Monday, September 06, 2010

Great news from the Ministry of Plenty!

Great news, everybody! The unemployment rate is going up! All glory to Big Brother!



Do these people have any idea how creepy that kind of blind loyalty looks like from the outside? It's like seeing someone trying to put a positive spin on the molestering priest scandal out of love for their church. It's always better to call a pig a pig, especially if it's your own pig, than it is to smear L'Oréal across its kisser in an attempt to pass it off as something it's not.



(H/T to Divas For Geeks.)

13 comments:

John B said...

Especially when I paid for that spendy lipstick.

My self I prefer Revlon, from the clearance bin.

Any assertive red will do, that's the fun of being a 300 pound occasional transvestite, you aren't out to upstage the women, though sometimes you do.

BryanP said...

There is a logic to why it's "good" news, it's just a matter of whether you believe the logic.

Jobs were created last month, but people who had given up on job hunting (and therefore had fallen off the list of officially unemployed) have begun looking for work again. In theory this is a good thing. But the "new" people listed again as unemployed drive up the official unemployment rate.

I'd be curious to know what the numbers would have done if those people hadn't suddenly begun to be counted again.

perlhaqr said...

I'd be curious to know what the numbers would have done if those people hadn't suddenly begun to be counted again.

Why, the unemployment rate would have gone down, and been counted as a huge success for the Administration!

Convenient, no?

Tam said...

We've always been at war with Eastasia. :)

Ritchie said...

There can be a lot of unclarity and lost motion in these matters. There are differences in reporting methods and definitions, and don't forget the multiple revisions of various numbers. But if you look up out of the trenches, the big picture remains the administration's pitiful conviction that government action will create permanent jobs fully integrated with a supposedly free economy. If I'm getting my isms right, that's Marxism, except for the free economy part-which they mean to "correct" anyway.

Home on the Range said...

What they don't tell you is that after someone has been unemployed for two years they are no longer counted in the numbers. It's considered they are "satisfied" being unemployed (I kid you not).

The numbers are probably then, MUCH higher.

Unknown said...

It requires 100,000 NEW jobs every month just to keep up with population growth. Those ankle-biters and curtain climbers keep growing and eventually a high percentage achieves the ripe old age of employability.

IOW, the zero point is 100K new jobs. IOW, we're in deep doo-doo.

From Dr. Thomas Sowell: "It is not just free market economists who think the government can make a mess bigger with its interventions. It was none other than Karl Marx who wrote to his colleague Engels that "crackbrained meddling by the authorities" can "aggravate an existing crisis."

Rabbit said...

All Glory to the Hypnotoad!

Blackwing1 said...

It didn't get much notice, but last June, for the first time ever, the Social Security Administration brought in less in revenues (payroll taxes) than was expended in benefits for that month. This wasn't supposed to happen for at least five more years.

The reason? A drop in June SSA incomes, year-over-year from 2009, of just about 19.1% That meant (to me, just an idiot engineer) that the total income across the US of people who contribute to SocSec dropped by about that same amount. And since most people don't get decreases in salary or hours to that extent, it simply translates to about 19% unemployment when compared to last year.

As has been pointed out, if you're unemployed for too long, they no longer count you (a concept only a dot-gov flunky could entertain). The real unemployment rate is probably between 18% to 25%.

Ritchie said...

To expand on my previous comment:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment#United_States_Bureau_of_Labor_Statistics
The BLS also calculates 5 alternate measures of unemployment, U1 through U6,[65] which have been charted over time[66][67]

* U1: Percentage of labor force unemployed 15 weeks or longer.
* U2: Percentage of labor force who lost jobs or completed temporary work.
* U3: Official unemployment rate per ILO definition.
* U4: U3 + "discouraged workers", or those who have stopped looking for work because current economic conditions make them believe that no work is available for them.
* U5: U4 + other "marginally attached workers", or "loosely attached workers", or those who "would like" and are able to work, but have not looked for work recently.
* U6: U5 + Part time workers who want to work full time, but cannot due to economic reasons (underemployment).

Anonymous said...

There really nothing the government can do except to accelerate this depression into its logical conclusion. Which IMO is the best choice for the country.

Anyway the current real unemployment rate in numbers and not percentage suppress that of the great depression.

Ancient Woodsman said...

Eastasia? Since when? I thought it was Eurasia...man, I'm old.

Got to stop reading Goldstein and get back to singing prol songs.

Bram said...

Up next, TIME will speculate why the mortgage foreclosure continues to rise despite all the economic good news. Maybe some massive government intervention will help?