BY RUSSELL TURNER
PEEING ON OUR BOOTS
All of us at one time or the other has had to deal with con artists and people of poor character. These people are always trying to convince us to do something, usually by distorting the facts and telling half truths. Being raised in a rural area I might not be as sophisticated as someone that was raised in a more urban community, but some of the old expressions that I was raised with fit the current events to a tee. Whenever someone is trying to con me I use the old saying, “Don’t pee on my boots and try to tell me that it is rain.” Over the past several months we Americans have had a constant tinkle on our boots, and the sad fact is too many of our citizens simply think that it is raining.
Whenever we watch the news on the unemployment numbers in our country we are assured that the economy is on the upswing and everything will be just fine. According to the flim-flam man in the White House, the unemployment in the country has dropped to 8.3%. Much of the mainstream media simply report the data and have little interest in verifying the claims. The Labor Department simply took 1.2 million Americans out of the labor force. In other words, the unemployment rate fell because the Labor Department deliberately did not count 1.2 million unemployed people. One accounting scheme it used is the classification of unemployed workers as being discouraged. If you gave up looking for work 365 days ago, you're still counted as a "discouraged worker" but if you are still unemployed after 366 days you are not "discouraged" any more and are no longer counted as unemployed even though you still don’t have a job. Since 2008 the government has stopped counting 9 million Americans in the employment report-- that's over 11% of the entire work force which simply vanished in just 4 years.
When politicians and the news media talk about the percentages they will usually refer to the U-3 rate, but a more accurate U-6 rate is seldom mentioned. Usually the U-6 rate will reflect a more accurate number. According to the U-6 rate our unemployment rate is closer to 15.1%. If the numbers were calculated as they were as recently as 1994, according to some estimates if you include all discouraged workers — just as the government itself did before 1994 — the true unemployment rate in America is 22.5%!
Before we start buying into the rainwater explanation we need to remember some words of wisdom by President Ronald Reagan who said, “Politics is the world’s second oldest profession and it bears a striking resemblance to the oldest profession.”
PEEING ON OUR BOOTS
All of us at one time or the other has had to deal with con artists and people of poor character. These people are always trying to convince us to do something, usually by distorting the facts and telling half truths. Being raised in a rural area I might not be as sophisticated as someone that was raised in a more urban community, but some of the old expressions that I was raised with fit the current events to a tee. Whenever someone is trying to con me I use the old saying, “Don’t pee on my boots and try to tell me that it is rain.” Over the past several months we Americans have had a constant tinkle on our boots, and the sad fact is too many of our citizens simply think that it is raining.
Whenever we watch the news on the unemployment numbers in our country we are assured that the economy is on the upswing and everything will be just fine. According to the flim-flam man in the White House, the unemployment in the country has dropped to 8.3%. Much of the mainstream media simply report the data and have little interest in verifying the claims. The Labor Department simply took 1.2 million Americans out of the labor force. In other words, the unemployment rate fell because the Labor Department deliberately did not count 1.2 million unemployed people. One accounting scheme it used is the classification of unemployed workers as being discouraged. If you gave up looking for work 365 days ago, you're still counted as a "discouraged worker" but if you are still unemployed after 366 days you are not "discouraged" any more and are no longer counted as unemployed even though you still don’t have a job. Since 2008 the government has stopped counting 9 million Americans in the employment report-- that's over 11% of the entire work force which simply vanished in just 4 years.
When politicians and the news media talk about the percentages they will usually refer to the U-3 rate, but a more accurate U-6 rate is seldom mentioned. Usually the U-6 rate will reflect a more accurate number. According to the U-6 rate our unemployment rate is closer to 15.1%. If the numbers were calculated as they were as recently as 1994, according to some estimates if you include all discouraged workers — just as the government itself did before 1994 — the true unemployment rate in America is 22.5%!
Before we start buying into the rainwater explanation we need to remember some words of wisdom by President Ronald Reagan who said, “Politics is the world’s second oldest profession and it bears a striking resemblance to the oldest profession.”
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