“A cynic could be temped to say that effectively the number of people employed by the government is double what is disclosed. A yet bigger cynic could claim that America is now the biggest socialist state in the world. Both cynics would not necessarily be wrong.”
You can take THAT to the bank. Or the Unemployment Office. Your call. ;)
Well, unemployment insurance is paid out of state unemployment funds, which are funded through a payroll tax on employers. It is only when they run out of money that they need to borrow from the Treasury.
That has happened a lot lately, as more and more state funds run out of money. They have also raised payroll taxes a lot.
Medicare income - $1.7 billion
Medicare outflow - $45.2 billion
Any Congress wants to EXPAND Medicare??
>> “the government could be underrepresenting employment data by up to 32%! “
10% / 0.68 = 14.7%
Man on the street guesstimate from The Heavy Equipment Guy?
About 20%, or one in five. Much higher among black folks here.
Government figures are as phony as a three-dollar bill... and worth about as much, as well.
The real trauma is going to come gradually, because unemployment is cumulative. That is, when people are newly unemployed, they have assets to live off for a while. But as time goes by, things keep getting incrementally worse.
Unemployment compensation and other aid stretches out this decline, but neither stops it, nor is enough to live on. It is a slow starvation of both your resources and your emotions, a wasting process.
But eventually something will happen, and millions of people will have become so weakened over time, that it will hit them all at once. What they had tolerated for so long will quickly become intolerable.
Politically, right then, anyone who promises them a roof over their head and food will get their vote. It will be a very dangerous time, and level heads need to be prepared to offer them enough aid to survive, or demagogues will do so, to the despair of all of us.
Mort Kondracke made a comment the other day, that the economy would have to grow 250,000 jobs a month for five years just to get back to where we were in late 2007, and we are nowhere near to growing that many jobs, nor is there any indication that there will be any time soon, either.
I find it very interesting that these numbers started to diverge in December 2008...go figure!