretically capable of holding a full-time job (2,000 hours/year) and pulling their share of society’s need for production and work effort.
By contrast, during 2014 only 240 billion hours were actually supplied to the US economy, according to the BLS estimates. Technically, therefore, there were 180 billion unemployed labor hours, meaning that the real unemployment rate was 42.9%, not 5.5%!”
Rush does a remarkable job on economics considering he’s had no formal training in the area. Analysts were blaming the aging of the workforce and retirees stopping working as a cause of labor force participation decline. Rush rightfully called them on that saying people are having to work longer and put off retirement due to the crappy economy caused by Obama. That was an excellent point.
Rush is perfectly clear on the math of labor force participation, but he gets the gist right and hammers them on the false hopes created by the completely useless and bogus unemployment rate.