Record 94,610,000 Americans not in Labor Force

a reply to: amicktd

Capitalism is it's own worst enemy Capitalism is it's own worst enemy Capitalism is it's own worst enemy Capitalism is it's own worst enemy....

Well *IF* a President and/or Congress has anything to do with it, compare 2006 with Bush and a Republican Congress.

Unemployment at a 4.4% low.

Then Democrats take Congress in 2007 until 2011.

Then look at a Republican House from 2011 until now.

See the correlation?

Deficit binge spending down too with a "R" Congress.

Strange

a reply to: pl3bscheese

Hmmm, we'll how many are over 65 and are we certain women should count?

yep just goes to show what I've said so often on these boards. when the economy get's tough, men have families to take care of, they need the jobs, women have men to take care of them or danged well should have. therefore, well they don't count!!

when the cost of child care eats up enough of the paycheck that it's just not worth working, or worse costs more than the paycheck provides, the women will leave the workforce. unless of course, their income is low enough that the gov't will subsidize their child care. the result of this will be those women who have the training, the ability to compete for the decent jobs will be pushed out of the labor force, while those who don't are pushed by welfare reform into those lower paid, traditionally women's work jobs. thus preserving the traditional stereotype of women.

a reply to: neoholographic

But... but.... but the unemployment rate is down.

originally posted by: rockintitz
a reply to: carewemust

Technically no, since they are not seeking employment they are not considered unemployed.

So the administration gets to keep up their farce of "low unemployment percentages"

OK...then OUR government continues to screw those of us who elected them. Just like they do when saying that Social Security will not increase in 2016, because there's NO INFLATION. Eventually, we'll get fed up and throw all the bums out of office. Are we to that point of making a radical change...like electing Donald Trump as President? Maybe..

originally posted by: introvert
Ya know, this is a very interesting topic that needs to be discussed, but it's hard to do that when you talk about the topic and then sprinkle a whole lot of anti-Obama, Right Wing bull# on top.

Obama is the President of the United States, not god. He has very little power to create jobs without the approval of congress. Perhaps one of the reasons our county is not doing so well is because people believe Obama, or any president, is a magical position in which he can squat and squeeze out jobs at will.

I agree with you that Obama has limited power to create jobs, but, he sure does love to take credit for "lowering" the unemployment rate.

He does have the power to eliminate them though. Look at what HIS EPA has done to the Coal Industry.

Presidents don't create jobs, but the certainly create environments in which job creation is possible.

Under Obama, regulations have been stifling along with Obamacare. Business hates uncertainty more than anything. This administration has created a lot of uncertainty for businesses which is why they are sitting on so much cash as they don't want to invest for fear of not knowing what the future holds in terms of regulations, etc.

To be fair, our economy is going through some very long term structural changes where you have:

1) Older workers leaving the workforce
2) They aren't necessarily being replaced due to advances in productivity because of technology
3) Our service economy is more focused on specialized knowledge skills which makes it harder for those who are less educated. Jobs are being created in small subsections of the economy with high salaries OR at the bottom rung with low salaries.

As a country, we need to figure out how to get those middle class jobs back. However, there are other issue such as a woefully messed up education system, cultural dysfunction discouraging working, etc that also need to be addressed. we have entire segments of society that are utterly worthless in this economy because they have zero marketable skills. We need to focus on getting these people up to speed and quickly.

I count myself among this elite group.

Enjoy your work day!

The only way to create jobs is to take away the rights of the corporate persons, remove corporate person-hood laws which allow non-persons to enjoy the freedoms of flesh and blood persons without being liable for the damage they do.

These corporate pricks were a major factor that caused the revolutionary war, and they sprung up around the banking system which was also a major contributing factor to it.

Round and round we go.

Some do know exactly where it will NEVER stop.

a reply to: carewemust

If this number is true, it is staggering. Like you said, 1/3 of the U.S. labor force is not working.

And wages are still stagnant.

The middle class is disappearing.

The debt is mounting.

Things are going to get worse before they get better.

I don't know who can fix it, or if it even can be fixed with the way our political system works. One man can't do it alone.

a reply to: dawnstar

Well your point has little to nothing to do with my post. I questioned if women should count on official workforce numbers for a reason. That reason should be obvious. Women have a maternal instinct and have a responsibility to raise children. There is more variability and therefore ability to manipulate the statistics if we include women in the workforce numbers.

Here's an easy way to look at this. If we were to include or not women from the workforce pre-ww2, we'd come up with vastly different figures. You're correct that human beings have an instinct to protect and provide for a family as they best can, but where you screw it up and make this into a sexist rant is believing that women and men don't have different natural endowments and specializations in the instinct's expressions.

Now, my mother left her job to raise her kids while we were very young, and entered back into the workforce ending up the primary breadwinner. She is exceptional, I say that not to boast, but to show the reality that in a world that often needs physical strength and skills that men dominate in for work, she still managed to find her niche and come up on top socioeconomically. There's nothing sexist in my statements, men in general are a best fit for more jobs than women, and women are in general a best fit to raise children through their most formative years.

Now, do exceptions exist all around these generalizations? Of course. I only mean that women, who are a best fit elsewhere when the going gets rough, adapt wisely. You being jaded and making this into something it's not seems to reflect on your own issues. I'm sorry you're in such a bad place right now.

Presiders are complicit because they announce the decisions. They act like they are in charge so people tend to blame them.

Wonderful fodder for back and forth threads like this.

Divide and rule…

originally posted by: JIMC5499

originally posted by: introvert
Ya know, this is a very interesting topic that needs to be discussed, but it's hard to do that when you talk about the topic and then sprinkle a whole lot of anti-Obama, Right Wing bull# on top.

Obama is the President of the United States, not god. He has very little power to create jobs without the approval of congress. Perhaps one of the reasons our county is not doing so well is because people believe Obama, or any president, is a magical position in which he can squat and squeeze out jobs at will.

I agree with you that Obama has limited power to create jobs, but, he sure does love to take credit for "lowering" the unemployment rate.

He does have the power to eliminate them though. Look at what HIS EPA has done to the Coal Industry.

Good points and the self righteous nonsense of "I'm not partisan so I don't want to talk about Bush or Obama" is just nonsense because they don't want you to point out how horrible Obama has been.

Bush and Obama have been horrible for the economy and you contrast that with Clinton. Clinton basically triangulated and got out of the way. He said the era of big government is over to the chagrin of liberals but Bush and Obama has brought back big government with reckless abandon.

It's also a lie that Presidents can't create jobs. They can create them and destroy them along with Congress based on the policies they support.

For example, Government policies helped cause the economic crash. Multi-national banks gave big money to Republicans and Democrats and they eased underwriting standards to make getting loans easier for poor people with bad credit because the multi-nationals wanted to write more credit default swaps. They couldn't write more credit default swaps without Government.

Under Obama, the Fed continues it's party of printing money which has been a tax on the middle class and a huge shift of wealth to the evil 1%.

Obama’s $4 trillion gift to the rich

The auctioneer in the case of QE is the US Treasury, which sells trillions of dollars of bonds each year to paper over the US government deficit. The shill is the Federal Reserve, which has been printing trillions in extra money to buy these government bonds.

There’s one more thing that QE accomplished: it has made the stock market soar. Interest rates have remained so low for so long that investors have had no other choice but to move their money into the stock market, thus creating a bubble.

Even those adverse to risk were forced to chase the better yields in stocks, no matter how dangerous that was.

But for every winner in QE there are 99 losers. While the richest 1% of the US population has been loving the rise in stock prices and other QE amenities, Fed policy has been taxing on the masses of savers.

In fact, “tax” is a perfect word. QE has been an invisible tax on savers beyond anything Washington could have ever conceived.

Every dollar that has benefited a borrower during QE has come out of the pocket of a saver in the form of a lower return on their assets.

In fact, QE is now widely recognized by both supporters and opponents as causing the single largest shift ever in wealth, from middle class savers to rich Wall Street investors.

nypost.com...

So President's can help create the condition for job creation or destroy it through their policies.

a reply to: neoholographic

Good points and the self righteous nonsense of "I'm not partisan so I don't want to talk about Bush or Obama" is just nonsense because they don't want you to point out how horrible Obama has been.

I have no problem discussing what Obama has done wrong during his term. But that is not what you did in your OP. You immediately started it off with a bash on Obama, and continued to say the usual talking points and rhetoric such as "he walks on water", "shovel ready jobs" and you even managed to get a snipe in on Obamacare.

When you present yourself in such a manner, how can you expect us to believe that you really want to have a truthful, logical conversation about jobs and Obama's record concerning jobs?

Also, I believe you have failed to recognize the real problem with our economy that set-off all the problems we have today. That is the repeal of Glass-Steagall with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley bill in 1999. This Republican piece of legislation signed by Clinton no longer forced the banks to separate investment capital from holdings. Which means the banks were able to gamble with the money people put in to their accounts. This is also what gave way for the creation of CDS's and derivatives.

So you can blame Obama all you want, but you have still yet to address the real problems that we need to tackle and Obama had nothing to do with it.

originally posted by: introvert
Obama is the President of the United States, not god. He has very little power to create jobs without the approval of congress.

Ya know, last time I checked....it's not the job of government to create jobs.

That is the job of corporations, companies, mom and pop stores.....
We're not making a climate favorable to making new jobs in the US...and keeping the ones that are here...here.

IN fact, one of the talking points for labor talks with Chrysler is to send some US jobs to Mexico....

a reply to: introvert

This is just nonsense.

So it's bashing Obama to tell the truth? His supporters did act like Obama walked on water and Obama himself talked about how the oceans will heal if he's elected. He talked about shovel ready jobs and how Obamacare would be a boon for the economy.

So you think any talk against Obama is bashing Obama when I equally talk about the things both Bush and Obama have done. So of course you want to speak in these Kumbaya terms because any talk about the horrible job Obama is doing is "bashing Obama" and that's just silly.

Also, theirs nothing wrong with credit default swaps if they were capped. The problem occurred when multi-national corporations gave big money to Republicans and Democrats to ease underwriting standards. This is why you had people like Barney Frank talking about poor people have a right to the American Dream by owning a home and anyone who questioned this was called a racist.

I worked as a Mortgage Broker at the time and it was obvious that they were giving loans to anyone regardless if they paid their bills or not.

Without Government, the multi-nationals could only do so many Credit Default Swaps. With Government, the floodgates were open.

Double post

originally posted by: MyHappyDogShiner
The only way to create jobs is to take away the rights of the corporate persons, remove corporate person-hood laws which allow non-persons to enjoy the freedoms of flesh and blood persons without being liable for the damage they do.

These corporate pricks were a major factor that caused the revolutionary war, and they sprung up around the banking system which was also a major contributing factor to it.

Round and round we go.

Some do know exactly where it will NEVER stop.

It's very hard for those that have let their ideology get in the way of their common sense to realize this.

"Obama is the antiChrist" is their mantra. He has made plenty of mistakes but loss of jobs is clearly the corporations and their profit motives fault.

originally posted by: olaru12


"Obama is the antiChrist" is their mantra. He has made plenty of mistakes but loss of jobs is clearly the corporations and their profit motives fault.

Then no politician should be blamed or take credit for the unemployment numbers.