Unemployment rate hits 9.7%

Yet, the Obama minions say that the recession is over.

How is this possible?

 

A lot of people "say" the recession is over....

Best is to research facts and not listen to anybody... Especially not mainstream politics or media.

 

Oh it seems like it was only yesterday our government fed us scary stories to push the stimulus plan. Remember, when we were told without it, unemployment could reach 8.5% by April and eventually double digits? I REMEMBER!

What can we learn from this? Well Obama haters will say his peeps were either lying or are idiots, while Obama fanbois will say it's Bush's fault still. I however will not point fingers to any specific knucklehead in our government and just say things such as this can't be accurately predicted or redirected necessary by throwing money at it. I would prefer to error on the side of NOT putting the next generations into debt more on an unfounded hunch/theory/prediction.

It should make everyone wonder how the same government could POSSIBLY attempt to predict the cost of a public health insurance option as well as what the end result will be. I'm not one that chooses to put blind faith in our government as the budget and debt keeps rising.

 

From my introductory knowledge of economics I know that a 0% of unemployment is actually bad for the economy.
I found this: http://economics.about.com/od/helpforeconomicsstudents/f/unemployment.htm
A widely accepted number for a "good" unemployment rate is about 5%.
9.7% in itself is an indication of a crisis. but whether its still here or over is determine by the acceleration of the unemployment, and not just the employment rate - which might just be a scar of a previous crisis. It taken about 5 years to heal.
In my opinion, the crisis was not a big one in historical perspective, and is over or at its very last stages. The greatest loser from the crisis was the US. The US dollar is at the beginning of a free fall. Although Israel was virtually unharmed in the last crisis directly, the weakening of the US economy which follows from this crisis will have very bad consequences on us, unfortunately.

 

Actually, if you count unemployment the same say it was counted back during the Great Depression, today's REAL unemployment rate in the USA is closer to 16%.

I'm not saying the Democrats are cooking the numbers, but why not tell us the real pain people are feeling?

 

Where are you getting this 16% figure? I know a handful of unemployed people, perhaps its my region. But I don't we're hitting 16% yet.

 

The 9.7% is not total unemployment, it is the "unemployment RATE" (the speed at which people are becoming unemployed. It's the number of people that were made unemployed in the past six(?) months. In other words, if you've been unemployed for six months, you're in the 9.7%, but if you've been unemployed for SEVEN months, you've rolled off the average and are considered "permanently unemployed" or something like that.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) uses other vague terms such as "labor force participation rate" (65.5%), "persons marginally attached to the labor force" (people who gave up looking for a job, 2.3Million), "discouraged workers", and other crappy terms used to mask the true unemployment figure. And then the rates are " seasonally adjusted"!

The BLS doesn't count small businesses that have no clients, you have to go to the SBA for that.

You have to read the BLS website carefully, Sometimes they give figures in millions, sometimes in thousands, sometimes in numbers of households. I've never seen the stats so garbled. Sometimes they mix the numbers up. Sometimes you can't figure out what in blazes they are claiming, such as this page, where the number in the lower-right makes it appear that the unemployment rate is actually 33%!

The TOTAL percentage of American citizens that are out of work is 16% of the work force. To put this in perspective: this is the highest it's been since the great depression.

And to put Congress' actions in perspective, the Democrats have spent enough "stimulous" money in the past 18 months to give - GIVE - every household in the USA $27,000.

TWENTY-Seven THOUSAND Dollars!

 

So what?..What about other countries that have 20%-30% unemployment rate they still hanging and don't complaint like us. The best thing is not to worry about the numbers and what everyone says.

 

We are not other countries. The 9.7 is a record for us.

 

The day before those numbers were release, Joe 'dumbass" Biden said that the recovery, stimulus and Obama the Christ were responsible for bringing unemployment down. Meanwhile the very next day?

Well we all know the rest of the story.

Way to go Obama; miserable failure.

 

I went to go work today, and when I got there, we were told that there is no work until Monday.
I've been unemployed for a couple months now without any luck.
A lot of people where I live are unemployed. It's tough competing for jobs in a place where not everyone goes to college.

 

Been there done that.. What do you do? Get a different job. Go back to school. Start a business? Not necessarily in that order and not necessarily all three.

During the Clinton years I did not have a pot to piss in. It sucks... I feel your pain. However, this is the best time to pick yourself up and move forward. Make a change! Don't wait for Change, go get it!

 

I feel for you. And this is why Washington is failing to convince us that the recession is over - for example, the people that *I* know that were unemployed seven months ago, are still unemployed.

 

It would be over if they would stop messing with it.

 

This is a saying that Economists hear in college:

"If you think the economy is bad NOW, wait until we implement the SOLUTION!"
-anonymous economist

Best and FASTEST way to boot-strap the economy is by defense spending, because almost every manufacturing segment of the USA either directly or indirectly benefits and the money immediately goes into the U.S economy. Guess what the Democrats aren't doing, hmmm????

 

I think the economy is getting better.. but it will take more time to get things normal once again.

 

Bingo... Nice quote btw. What makes it so funny is its true!

 

Corwin, agree on how important manufacturing is to an economy's health. Too many have viewed "services" as the panacea, when they fail to see how critical manufacturing is, by its amplifier effects, logistical "hubs" of healthy activity, etc.

That said, I cannot understand how a free marketeer conservative would believe the way out of difficulty is by a Keynesianist injection in any way, and that includes via a military buildup.

Not saying you are a paleo-conservative, small government kind of guy (I actually don't know where you are on this). But I find it odd, for anyone speaking about how they are conservatives who want the "government off our backs" to then call for a defense spending buildup.

This was Reagan's approach. Talk about tightening the belt, while just shifting whose belt got tightened, and whose fattened. Doing so, Reagan's tenure saw a tripling of the fiscal bleed.

If one does believe a Keynesian approach can work, then it comes down to a discussion of what specific injections tend to do best in bringing about a desired recovery. Neo-conservatives tend to say, Uncle Sam, buy guns. Liberals tend to say, Uncle Sam, buy butter. Both are interventionists.

Otherwise, I'd say, speaking of what I'd call conservatism, anyway, one cannot have it both ways; one cannot talk about how government "is the problem," and at the same time, argue for a deeper penetration of the government in the sector mix by an increase in defense spending, with its associated state fiscal outlay.

 

Conservative? Paleo-conservative? I never much cared to label my political beliefs. Once you let someone apply a political label on you, you feel obligated to 'stick up" for the beliefs that are stereotyped to that system and people question when they think you "stray", like now. And I never cared much for stereotypes either.

Military spending isn't Keynesian, because the government isn't manipulating the free market, they are a major CUSTOMER of the free market!

Let's say, the government orders more of an existing system, such as 20 more F-18 Hornets. McDonnell-Douglas will IMMEDIATELY go to work on them. Workers are re-assigned or hired. Orders are immediately placed with sub-contractors and delivery dates set. Sub-contractors hire new people as needed to handle the new business. The sub-contractors may have had their own subcontractors. Systems are built, and because this is military, systems are built in the USA - ostensibly for reasons for security, but also to keep the jobs here. At the component level, it's IMMEDIATE orders for American wire, American semiconductors, American aluminum, American glass, etc.

To call it a ripple effect would be to do it an injustice, it's really more of a tsunami. The effect of military spending is immediate. Restaurants, entertainment, an entire community springs up. Summer jobs for students are easy to find.

Long Island was a sleepy suburb of Manhattan until Grumman got the contract for the F-14 Tomcat in the late 1960's. The way people tell it, Long Island changed overnight. It was like flipping a switch. That aircraft literally made the Long Island middle class out of nowhere. People made money, People moved to Long Island to work at Grumman. My father sold them wire, components, and interconnect (mil-grade connectors can sell for THOUSANDS of dollars) and from the F-14 alone later put me and my two brothers through college. In the 1970's, some middle-class Grumman workers, subcontractors, and suppliers were driving Cadillacs and German cars. And for many, No College Education Required. Within one year of Grumman receiving the F-14 contract, Long Island was a thriving community. The schools were so full they built more.

And when Bush's Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney canceled the F-14 (he had some grudge against Grumman's executives), it was like someone flipped a switch. Within six months Grumman became a shell of it's former self. Within six months Grumman employees, subcontractors, loads of people lost jobs. Depending on whose estimates you believe, Between 50,000-100,000 people lost their jobs. Long Island went downhill and never recovered.

To put that in perspective, when NASA's Apollo program was canceled, 100,000 people were put out of work just in Houston. That's NASA employees, subcontractors, waiters, grocers.

President Reagan tried an innovative method to control spending, which was to 'starve the beast". He thought that if he reduced the taxes that the Democratic Congress had to work with, that Congress would reduce spending.

Instead, the Democrats decided "screw the deficit" and decided to spend our money anyway. President Reagan had a few well-publicized showdowns with Congress, but in the end he was forced to relent and sign their spending bills and let the Democrats have their way - and so, deficit spending was born!

 

Corwin, I hear you on labels, I don't like them either - and I do not mean in any way to label you, nor disrespect your individuality. (I actually don't know all that much about you - my hit or miss attendance here over the last stretch of time precludes my getting to know much more than surface stuff, anyway - so please accept that I do not mean any facile labelling, or misrepresentations, in any way; please feel free to correct me if I've said anything in this way...sincerely).

I merely use labels here to provide a way I know in such a short form, these web posts, to distinguish what many associate with conservatism - namely a free market and small government philosophy, from its neo-conservative advent, which in my opinion shares no such allegiance to small government - in fact, as we've seen, whatever is publically stated, neo-conservatism advocates a strong interventionist hand, so long as it's in the cause that is deemed right, by a neo-conservative standpoint.

I would have to disagree with you on your characterization of Keynesianism, and on whether defense expenditure is or isn't Keynesian. I would say the notion of the state buying up military equipment, deficit be damned, is a strongly Keynesian stand; that is, it is the use of a mixed economic paradigm to effect a desired economic outcome, irrespective of the fiscal picture; it is necessarily Keynesian, as it necessarily involves public sector policy decisions for the specific purpose of affecting the national economy. Not that I think Wiki is exactly "peer-reviewed and rigorously tested," but as I just came across this, I think it says it well enough:

Again, Keynesians are Keynesians. Whether for guns or butter, using public policy, and buying up goods to effect a desired economic outcome, is necessarily Keynesian.

Also again, I agree with you in that there is no denying there is a tremendous amplifier effect of defense spending - as your examples show. It is arguable whether spending in that sector, or in other manufacturing sectors, effects a "more" or "less" desired outcome, but that's outside the scope of our discussion...this would be a classic guns and butter discussion, and we'd move off topic ("what does 'more?' Infrastructure improvements better linking manufacturing hubs, or capital outlay on military equipment?").

The issue is that while there is indeed an amplifier effect, the fact it is through the state and by public expenditure, and not through private consumption, makes this a truly a Keynesian approach; and because of that, such an idea cannot be squared with a free-market, libertarian perspective.

To take but one example, Hitler rebounded the German economy, by a Keynesian military buildup. There were bankers of his time, like now, who argued strenuously against such a fiscal policy, saying he was moving the German state not to a state of health, but only temporary illusion, as he was doing it on non-existent monies. Roosevelt did very similar things.

I'd have to disagree with you on Reagan's years....the argument he was a small government libertarian, against a Democratic prodigal legislature, can only go so far, when it was Reagan's military buildup that was primarily responsible for the fiscal bleed. In my opinion, all myth aside, Reagan's was a Keynesian administration.

Many here would say it was worth it - but again, that doesn't deny the Keynesianism involved. Such an approbation only states that the particular Keynesianism was the right one to embrace.