How can people who are out of work move in with their aging parents, and take care of them? By eating out of garbage cans? Rob banks?
A lot of husbands are staying home while their wives work. As was previously mentioned, many college grads or even young people in their late 20s are moving back in with their parents.
So these 8.2 million people in the work force who've can't find work and have dropped off the unemployment roles have all moved back in with their parents or are letting their wives support them.
Wow. We must have a pretty prosperous society if 8.2 million workers can lose all their income and just be absorbed and become invisible to the unemployment stats by becoming dependants on by relatives who are making enough money to support them.
Of all your scoffing on thread, this statement, alone, has some merit. But the word is not "prosperous", exactly. We, the US of A, used to be prosperous. Meaning we made things, we traded for benefits, we grew, we prospered. Now we are, net out, something else entirely.
Living off of captial, okay, but not so much. It's worse.
Borrowing is not prosperity. We are still the richest, free-est and most powerful nation ever. But we have taken on a bad habit, and only by begging from tomorrow are we paying today's bills.
Easy. Sick, old people get social security, pensions, sometimes even disability payments. Many of them have equity in their homes and have savings. If the choice is between spending $50,000 a year on a nursing home, or having a relative take care of you, many will prefer the relative, even if it means supporting them for a time.
So these 8.2 million people in the work force who've can't find work and have dropped off the unemployment roles have all moved back in with their parents or are letting their wives support them.
Some of them probably have become stay-at-home mothers as well. The net result is that peoples' standards of living seriously decline. If they decline too much around November 2004, it *will* become a factor in this election.