Per the discussion of the right-wing's new efforts to slander Franklin Roosevelt, note that though the Bureau of Labor Statistics today reports that the unemployment rate in President Bush's last month is 7.2 percent, if you use the same kind of absurd math conservatives use to berate the New Deal, then the unemployment today is actually around 22 percent.
As University of California historian Eric Rauchway has noted, Wingnuttia's leading FDR slanderers like Amity Shlaes and Thomas Sowell base their claims that unemployment during the New Deal didn't go below 20 percent by counting government workers as unemployed. And those claims are being echoed by right-wing rags like the National Review and fringe think tanks like the Heritage Foundation. I want to repeat that: conservatives base their claims that unemployment didn't drop below 20 percent during the pre-WWII New Deal not on the official government data showing otherwise, but by counting government workers in programs like the Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps as unemployed.
So, in the interest of comparing apples to apples, it's important to remember that using the same ridiculous method of counting, the unemployment rate today is 22 percent. Officially, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says the total workforce is 155.4 million workers, and says 11.1 million workers in that workforce are unemployed - a 7.2 percent unemployment rate. But when you add the 22.5 million workers who BLS says work for the government to the 11.1 million officially unemployed workers, that unemployment rate is roughly 22 percent. Because, ya know, conservatives insist with a straight face that people who work for the government - people who build bridges, roads, airports, etc. - are actually welfare cases who shouldn't be counted as employed.
So, just to sum up, based on conservatives' arguments, unemployment rates right now are in the neighborhood of unemployment levels not seen since the height of the Great Depression.
Now, I certainly believe unemployment today is way too high. I agree with those experts who say that the official unemployment rate undercounts the number of people actually unemployed (it does this by not counting people who have given up looking for work - ie. the long-term unemployed - as unemployed) - and I also believe that if we don't pass at least a New Deal-sized economic rescue package, we could see unemployment levels sharply increase from their already high levels today.
But clearly, the unemployment rate today is not at the same levels it was during the height of the Great Depression - and clearly, conservatives aren't willing to apply the same methods of counting jobs during the Great Depression today - because doing that would show how fast and loose they are with the facts.
That conservative Wingnuttia continues to employ the fuzziest of fuzzy math - and in the process, insult government workers - shows that their zeal to slander FDR and try to stop a new New Deal knows absolutely no bounds. I'm not surprised by that, of course - but it's important that we throw their math right back at them so that everyone can see how dishonest the right really is.
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Joan Walsh
Kerry Lauerman
Salon.com
Comments
Personally I don't give a crap what happened in the Great Depression anymore. I AM concerned of what's happening NOW!
I recall a brief moment of news as the Bush administration was getting started in 2001 that they had given consideration to creating an office of disinformation. It was met with the understandable disfavor from the people of a republic like ours which favors openness. In retrospect, of they did not create that disinformation office, the entire administration became one anyway.
See:
http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm
for what is counted, and how. They are pretty transparent.
I admit that this whole comment is just another exercise in futility and will garner no real response. Nothing personal, Mr. Sirota, I know that I'm only a layman and can't possibly have even a slight clue about how things work. I suppose that I'm just tired of being so confused and unable to affect any sort of change. When a man like Mitch McConnell can look at a camera and say to the American people that when it comes to financial rescue for citizens we must take our time and make sure that only those deserving help will get it. Isn't he the same guy that said we had to throw a billion dollars at wall street and do it now, no questions asked? Where was his concern for the people who actually earned those dollars? Where was his desire to make sure that the money was both used wisely and accounted for publicly? Why aren't journalists asking him this question? or for that matter Harry and Nancy?
I hope that one of Mr. Obama's actions in his government is to restore the governments duty to represent its citizens and not just tell us what to do and how to live.
Whatever the number of unemployed actually is -- and I suspect it's at least 10% -- it is statistically irrelevant in the face of the fact that a great and growing number of the employed are underemployed, that real world wages are in decline, that health insurance is in decline, that pension benefits are in decline.
While "academics" argue about how many workers can subsist on a pittance, the have-more executives continue to receive million-dollar bonuses for failure, and bank holding companies continue to buy up local banks so that they will be TooBigToFail and one day take advantage of the socialism they decry. And all of this is being underwritten with kited checks handed out by the Bernie and Hank for the benefit of their mutual friends.
I'll pay more attention to academics and corporate apologists when they show me the real world cost of the complete loss of loyalty on the part of workers, on the cost of the degradation visited on much of the male population in this country who cannot provide adequately for their families, on the cost of the resultant disintegration of society. When they understand and address these costs, I'll start to take them seriously.
Until then, I have a warning for them: Freemarketeers -- there is revolution in the air. You have been warned, you better begin to change your ways or be prepared to face the awful consequences.
Shlaes is a member of the conservative journalistic Illuminati, a commentator on all things economic. As a group CJIThey are desperately trying to cast a pall of amnesia over the American electorate, otherwise they got a lot of 'splaining to do. I think this argument is part of that effort, project "find something to fight about so we don't have to consider just how wrong we were." So I guess a "Good Job" is in order for Amity.
It's all good, the Krugman is on the other side of the balance, his model has the inestimable advantage of having been proven correct in actual economies (ours for example). He also likes to bash these guys about the head and ears with his Nobel plaque. He's gotten so good at it he's apparently roped the Obama administration into some kind of negotiated settlement on the size of the bail out package, a rather surprising turn of events. Professor Sowell and Fräulein Shlaes are just a couple of red necks looky-loos. It wouldn't be America if we couldn't scrounge up a couple of them.
Aint you never seen Jerry Springer?
The latest issue of Barron's analyzed the unemployment numbers. They always take issue with the way the BLS does the unemployment numbers by using a birth/death model. In the just released numbers for December, this means they created 70,000 jobs out of thin air despite the fact that employers are handing out pink slips like Halloween candy on October 31.
Barron's uses the U-6 number, which accounts for people who want to work but have given up their job search, and includes people who are working part time but want full time work.
That number is at 13.5 percent, which is up from 12.6 in November and 8.7 percent in December of 2007. The BLS data goes back to 1994. This is the highest U-6 number by far. The next highest number is 11.8 percent back in January 1994.
We must realize that anyone working for the government is payed through taxpayer dollars and that taxpayer dollars come directly from the private sector. Given these facts, imagine for a moment if 100% of all work people in this country worked for the government. Well, that would mean ZERO people would be working for the private sector. That means that ZERO taxes are being payed. That means government workers are being payed ZERO dollars and now all these people are now out of a job. This extreme circumstance illustrates that government cannot sustain itself. It needs the private sector in order to survive. Which means anyone working for the government needs the private sector to sustain it. With all that said, of course unemployment numbers should include those working for the government because they are not employed by any entity that actually makes money. Therefore, for statistical purposes they do NOT have a job. They aren't making money that helps sustain our economy because 100% of the money they earn is taken from private businesses that DO make money.