Note: 20141220
One FaceBook follower noted in a comment to me that my posts “always create huge controversy”. This post was no exception. In fact, the controversy here went beyond the usual name calling and defamation to levels where followers who normally agree at least in part with my observations were claiming my position unreasonable. But they never mentioned any way in which my calculation was actually faulted, only that they didn’t like the result.
This post is mathematical analysis and contains no emotions: mathematics is a modeling tool, not a judgmental hammer! It is a simple mathematical fact that the true unemployment rate, based entirely upon US government Census Bureau and US Bureau of Labor Statistics provided numbers, is at least 29%, not the published 5%. If the 20 million illegal aliens hiding in this country are incorporated into the calculation, they make it come out to about 35% of Americans are not working at this time. It excludes those too young (younger than 18 years of age) or too old (older than 65 years of age) to work, but considers everyone in between a potential worker.
This does not pass judgment that the current status is either good or bad: it does not rule that all wives should be working. It does not claim paraplegics, bed ridden seniors, or new born babies should be out digging ditches. It just says this many people are in the US, this many can work and are working, therefore this many who can work are not working, and this is the percentage of working age adults who are not working.
Any judgment or emotion came from something beside the mathematical analysis.
And maybe that also means something. The fact that so many people were so outraged at the result of the analysis, yet could offer absolutely no point where the analysis itself was in any way flawed, speaks to me that the sense of the American Citizenry is that all people who can work should work, and that they see from this analysis that that is not the present status.
It was not my goal in this post to pass judgment upon the present Federal Administration: it was my goal merely to correct the Federal mis-information concerning the current unemployment rate. I don’t NEED to pass judgment on the present Federal Administration: passing judgment on this Federal Administration was clearly accomplished at the polls in November 2014, and will be again in November 2016.
Whether or not the present Federal Administration wants to actually DO SOMETHING to comply with the sense of the voting American Citizenry is really up to them. Perhaps they will consider the will of the people and stop being a DO NOTHING USEFUL ADMINISTRATION and give us some change that we really can believe in, because clearly 90% of the States voted against continuing this path. Counting on 10% of the States to keep you in power is not especially omniscient.