Here is a clear look at the latest unemployment numbers. It asks the question we all must remember: How can you add another 450,000 new jobless claims this month and then say that 151,000 jobs were created, leaving unemployment relatively constant?
Labor Force Participation Drops
Could extending unemployment payments from the traditional twenty-six weeks to roughly two full years with a promise of yet another extension coming from the lame duck session be contributing to people leaving the work force?
Can a nation with one third of the population not producing anything remain successful?
The answers are pretty apparent, aren't they?
2 comments:
This post is right on the money.
For over 20 years I've wondered how we can keep going with filling our houses with kitsch and other meaningless stuff, while our productivity goes down the drain. It's irritating to me to go to the mall (it doesn't happen often) and see kiosk after cart of morons selling rhinestone studded cellphone covers and other crap.
Generations ago, if you handed a new immigrant to this country (at Ellis Island for instance) the equivalent of $500 (today's value), he or she might likely have gone out and purchased an inventory of merchandise, a sewing machine, an English wheel, or something else that would create production or grow the economy.
Hand someone $500 today, and they'll immediately pi$$ it off on a flat screen TV, a Wii, or some other gee-gaw or amusement, none of which has any productive capacity.
I think Henley had it right in The Garden of Allah: "We're partyin' fools in the autumn of our heyday."
My Henley reference was actually from Workin' It, not Garden of Allah.
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