Unemployment

[kandrathe]

1) Dennis Kucinich gets his way approximately 0% of the time. He is to the Dems what Ron Paul is to the Republicans - he has no broad support, and almost never influences policy. He is not, in any meaningful sense, a "policy maker". Also, for what it's worth, that's "Congressman Kucinich". He's not a senator.

Right, Representative. He's in the top 35 of 525 for cosponsoring legislation, although correct that he doesn't author many bills on his own. He's the Chairman of the progressive caucus. So... Not a policy maker?

2) Being wrong about unemployment numbers (or recovery times) does not equal lying about them. Since asking 200 million people about their jobs individually (and verifying their answers) is impossible, all calculations have to be based on assumptions. In a crisis, sometimes those assumptions are harder, and being wrong causes errors much larger than you would see normally. I don't find it staggering at all - just the normal consequence of hitting a fast moving target with the lights out. Remember, the labour market is huge. Being off by 800,000 seems like an impossibly large error, but in a 200,000,000 person market, it's less than half a percent unemployment. Glad to see the error fixed, but once again, what is it you're using these numbers for, that this changes your thinking? Obviously, unemployment is *far* above 4%, and whatever plan you prefer to reduce unemployment should be pursued post haste, regardless of whether it's 10% or 10.5%.

This is the same government that has a tax id for every single person (paying or not), and corporate entity (paying or not), and has laws that require withholding to be collected from every paycheck for individuals, and from every company at least quarterly. So, how hard would it be to count how many of those tax id's contributed? Having worked on automation projects for my own states Dept. of Revenue, I can tell you that the State government has a weekly measure of payers and revenue. How hard is it to add up 50 states contributions?

3) You can say the government has not been calculating its statistics properly if you like - feel free to use an alternate set. I think the official methods look pretty good, if you look at the data overall, and not just fixate on the one-number percentage figures. I'm really not sure shadowstats.com provides a "more realistic" set of figures, but I don't have the specialist knowledge to say for certain. Use it if you prefer.

The BLS is the agency charged with producing THE number. A man with two watches doesn't really know what time it is, unless they agree. What I do know is that the BLS is wrong, and not by a little.

4) The US can currently borrow at almost absurdly good rates. This is not the problem. The increased debt service will not be pleasant, but neither will it be crippling. The problems are short term recovery, and reducing long-run spending. (Hint: Try health care reform.)

Servicing the debt is now the 2nd largest portion of the US budget, slightly below runaway social program spending. But, yes, the $100 trillion of unfunded (that being above our projected revenue stream) social program spending for the next 75 years is equally troubling.<blockquote>As for the deficit, CBO shows that over the first three years of the Obama Presidency, 2009-2011, the federal government will borrow an estimated $3.7 trillion. That is more than the entire accumulated national debt for the first 225 years of U.S. history. By 2019, the interest payments on this debt will be larger than the budget for education, roads and all other nondefense discretionary spending. --WSJ -- The Obama Fisc</blockquote>