Bill Quick at Daily Pundit (Link not working at this time. He changed hosting services and is having problems. Should have gone to my provider, Hosting Matters. Fantastic tech support!) has been writing for quite some time that we never came out of the Great Recession and in fact, we are currently in a depression. Over at Zero Hedge, there is proof.
On this Labor Day, labor, meaning jobs, is suffering.
The most blatant attempt by the ruling class to subvert the truth regarding our ongoing depression is the despicably absurd propaganda churned out by the government apparatchiks at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. With a working age population of 253.9 million people and only 151.6 million of them employed (27 million part-time, 15 million self-employed, 7 million working multiple jobs and worst of all 22 million government workers), the BLS has the gall to report only a 4.9% unemployment rate. There are 102.3 million working age Americans not working, but only 7.8 million of them are unemployed according to the highly educated establishment lackeys at the BLS. The other 94.5 million non-working Americans must be frolicking in the surf, sipping margaritas and counting the millions they’ve made in the rigged Wall Street casino.
Would the labor participation rate and employment to population ratio be hovering at levels last seen in 1978 if the jobs market was booming? And don’t blame it on Baby Boomers retiring. With 28% of people over 55 years old with no retirement savings and the median retirement savings of those 55 to 61 years old of $17,000, few Boomers can afford to retire on $12,000 of Social Security per year. The percentage of those over 55 years old working is at an all-time high, while the percentage of men 25 to 54 (prime working years) working is at an all-time low. Since 2007 the country has added 5.6 million mostly low paying service jobs, while 15.7 million Americans have supposedly left the labor force of their own free will, and the unemployment rate is virtually the same. Only an Ivy League educated economist or highly paid CNBC pundit would believe such malarkey.
If job growth was as strong as government and corporate media proclaim, how could weekly wages be growing by only 1.5% annually today and averaging only 2% over the last five years. When inflation on things you need to live (rent, healthcare, energy, food, education, autos) tallies in excess of 5% annually, you’re earning .25% if you have any savings and your wages have been going up at less than 2% per year, your daily existence is depressionary. Real median household income is lower than it was in 1989, even using the hugely understated and manipulated CPI.
Back before seasonal adjustments, birth death model phantom excel spreadsheet created jobs, pretending working age people weren’t in the workforce and the existence of government bureaucrats whose job it was to paint a rosy picture, we had actual unemployment figures. Every able bodied American was in the labor force during the Great Depression. The true unemployment rate fluctuated between 15% and 25% during most of the 1930’s. They had to stand in line for their relief checks and food. It wasn’t wired into their bank accounts or downloaded onto an EBT card.
The government approved false unemployment rate (U3) regurgitated by the corporate mainstream media with no qualifications or clarifications is 4.9%. The U-6 unemployment rate is the broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment. It stands at 9.7%, almost double the mainstream media reported rate. You never hear this figure mentioned by the compliant lackey media.
But, if you want the true unemployment rate you must adjust the government figures for the misinformation which began in 1994. Long-term discouraged workers were defined out of official existence in 1994. If you stop looking for a job because there are no jobs available, the BLS pretends you no longer exist and you are dropped from their unemployment calculations. John Williams at Shadowstats rightfully adds these discouraged workers, who are willing to work, back into the calculation and surprise, surprise, the real unemployment rate in this country has been between 18% and 23% for the last seven years. Those rates are identical to the worst years of the Great Depression.
He also points out that there are no lines at soup kitchens because now people are getting Food Stamps which, by the way, are at an all time high. Without them, there would be lines of hungry people.
But what about the stock market? He points out that during the Depression, the stock market actually outperformed today’s stock market. “… the stock market soared by 260% between 1932 and 1937, making the current cyclical bull seem puny in comparison.” The fat cats got richer while the rest of the people didn’t.
The growth rate during Obungler’s recovery has actually been less than the rate during the Depression. It has not cracked 3% any year. It was better during the Depression.
Again, we refer to the entire 1930’s as the Great Depression despite the fact real GDP surged by 40% between 1933 and 1937. If today’s mainstream media existed during the 1930’s they would have been proclaiming the “tremendous” GDP growth and “spectacular” stock market gains. They would have really boosted the spirits of the millions receiving government relief and standing for hours waiting for a cup of soup and some stale bread. The real GDP in this country has grown by a pathetic 15.4% since the 2009 low. Using a true measure of inflation reveals we’ve essentially been in recession since the early 2000’s, with a depression since 2008.
Yet every summer during the Obumbler regime, the LSM propaganda arm of the Dimocrat Party has been churning out garbage like “green shoots” and “recovery summer” and it has been nothing but bullshit.
I’ve been ignoring the fact that we are in a Depression because I’m doing well. I saved and invested my money and grew a pretty substantial nest egg and it has continued to grow since I’ve retired. I’ve lived well but never beyond my means. As a result, I have a nice income and no money worries. I’ve seen ROI on electric utility stocks drop from 8% to 3% which sucks but I still have enough money invested to get a nice income. Same with bonds.
I feel sorry for seniors who do not have enough money to survive on these rates. Many of them invested in CDs but the Fed has lowered interest rates so much (so the gummint could borrow money cheaply to implement failed Keynesian policies) that they are getting nothing from them. The current Depression is hitting many seniors hard who only have their Social Security checks to live on. And while Congress gets a cost of living raise every year, seniors on Social Security don’t. They didn’t get one this year and I’ll bet they don’t get one next year. A nice growth in the economy and reasonable interest rates would solve this problem but the current bunch in DC, meaning all of the Dimocrats and at least half of the Republicans, have no ideas to get us out of this mess. I’d say a nice war might do it since that usually gets us out of depressions, but we’re currently fighting two of them.
Anyway, read the entire article. This is only part one. I look forward to part two.