Brent P wrote:
In article , trent wrote:
wrote:
This is a common canard - in plainer English, bull**** - of whining
economics-illiterates: that the "real" unemployment rate is much
higher than what is reported. It simply isn't true. Those people who
are excluded from the official definition of the workforce are properly
excluded. If you're not seeking work and you're not working, you're
not counted - and you *shouldn't* be counted. But dopes like you want
to pretend there are some tens of millions of people who have dropped
out of the workforce due to being discouraged, etc., and there simply
is no valid basis for your belief. The only basis for it is your
class-consciousness and your overweening negativity. Your ideology
demands that you make these absurd, outlandish claims, even though
there isn't a shred of theory *or* fact to back them up.
Leif, this Brent guy is absolutely amazing. All this started when I
simply pointed out that cheap imports are not all bad and that you have
to look at the positive side of the ledger too, one of which is people
can buy goods for less money. And I pointed out that this is a good
thing for everyone, especially low income families. Tthis is so
elementary, and obvious, it's incredible anyone, even those who haven't
taken an economics course, would attempt to argue it.
Unfortunately, your statemet of "Tthis is so elementary, and obvious,
it's incredible anyone, even those who haven't taken an economics
course..." is substantially devoid of supporting evidence. In
economics, nothing is obvious (thanks to statistics) which is why the
market does what the market does.
What I find amusing is that this guy and his sock puppet spend all their
time constructing arguments to knock down. I merely mention that the
unemployment rate doesn't count everyone and immediately 'they' create a
whole set of arguments and views for me out of thin air, not to mention a
variety of insulting statements. Rinse and repeat that for everything else.
THE unemployment rate (called 'the headline number' in the monthly
survey) does NOT count everyone- only those who "had made specific
efforts to find employement sometime during the 4-week period ending
with the reference week." It does not count the number of people
without jobs. And this number is widely disregarded by those outside of
the press. Economists watch the Employment Rate (a number not
calculated by a Government Agency) and the Non-Farm Payrolls number, a
measure of job-creation.
What were they saying?
trent