ONE REASON THE LABOR FORCE IS SHRINKING: BOOMERS RETIRING
Amidst the concern about tepid job creation under the Obama presidency, there is also the issue of people "dropping out of the work force" and the percentage of the population in the work force continually hitting new lows. It is important to be fair about this and recognize that there are two different factors driving this shrinkage in the work force:
1- People are truly discouraged about job prospects and quit looking--and this is exaggerated by the high level of government support: unemployment, food stamps, welfare, etc.
2- 10,000 Americans turn 65 every day, that is 3,650,000 per year (300,000+/-) per month, most of whom might be dropping out of the work force.
THUS: As little as 25% of the work force drop outs are due to demotivated job seekers, and as many as 75% could be aging boomers who "retire" and draw Social Security (age 66+) and Medicare (age 65+).
ONLY 96,000 NET JOBS AND YET UNEMPLOYMENT GOES DOWN TO 8.1%--WHAT?
First this is U-2 unemployment which ignores many people who are dramatically underemployed (U-6). Go see http://www.bls.gov/lau/stalt.htm This shows the complete picture nationally and by state. Since population growth in the USA is around 3% and the country's population is 312 million, it takes around 100,000 to 125,000 new net jobs to absorb new work force entrants. It varies around 100-125,000 since the ages of new work force entrants might be slightly different from the average growth rate…but when the economy i.e. creating net new jobs at an average of 150,000, it is not really growing very much in jobs.
NOTE: The claim of 4.5 million new jobs in the past 30 months by Obama-ites uses a slight deception to make it look better. It excludes government jobs, which have been dropping, and only shows private sector jobs. Bottom line--there has been growth, but a only a little higher than the number of new work force entrants @ 100,000-125,000+/-.
AN OUTLOOK FOR THE ECONOMY?
Here is my latest Forbes post, since it attracted very few views--I guess everyone is glued to the political conventions. I probably need to write some kind of scathing political headline to attract view--content clearly doesn't do it.
Download Retail Recovery: A Blip Followed By A Dip? - Forbes
PROVERBS ARE OFTEN TRUE
Original Chinese Proverb: "Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime"
New White House Proverb: Give a man a welfare check, a free cell phone with unlimited free minutes, cash for his clunker, food stamps, section 8 housing, free contraceptives, Medicaid, ninety-nine weeks of unemployment, free meds, and he will vote for Democrats the rest of his life … even after he's deceased.
New White House Proverb: Give a man a welfare check, a free cell phone with unlimited free minutes, cash for his clunker, food stamps, section 8 housing, free contraceptives, Medicaid, ninety-nine weeks of unemployment, free meds, and he will vote for Democrats the rest of his life … even after he's deceased.
ON THE WEEK WHEN THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION IS PUTTING ON AN OBAMA "LOVEFEST"
I only watched a little of the coverage: Michelle Obama was amazingly effective. The personal nature of her appeal hit home with that audience. Bill Clinton seemed to be running for another term--and was far more informative and effective than Obama will be--but he's done. He was doing his duty and did it very well. The base loves him. The rest of us know he lies as easily as Obama and as most people tell the true. Best of all, as a politician, he can bend the facts to suit his purpose with the best of them (like Obama, but way more engaging and down to earth. He's masterful at it. But he was selling a "dog that just won't hunt." (Most of his rationales were contrived or distorted--but he gave it a good shot!)
WHAT NEW IDEAS DID BARACK OBAMA COVER?
THE NY TIMES SUDDENLY GETS A BIT MORE OBJECTIVE:
(READ RICH KAARLSGARD'S INTRO FIRST)
CAMPAIGNS ARE WHEN BOTH SIDES TAKE EVERYTHING THEY CAN AND USE IT--EVEN WHEN IT ISN'T QUITE ACCURATE
Paul Ryan's Janesville GM plant story is one example of this. Ryan didn't lie. He just didn't tell everyone the full context. He was trying to point that instance out as another example of Obama's broken campaign promises and failed rhetoric. IF Ryan had phrased it a bit differently--and more honestly--he'd have gotten as much or more impact out of the story. He will learn, and continue to improve.
OBAMA IS PARTLY RIGHT, BUT MOSTLY WRONG--AND HE THINKS OF IT ALL MOSTLY WRONG TOO!
Barack Obama's "you didn't build that…" is another case of where a phrase was partly taken in context, and partly taken out of context. Obama is partly right. Obama is right if he meant that companies don't build the infrastructure (water, sewers, roads, etc.) they need to exist, do business, etc. On the other hand, which comes first, the chicken or the egg?
WHERE DOES THE MONEY COME FROM TO PAY FOR PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE? TAXES--from companies and employees
If companies aren't "built" and don't hire people and pay taxes (plus, their employees, suppliers, etc. also pay taxes) then there is no financial basis for building the infrastructure (often done by Bonds). from the other directions, cities and states sometimes build infrastructure first and then try to attract employers. As far as other governmental support, (police, fire,schools, etc.) I think Obama is on pretty shaky ground in saying that these public services were what has allowed companies to be built, prosper, etc.
A LITANY OF LIES MARKED HIS CAMPAIGN (AND FOLLOWED IN HIS PRESIDENCY): WATCH AND LISTEN
TWO VERY GOOD PIECES FOLLOW THIS…THEY SAY IT FAR BETTER THAN I COULD.
BEST, JOHN
(Click on
the file and see both pages)
A BRILLIANT WRITER WEIGHS IN
Obama's Dreams
By Thomas Sowell
Tuesday, September 04, 2012
After reading Barack Obama's book "Dreams from My Father," it became painfully clear that he has not been searching for the truth, because he assumed from an early age that he had already found the truth — and now it was just a question of filling in the details and deciding how to change things.
Obama did not simply happen to encounter a lot of people on the far left fringe during his life. As he spells out in his book, he actively sought out such people. There is no hint of the slightest curiosity on his part about other visions of the world that might be weighed against the vision he had seized upon.
As Professor Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago Law School has pointed out, Obama made no effort to take part in the marketplace of ideas with other faculty members when he was teaching a law course there. What would be the point, if he already knew the truth and knew that they were wrong?
This would be a remarkable position to take, even for a learned scholar who had already spent decades canvassing a vast amount of information and views on many subjects. But Obama was already doctrinaire at a very early age — and ill-informed or misinformed on both history and economics.
His statement in "Dreams from My Father" about how white men went to Africa to "drag away the conquered in chains" betrays his ignorance of African history.
The era of the Atlantic slave trade and the era of European conquests across the continent of Africa were different eras. During the era of the Atlantic slave trade, most of Africa was ruled by Africans, who sold some of their slaves to white men.
European conquests in Africa had to wait until Europeans found some way to survive lethal African diseases, to which they lacked resistance. Only after medical science learned to deal with these diseases could the era of European conquests spread across sub-Saharan Africa. But the Atlantic slave trade was over by then.
There was no reason why Barack Obama had to know this. But there was also no reason for him to be shooting off his mouth without knowing what he was talking about.
Similarly with Obama's characterization of the Nile as "the world's greatest river." The Nile is less than 10 percent longer than the Amazon, but the Amazon delivers more than 50 times as much water into the Atlantic as the Nile delivers into the Mediterranean. The Nile could not accommodate the largest ships, even back in Roman times, much less the aircraft carriers of today that can sail up the Hudson River and dock in midtown Manhattan.
When Obama wrote that many people "had been enslaved only because of the color of their skin," he was repeating a common piece of gross misinformation. For thousands of years, people enslaved other people of the same race as themselves, whether in Europe, Asia, Africa or the Western Hemisphere.
Europeans enslaved other Europeans for centuries before the first African was brought in bondage to the Western Hemisphere. The very word "slave" is derived from the name of a European people once widely held in bondage, the Slavs.
As for economics, Obama thought that Indonesians would be worse off after Europeans came in, used up their natural resources and then left them too poor to continue the modern way of life to which they had become accustomed, or to resume their previous way of life, after their previous skills had atrophied.
This fear of European "exploitation" prevailed widely in the Third World in the middle of the 20th century. But, by the late 20th century, the falseness of that view had been demonstrated so plainly and so often, in countries around the world, that even socialist and communist governments began opening their economies to foreign investments. This often led to rising economic growth rates that lifted millions of people out of poverty.
Barack Obama is one of those people who are often wrong but never in doubt. When he burst upon the national political scene as a presidential candidate in 2008, even some conservatives were impressed by his confidence.
But confident ignorance is one of the most dangerous qualities in a leader of a nation. If he has the rhetorical skills to inspire the same confidence in himself by others, then you have the ingredients for national disaster.
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com.
READ MY NEW BLOG: http://hopeisnotastrategybook.wordpress.com
By Thomas Sowell
Tuesday, September 04, 2012
After reading Barack Obama's book "Dreams from My Father," it became painfully clear that he has not been searching for the truth, because he assumed from an early age that he had already found the truth — and now it was just a question of filling in the details and deciding how to change things.
Obama did not simply happen to encounter a lot of people on the far left fringe during his life. As he spells out in his book, he actively sought out such people. There is no hint of the slightest curiosity on his part about other visions of the world that might be weighed against the vision he had seized upon.
As Professor Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago Law School has pointed out, Obama made no effort to take part in the marketplace of ideas with other faculty members when he was teaching a law course there. What would be the point, if he already knew the truth and knew that they were wrong?
This would be a remarkable position to take, even for a learned scholar who had already spent decades canvassing a vast amount of information and views on many subjects. But Obama was already doctrinaire at a very early age — and ill-informed or misinformed on both history and economics.
His statement in "Dreams from My Father" about how white men went to Africa to "drag away the conquered in chains" betrays his ignorance of African history.
The era of the Atlantic slave trade and the era of European conquests across the continent of Africa were different eras. During the era of the Atlantic slave trade, most of Africa was ruled by Africans, who sold some of their slaves to white men.
European conquests in Africa had to wait until Europeans found some way to survive lethal African diseases, to which they lacked resistance. Only after medical science learned to deal with these diseases could the era of European conquests spread across sub-Saharan Africa. But the Atlantic slave trade was over by then.
There was no reason why Barack Obama had to know this. But there was also no reason for him to be shooting off his mouth without knowing what he was talking about.
Similarly with Obama's characterization of the Nile as "the world's greatest river." The Nile is less than 10 percent longer than the Amazon, but the Amazon delivers more than 50 times as much water into the Atlantic as the Nile delivers into the Mediterranean. The Nile could not accommodate the largest ships, even back in Roman times, much less the aircraft carriers of today that can sail up the Hudson River and dock in midtown Manhattan.
When Obama wrote that many people "had been enslaved only because of the color of their skin," he was repeating a common piece of gross misinformation. For thousands of years, people enslaved other people of the same race as themselves, whether in Europe, Asia, Africa or the Western Hemisphere.
Europeans enslaved other Europeans for centuries before the first African was brought in bondage to the Western Hemisphere. The very word "slave" is derived from the name of a European people once widely held in bondage, the Slavs.
As for economics, Obama thought that Indonesians would be worse off after Europeans came in, used up their natural resources and then left them too poor to continue the modern way of life to which they had become accustomed, or to resume their previous way of life, after their previous skills had atrophied.
This fear of European "exploitation" prevailed widely in the Third World in the middle of the 20th century. But, by the late 20th century, the falseness of that view had been demonstrated so plainly and so often, in countries around the world, that even socialist and communist governments began opening their economies to foreign investments. This often led to rising economic growth rates that lifted millions of people out of poverty.
Barack Obama is one of those people who are often wrong but never in doubt. When he burst upon the national political scene as a presidential candidate in 2008, even some conservatives were impressed by his confidence.
But confident ignorance is one of the most dangerous qualities in a leader of a nation. If he has the rhetorical skills to inspire the same confidence in himself by others, then you have the ingredients for national disaster.
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com.
**********************
GET HOPE IS NOT A STRATEGY IN BOOK OR KINDLE VERSION AT:
OR OTHER EBOOK FORMATS AT:
Smashwords.com https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/142287
AND GO SEE THE WEB SITE to see the Chapter titles and much more information:
Author of the Award Winner: THE COMPLEXITY CRISIS, and the exciting novel: THE CHINESE CONSPIRACY. Come see my blog posts on Forbes.com
John L. Mariotti, President & CEO, The Enterprise Group, http://www.mariotti.net, http://mariotti.blogs.com/my_weblog/
****CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This e-mail message, including any attachments, is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the original message. --The comments in this message are the sole opinion of the author, or of the attributed sources, and of no other persons or organization.
Comments