It always amazes me how the government wants us to believe their figures on statistical information such as unemployment data, yet there is no government program that we can ever say is run well or accurate.
The only numbers that are counted relate to actual people filing claims for unemployment insurance payments! But, how many do not file for various reasons including the stigma of filing? Lot's do not.
In actuality about 16 million "working" people are not working or are seriously underemployed in the USA. This means that they do not spend as much at stores, restaurants, or with shops and boutiques which depend on their spending to keep them in business.
It's hard to predict that there is any tangible reason for unemployment to magically decrease, and nothing is being done in any meaningful way by ANY government-state or federal to help the businesses which will drive the economy.
For instance, a liquor store owner just told me that a new excise tax on the alcohol content of wines and spirits will add as much as 30% or possibly more to the retail price of a bottle of wine or spirits at the lowest price point! They have resorted to posting large signs in their store to inform the consumer that they are not responsible for raising the price...it is the new tax at the distributor level!
However, the government wants to hide that fact so by taxing at the distributor level, the retail price is simply higher, leaving the consumer to believe that it is those greedy retailers raising the price. Additionally, as the item is rung up at the cash register, the initial higher shelf price, the price with the hidden tax on it, is ow taxed at a higher amount as well.
This amounts to a tax on a tax!
Back to unemployment, it should be noted that it is a bad idea to add a tax on liquor when unemployment is very high, don't you agree?
The real US unemployment rate is 16 percent if persons who have dropped out of the labor pool and those working less than they would like are counted, a Federal Reserve official said Wednesday.
"If one considers the people who would like a job but have stopped looking -- so-called discouraged workers -- and those who are working fewer hours than they want, the unemployment rate would move from the official 9.4 percent to 16 percent, said Atlanta Fed chief Dennis Lockhart.
Watch for this guy's term expiring without being re-appointed!
He underscored that he was expressing his own views, which did "do not necessarily reflect those of my colleagues on the Federal Open Market Committee," the policy-setting body of the central bank.
Lockhart pointed out in a speech to a chamber of commerce in Chattanooga, Tennessee that those two categories of people are not taken into account in the Labor Department's monthly report on the unemployment rate. The official July jobless rate was 9.4 percent.
Lockhart, who heads the Atlanta, Georgia, division of the Fed, is the first central bank official to acknowledge the depth of unemployment amid the worst US recession since the Great Depression.
Lockhart said the US economy was improving ( he has got to be nuts to make this statement since his area has lost the most manufacturing jobs) but "still fragile," and the beginning stages of a sluggish recovery were underway.
"My forecast for a slow recovery implies a protracted period of high unemployment," he said, adding that it would be difficult to stimulate jobs through additional public spending.
You could not be more wrong Mr. Lockhart. Public spending does not create jobs, it sucks the money out of those who earn it and redistributes it! How do people like him have these positions when they do not understand basic economics?
The government never creates jobs, it destroys jobs! It taxes businesses and successful individuals and either takes their money directly or indirectly and then redistributes it or simply wastes it.
President Barack Obama's administration has resisted calls for more public spending, arguing that the 787-billion-dollar stimulus passed in February needs time to work its way through the economy.
Please explain to me how re-paving a road someplace on a rural highway (as most recently documented in various TV programs is going to help employ a person in the low income section of Detroit?
Lockhart noted that construction and manufacturing had been particularly hard hit in the recession that began in December 2007 and predicted some jobs were gone for good. No kidding...these are not jobs which "come back" either. When a business closes, it closes for good. Closed businesses do not reopen, especially manufacturing businesses in competitive industries.
Prior to the recession, he said, construction and manufacturing combined accounted for slightly more than 15 percent of employment. But during the recession, their job losses made up more than 40 percent of all US job losses.
"In my view, it is unlikely that we will see a return of jobs lost in certain sectors, such as manufacturing," he said.
He is so correct!
"In a similar vein, the recession has been so deep in construction that a reallocation of workers is likely to happen -- even if not permanent."
"Reallocation" of workers means that a well paid painter has to find a job as a WAL-MART or HOME DEPOT paint department clerk for instance, since his job is gone due to a lack of demand for his services. That demand may not come back before he is permanentley displaced from that prior occupation.
Payroll employment has fallen by 6.7 million since the recession began. That also does not take into account those people who are NOT reported and those counted amoung the 20 million illegals in this country who may now work less or be paid less and are NEVER counted.
