I'll admit it, I was wrong.
Okay, I was wrong, I'll admit it. Back on 24 November, 2008 I predicted that unemployment would hit around 25%. It was the end of the Bush administration and things were dire. Actual unemployment, not the phony numbers that get released each month, was around 37%. When I wrote in Livejournal I didn't have those numbers so I figured, "How outrageous can it get":
...the economy is going to get much, much worse. How much worse? I think actual unemployment will hit perhaps 25% or more. Remember, the current numbers don’t even show those that lost their jobs and had their unemployment run out (I speak from personal experience there, when mine ran out, I was no longer “unemployed”). I don’t trust the numbers!
Little did I know how much in error I was. Here I thought it was maybe 15-18%, it was 37%! On 9 June, 2009 I wrote a follow-up to the comments above:
At the time we were facing an economic collapse of unparalleled proportions. The Bush Administration executed the TARP financial rescue for the banks (of course nobody was making any effort to rescue us) and there was lots of heat about that at the time. So far, it does look like it was the right thing to do. Had the banking system totally failed, I think we'd all be in much more dire straits than we are at present, not that things are all that hunky-dory for anyone, other than the extremely wealthy.
At that time the actual numbers were around 40% unemployed. I didn't know, honest! That was after a year of the Obama administration. To the administrations credit, it was a monumental task to merely slow things down, fixing a disaster like that doesn't happen overnight.
Today a new report that actually tracks the true numbers, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, shows that we're now at 58.1% of the population employed, or 41.9% unemployed. See, I really was wrong, I figured by now we'd be at 25% unemployed. The good news is, it looks like it has been holding close to that number for about a year, the bad news is, it looks like it has been holding close to that number for about a year.
What we really should worry about now is the ripple-effects of this crazy, contrived, Budget Ceiling fiasco we just experienced. A bunch of lunatics that managed to get elected to Congress thought they had an edict from Planet Zork to hold the country hostage while they argued over how many angels could fit in the eye of a needle. They certainly were not looking for ways to exit their manufactured crisis, one that had no connection with reality. Why? Simple: Every previous President (Reagan 18 times, G. W. Bush, 7 times, etc.) have raised the limit to keep the country functioning. President G. W. Bush even threw in $4 Trillion in unfunded war bills, just to liven things up a bit. Now, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, the conservatives have found religion and want to exorcise this demon called the Debt Ceiling.
I'm all for reducing the national debt, I've argued in favor of that for years (The only Administration that actually did was Clinton-Gore). However, this contrived emergency was just totally politically driven and is a sham. We the taxpayers are going to be stuck with the bill, and I'm not talking about the rich tax payers, they're not even involved in this debate. It is the 58% of the population that is being called upon to sacrifice, not the people holding the money bags.
A few days ago I had a letter-to-the-editor published in our local paper, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. It was regarding headlines on the previous days paper about the rich spending money on their expensive toys and the unemployment numbers:
Rich and rescue-ready?
I found the front-page headline on Thursday's paper fascinating: "THE RICH GET BACK TO BUYING."
How comforting to know that they're stimulating the economy. For 30 years, conservatives have been telling us that, if we just reduce the taxes on the rich, they will magically rescue the economy.
Sadly, as the article points out, almost everything they're buying is expensive and foreign - Mercedes, Prada, Gucci, not exactly "red, white and blue" companies.
The same issue's Business section front also had a headline: "JOBLESS RATE RISES ALL OVER." Maybe the rich and the Bush tax cuts are not rescuing us?
Folks, I don't know if you realize it or not, but we've been cutting government for 30 years. We've been cutting the taxes on the rich for about as long. To paraphrase President Ronald Reagan, "Are you better off now than you were 30 years ago?" I think not.
...the economy is going to get much, much worse. How much worse? I think actual unemployment will hit perhaps 25% or more. Remember, the current numbers don’t even show those that lost their jobs and had their unemployment run out (I speak from personal experience there, when mine ran out, I was no longer “unemployed”). I don’t trust the numbers!
Little did I know how much in error I was. Here I thought it was maybe 15-18%, it was 37%! On 9 June, 2009 I wrote a follow-up to the comments above:
At the time we were facing an economic collapse of unparalleled proportions. The Bush Administration executed the TARP financial rescue for the banks (of course nobody was making any effort to rescue us) and there was lots of heat about that at the time. So far, it does look like it was the right thing to do. Had the banking system totally failed, I think we'd all be in much more dire straits than we are at present, not that things are all that hunky-dory for anyone, other than the extremely wealthy.
At that time the actual numbers were around 40% unemployed. I didn't know, honest! That was after a year of the Obama administration. To the administrations credit, it was a monumental task to merely slow things down, fixing a disaster like that doesn't happen overnight.
Today a new report that actually tracks the true numbers, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, shows that we're now at 58.1% of the population employed, or 41.9% unemployed. See, I really was wrong, I figured by now we'd be at 25% unemployed. The good news is, it looks like it has been holding close to that number for about a year, the bad news is, it looks like it has been holding close to that number for about a year.
What we really should worry about now is the ripple-effects of this crazy, contrived, Budget Ceiling fiasco we just experienced. A bunch of lunatics that managed to get elected to Congress thought they had an edict from Planet Zork to hold the country hostage while they argued over how many angels could fit in the eye of a needle. They certainly were not looking for ways to exit their manufactured crisis, one that had no connection with reality. Why? Simple: Every previous President (Reagan 18 times, G. W. Bush, 7 times, etc.) have raised the limit to keep the country functioning. President G. W. Bush even threw in $4 Trillion in unfunded war bills, just to liven things up a bit. Now, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, the conservatives have found religion and want to exorcise this demon called the Debt Ceiling.
I'm all for reducing the national debt, I've argued in favor of that for years (The only Administration that actually did was Clinton-Gore). However, this contrived emergency was just totally politically driven and is a sham. We the taxpayers are going to be stuck with the bill, and I'm not talking about the rich tax payers, they're not even involved in this debate. It is the 58% of the population that is being called upon to sacrifice, not the people holding the money bags.
A few days ago I had a letter-to-the-editor published in our local paper, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. It was regarding headlines on the previous days paper about the rich spending money on their expensive toys and the unemployment numbers:
Rich and rescue-ready?
I found the front-page headline on Thursday's paper fascinating: "THE RICH GET BACK TO BUYING."
How comforting to know that they're stimulating the economy. For 30 years, conservatives have been telling us that, if we just reduce the taxes on the rich, they will magically rescue the economy.
Sadly, as the article points out, almost everything they're buying is expensive and foreign - Mercedes, Prada, Gucci, not exactly "red, white and blue" companies.
The same issue's Business section front also had a headline: "JOBLESS RATE RISES ALL OVER." Maybe the rich and the Bush tax cuts are not rescuing us?
Folks, I don't know if you realize it or not, but we've been cutting government for 30 years. We've been cutting the taxes on the rich for about as long. To paraphrase President Ronald Reagan, "Are you better off now than you were 30 years ago?" I think not.