Archive for April 6th, 2012

The unemployment rate went down … hmmm.

April 6, 2012

BLS Report says that 120,000 seasonally adjusted jobs were added in March … below February when 240,000 were added.

In February, the unemployment rate remained constant at 8.3% … it dropped in March to 8.2%.

How can that be?

Remember that the jobs growth comes from the “Institutions Survey” and the unemployment rate comes from the “Population Survey”.

From the “Population Survey”, seasonally adjusted employment actually declined by 31,000 – from 142.065 million to 142.034 million. (chart below)

So, how did the unemployment rate go down?

Simple.

The labor force participation rate continued to decline.

In February, 154.871 million were in the labor pool; in March there were 154.707 million … a drop of 164,000. (chart below)

Presto … the unemployment rate goes down.

If only more people were to get sufficiently discouraged that they’d stop looking for work, we’d have this unemployment problem nailed.

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Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey

Civilian Employment Level

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Civilian Labor Force Level

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In the UK, it’s better to be fat than to be old.

April 6, 2012

Recent editorial in the UK’s  Telegraph pointed out that the National Health Service (NHS) discriminates against elderly folks … rationing their care by dealying or denying medical services.

According to the Telegraph, the elderly are displaced in the medical queue by overweight folks whose “conditions, though, are the direct result of bad habits, poor diet, and the wrong choices. These conditions range from obesity and diabetes to smoking-related diseases like emphesema.”

If a 20-stone, 30-something woman comes into hospital with a bad diabetic attack, does she deserve to be at the front of the queue or the back?

She has chosen to stuff her face with Mars bars and Coke, and is now suffering the consequences of her choice.

She cannot claim ignorance of the dangers of her diet: the Government has carpet-bombed us with health advice, from schools to GP practices.

Class no longer regulates access to healthy living: everyone who can watch the telly, let alone read the magazines, knows that a high-fat diet will make you look bad and feel worse.

So what?

The Telegraph’s view:

The septuagenarian who develops breast cancer has done nothing wrong – except grow old.

The NHS has to consider that there are deserving cases and undeserving ones.

Age should not be a barrier to optimum care; but bad habits should be.

As my personal odometer races forward, I gotta agree with the Telegraph.

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Mindreader: “I’m not picking up a signal”

April 6, 2012

According to the Journal of Commerce, the head of the General Services Administration (GSA) and top staff got pink slips for spending $800,000 on a Las Vegas conference.

U.S. Rep. John L. Mica (R-FL) sniffed out that “the tab even included a clown for entertainment” and huffed that “this is just the tip of the iceberg.”

Boy, that’s for sure.

Riding lower on the conference iceberg was a mindreader, leading Rep. Mica to wonder “if the $3,200 mind reader told GSA officials that blowing more than $800,000 on a Vegas conference for a few hundred bureaucrats would get them fired?”

Silly question. 

Mindreaders read minds, they don’t tell fortunes.

Fortune tellers tell fortunes.

Maybe they should have hired a fortune teller …

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P.S Yeah, the expenses sound a little high, but c’mon, man  … every conference I’ve ever been to has had some entertainment … and a mindreading act isn’t exactly el primo education.

Also, while I love to pick on gov’t waste, I’m told that the GSA does a pretty solid job.

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