DUmmy husb2Sparkly (by the way, why haven't we heard from Sparkly lately? Any freshly turned earth in Sparkly's back yard?), still crouched over the cat box, still not recovered from the outrageous use of the word "jig" in a news report, is now deeply offended by the suggestion that unemployment has declined by a small amount:
Stinky The Clown (1000+ posts) Fri Aug-07-09 06:21 PM
Original message
The downtick in unemployment from 9.6 to 9.4 is largely the result of 400,000 people .........
.... no longer being listed as 'unemployed'. They haven't gotten jobs. They've just stopped looking. Or maybe worse.
abumbyanyothername (1000+ posts) Fri Aug-07-09 06:22 PM
Response to Original message
1. Yes
If we had a decent health care system, some of those people would be alive making the numbers look worse.
That's clearly true. You can look at nearly any socialist country, and see lots more people living in poverty than we have here. The reason is that socialized medicine keeps them alive. Many people in free countries don't realize this. The reason we don't have all those starving masses is that we've already allowed them to die.
JonQ (1000+ posts) Fri Aug-07-09 06:27 PM
Response to Reply #2
7. The latest claim
for things getting better was that new cases of unemployment had slowed (something like 550,000 last month instead of the projected 580,000). That still argues that the unemployment rate is increasing, maybe at a slower rate, but certainly not decreasing.
Question: how do you lower unemployment rates when more people are being laid off and new jobs aren't popping in to existence?
Answer: stop calling all those people with jobs "unemployed" label them as something else and the rate plummets.
Wait a minute. I thought that whole system of deceptive unemployment numbers was invented by the BFEE during the era of Reagan/Bush prosperity, to fool the proles. Why is it still being used? I thought the true unemployment rate, somewhere north of 20% was going to be revealed.
Stinky The Clown (1000+ posts) Fri Aug-07-09 06:29 PM
Response to Reply #2
11. Actually ......
Next months numbers could have a different explanation. Or not.
The stock market usually goes up on news that's bad for little people. Or not.
DUmmy husb2Sparkly does not realize that a rise in the stock market IS good news for little people.
NoPasaran (1000+ posts) Fri Aug-07-09 06:29 PM
Response to Original message
9. I got an email from Cynthia McKinney
She says they were all shot in the back of the head and fed to the gators.
If you think this is a joke, I would suggest you sign up for Cynthia McKinney's ping list.
ProgressiveProfessor (1000+ posts) Fri Aug-07-09 06:29 PM
Response to Original message
10. Is anyone at the Whitehouse dancing a jig over that?
