Friday, May 4, 2012

STATISTICAL WAYS THE GOVERNMENT IS SCREWING US

As a person with a degree in statistical analysis (technically anthropology but most of that IS statistical analysis), I understand statistics more than the average layman. What is going on right now is nothing short of criminal with BOTH parties in power doing the exact same thing for decades. The reason why is obvious in that who ever controls the strings at the time, in the case the Democrats, will manipulate the data to make it seem like things are better than they really are. But the fudging of the data is doing a great deal of harm from the idiotic unemployment rate to the way inflation is gauged.

Way back when Reagen was in office, the wave off bull began. Under his "wise tutelage," unemployment statistics was changed to eliminate some of who should have been counted. Likewise, President Douchebag started adding income taxes to all unemployment payments, taking what little money you had, which was roughly a third of what you were making, and then giving another third for taxes. WTF?

Not to be outdone, Clinton furthered tinkered with unemployment data, throwing even more off the ranks of the officially unemployed. No longer would certain people be counted like those that had given up for work because they couldn't find a job. How exactly are these people not unemployed? Plus, working as little as one hour a week meant you were gainfully employed. That hour better pay fantastic to anyone to survive off that. So our current unemployment rate goes from what was the lie of 8.1% to somewhere in the low to mid twenties if we remove that statistic trick to better gauge the real numbers. These are Depression Era levels and have not moved a tick in five years. The fact that the government and MSM keep telling us the recession ended in 2009 must not get out much because the reality is that not only are we not out of recession, we are in a shallow Depression, one that looks to be getting worse.

Even by the government's own standards, if we include the two groups mentioned above, the unemployment rate would climb to 14.5% and that still doesn't include all the people who should be counted. John Williams Shadowstats website is an excellent gauge of the true unemployment in the country and should be checked out. Here's a link:

http://www.shadowstats.com/





The above chart shows the REAL rate of unemployment when all factors are added in such as long term discouraged workers. The actual rate is around 23%. But we're not in recession. Right.

Inflation is another stat being manipulated wildly for economic reasons. Clinton changed the way we gauges inflation by removing inflationary additions caused by food and fuel and kept what is called Core Inflation. By removing two of the most volatile commodities, Clinton and subsequent presidents and Congress have kept the rate artificially low for several decades. The chart below shows the real rate.





These two charts show what happened after Regan and Bush Sr. both got through trashing the numbers. The first chart uses data using post 90's numbers show the real unemployment rate is hovering around 6%, not the idiotic 3% the government uses since Clinton and Bush Jr have both tinkered with it again, as almost certainly Obama has as well. If we look at the numbers that have changed since Reagan, the inflation rate is almost four times what the going rate is. What that means for all you seniors out there on Social Security and a fixed income, the government has taken your money and returned pennies to you on the dollar. If the real rate was still in effect, your SS checks would be higher by at least double what you get right now.

And let's clear one thing up for the Teatards and Republicans who keep calling SS an "entitlement" program, need to shut the hell up because they have no idea what they are talking about. Last I looked, we have all been paying a substantial part of our paychecks since we have been old enough to work to cover this fund. If the average worker contributes a steady percentage of his income over a period of roughly fifty years, every single person in the US would have, with interest factored in, approximately $250,000. If the average payment is $1200 a month, it would take 25 years to deplete that account, which at least half of people will never collect the full amount. These overdrafts would more than compensate the rest of the population that would live past the 25 year depletion rate. So where is all that money that workers have been putting into? It has been stolen by the very officials that were supposed to be protecting it. SS isn't broke. Politicians have taken it and a lot of you out there want it ended completely as a result. It's like closing a bank because someone robbed it of fifty dollars. Get your heads out of your ass and realize when someone has screwed you over already morons.

Both side are lying to us and yet we do nothing. Let' s look at another stat that has my blood boiling. We keep hearing about jobs being added to economy which has been roughly 200,000 over the last four months, with April being a disaster with only 130,000 jobs added. The funny part is, again due to a statistical tricks, that number is actually closer to zero. Government pencil pushers use an outdated, worthless, birth/death ratio that in no way shows the real gain/loss in employment. This model worked fine a decade ago when the economy was humming, but in todays uncertain climate, the model no longer works as there are far more "deaths" than "births." What this model attempts to show is how many new businesses were created or "births" versus those that went under or "deaths." However, modern stats show that far more businesses die than are created, especially over the last five years. Using a more detailed model, 120,000 jobs "created" each month are nothing more than statistic trick using outdated data capture. Therefore 130,000 jobs created are actually closer to 10,000. And most, if not all of those, are crap jobs that pay nothing what the person once made.


Housing gets no better with this stat below.



• Industrial Production Unchanged for Second Month
• Housing Starts in 40th Month of Historically-Low-Level Stagnation,
Following 2006-to-2008 Collapse in Activity

We keep hearing from the government and MSM that the hosuing market is going to pick up steam any day now. Right. Not with banks still holding on to huge tracks of toxic mortagages. Some economists have said the housing market will take 25 years to recover. But there is no recession.

Stats are being used to sell us austerity measures, AKA the Ryan Budget Plan, and anyone supporting that kind of crap can just pack their bags and move to Greece or Spain and see how well those measures have been. We don't want you here. Leave so the rest of us can figure out how to fix this increasingly out of control job and housing crisis. The sad part is no one has any idea what to do. One in seven in the US think the world will end in their lifetime. With these kind of numbers, it's hard not be one of them.    

1 comment:

  1. Good commentary.
    The scariest part to me isn't that the government is lying about the number of jobs, or jobless, temporarily employed---------it's the idea that an economy based on people being sick (17% GNP) and participating in finding ways to kill or actually killing in the name of defense (???GNP) coupled to increased AI and robotics......means that even if the country turns its attention fulltime to rebuilding the infrastructure (which would be intelligently sane to do) the job scenario for the future is bleak.

    Humans are expendable entities for employers covering their bottomline asses.
    I wonder where the actual jobs will be even as we continue to mechanize/robotize while increasing the population......it's
    discomforting to contemplate.

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