The Other Unemployment Rate - 41% of adults not working

[fskimospy]

Medicare has a shit ton of unfunded liabilities. Its the giant elephant in the room, that neither D nor R want to address.

That's like saying when you take out a mortgage that you suddenly have hundreds of thousands of dollars in unfunded liabilities.

 

[fskimospy]

This is the participation rate. And historically it has been much lower. Unemployment and participation rates are two different numbers. I think they both have a reason to be talked about. But for measuring the strength of an economy. I would put more weight on the unemployment numbers. It gives us a barometer of how the job market is.

Yes, absolutely.

While it is almost certain that the participation rate is lower currently due to depressed economic conditions we can also expect the participation rate to decline naturally as our population becomes older. In fact if you look at the trends our labor force participation rate has been declining for awhile now, long before the recession hit.

For an interesting read on this, the Kansas City FRB did a study on it last year:
http://www.kc.frb.org/publicat/econrev/pdf/12q1VanZandweghe.pdf

They concluded about half of the decline in participation during the recession was due to aging alone, the other half due to economic troubles.

 

[Mai72]

I'm staying right here in Asia. I'm teaching in South Korea and I get paid well. On top of that I get a free apartment, and I don't have car payments. Taxis are plentiful, convenient and they are dirt cheap. I'm saving a ton of money and I am having a blast as well.

After my contract is over I'm going to Thailand to live with my girlfriend. I'm going to purchase a beautiful condo in Bangkok that will only cost me $42,000 USD. I could never purchase a $42k condo in New Jersey.

I have zero desire to come home.

 

[Apple Of Sodom]

It is because you don't pay enough and are a douchebag. That is the only reason any job has trouble finding people to work. The douchebag thing is almost even bearable if the job pays enough.

Many employers suffer from this same issue, which is why so many people have quit looking. They would RATHER BE POOR THAN DEAL WITH SOMEONE LIKE YOU. Let that sink in for awhile.

Of course this is where you say handouts, entitlements, productivity, and all the other stupid bullshit you've been fed by your corporate overlords and all the Righty sheep come in to laud you for being a "job creator" and an "innovator" when you haven't invented a single fucking thing in your entire life.

I have a hard time taking advice from someone like you. Once I read stupid shit like "Righty sheep" or name calling like "Obummer" my brain shuts anything else out because I know I'm not dealing with a rational individual. Did you come up with "Righty sheep" and "corporate overlords" all on your own? God, you must have really kicked serious ass in high-school debate with that razor sharp wit of yours. Wow. How do you do it? I mean, this thread is from October so it only took a few months for you to postulate such a great argument, but you really did hit it out of the park.

 

[lotus503]

I have a hard time taking advice from someone like you. Once I read stupid shit like "Righty sheep" or name calling like "Obummer" my brain shuts anything else out because I know I'm not dealing with a rational individual. Did you come up with "Righty sheep" and "corporate overlords" all on your own? God, you must have really kicked serious ass in high-school debate with that razor sharp wit of yours. Wow. How do you do it? I mean, this thread is from October so it only took a few months for you to postulate such a great argument, but you really did hit it out of the park.

I thought he made a good point, if your having a hard time finding talent in this job market, maybe the problem is you.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

I thought he made a good point, if your having a hard time finding talent in this job market, maybe the problem is you.

I really think pr0d1gy is borderline psycho based on many of his posts in here and why his points aren't taken seriously. I laugh at most of what he posts in here.

 

[sao123]

Nice contribution. I can see you must have been on the debate team at your highschool.

I am an employer and have a hell of a time trying to find employees. Of my employees only half want to be there. The other half constantly job hop and do not want to work at all. One girl is unemployed and won't accept a job because we split tips with all staff instead of just the cashiers...it is ridiculous.

A quick glance through employment pages shows there are a lot of jobs open. Sure, a lot are only a buck or two above minimum wage, but it is still employment. I'm not saying we have 10 million vacancies...but I can tell you what the labor pool is like and how hard it is to find people to fill positions.

When you have a hard time finding people to work for you... its time to raise wages, thus enlarging your employment pool.
Basic supply and demand.

 

[ElFenix]

That's like saying when you take out a mortgage that you suddenly have hundreds of thousands of dollars in unfunded liabilities.

wut? secured debt, how does it work?

 

[fskimospy]

wut? secured debt, how does it work?

An unfunded liability is any debt that does not have some sort of savings put aside for it. If your argument is that your mortgage is not an unfunded liability because you can just become homeless to clear it... well... okay.

 

[buckshot24]

When you have a hard time finding people to work for you... its time to raise wages, thus enlarging your employment pool.
Basic supply and demand.

Simple!

Except supply and demand works for his customers too. If he has to pay more in labor he will have to charge more to his customers who may or may not be interested in paying more.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

how about add in the millions of new people on disability and welfare... the true unemployment rate is actually close to 15%. cant find a job, unemployment ran out, its time to go to the doc about back pain to get on social money bandwagon.
take away food stamps
take away welfare
take away obama phones
take away free lunches
take away disability
take away government cheese
welcome to Obamadepression.

Doesn't have anything to do with my point.

The question as asked is useless. A more relevant one would be "how many people who need to work would do so if they could along with how many don't work and won't but depend on someone else picking up their tab."

A two parent household in which one earns enough to take care of the family and the other stays home isn't the same as where one works but the other is trying to find a job. They are qualitatively different, and the more if one paycheck isn't making it. There is no context in numbers.

 

[boomerang]

I'm staying right here in Asia. I'm teaching in South Korea and I get paid well. On top of that I get a free apartment, and I don't have car payments. Taxis are plentiful, convenient and they are dirt cheap. I'm saving a ton of money and I am having a blast as well.

After my contract is over I'm going to Thailand to live with my girlfriend. I'm going to purchase a beautiful condo in Bangkok that will only cost me $42,000 USD. I could never purchase a $42k condo in New Jersey.

I have zero desire to come home.

And yet you referred to it as home...

 

[Pr0d1gy]

I have a hard time taking advice from someone like you. Once I read stupid shit like "Righty sheep" or name calling like "Obummer" my brain shuts anything else out because I know I'm not dealing with a rational individual. Did you come up with "Righty sheep" and "corporate overlords" all on your own? God, you must have really kicked serious ass in high-school debate with that razor sharp wit of yours. Wow. How do you do it? I mean, this thread is from October so it only took a few months for you to postulate such a great argument, but you really did hit it out of the park.

Did you come up with productivity, entitlements, and such all on your own? The fact that you even acknowledged my post just proves what I said is true. Any business owner/manager worth his salt would have just ignored it and moved on, but your ego forced you to reply and belittle me...proving you are the douchebag I thought you were. Congratulations, pay people more and quit whining about the workforce.

 

[jackstar7]

Simple!

Except supply and demand works for his customers too. If he has to pay more in labor he will have to charge more to his customers who may or may not be interested in paying more.

Actually, if he has to pay more in labor then he has to look at his entire process to see if that can be offset anywhere else (materials, his own pay, etc.) before he has to raise prices.

 

[Svnla]

I'm staying right here in Asia. I'm teaching in South Korea and I get paid well. On top of that I get a free apartment, and I don't have car payments. Taxis are plentiful, convenient and they are dirt cheap. I'm saving a ton of money and I am having a blast as well.

After my contract is over I'm going to Thailand to live with my girlfriend. I'm going to purchase a beautiful condo in Bangkok that will only cost me $42,000 USD. I could never purchase a $42k condo in New Jersey.

I have zero desire to come home.

I do have several offers to move to Asia (SE area) and I did spend time over there. A few things I did not like were the horrible traffic (yes, I was in NYC a few times), the rampart corruption, and the pollution (air and noise especially).

 

[Doppel]

I'm staying right here in Asia. I'm teaching in South Korea and I get paid well. On top of that I get a free apartment, and I don't have car payments. Taxis are plentiful, convenient and they are dirt cheap. I'm saving a ton of money and I am having a blast as well.

After my contract is over I'm going to Thailand to live with my girlfriend. I'm going to purchase a beautiful condo in Bangkok that will only cost me $42,000 USD. I could never purchase a $42k condo in New Jersey.

I have zero desire to come home.

Things change. Perhaps one day you don't want to be in Thailand and arrested for speaking out against the king, or you want a good school for your kids, or health-care. Point being the standards of what is important to you now may not be later, and there is a reason people are more inclined to immigrate to the US from Thailand than the other way around.

 

[Mai72]

Things change. Perhaps one day you don't want to be in Thailand and arrested for speaking out against the king, or you want a good school for your kids, or health-care. Point being the standards of what is important to you now may not be later, and there is a reason people are more inclined to immigrate to the US from Thailand than the other way around.

That's true and you make a valid point. I love America. I still think America is an amazing country. My girlfriend wants to desperatley live in the states, but I don't know if I want to anymore. My attitude could change and I might be back to stay in the near future.

I love the fact that things are so cheap in Korea. A 10 minute taxi ride cost me $3.00 Lunch will normally cost me $4.00 Electricity cost me $40 a month. The list goes on...

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Do you think this is a problem with our country?

Yes. When your government allows millions of jobs, many of them middle class jobs, to get exported overseas AND imports foreigners on H-1B, L-1, TN, and J-1 visas to displace Americans from jobs domestically and to drive down wages AND imports tens of millions of impoverished people from other countries (legal and illegal immigrants) to displace Americans from jobs and to drive down wages...your nation just might have an employment problem. (Understanding how global labor arbitrage works is not rocket science, though I would expect "no think" free market dogmatist morons to fail to understand it.)

Why do so many people not want to work?

What makes you think that people don't want to work? Do you live in a world of rainbows and sunshine where jobs grow in abundance on a magic jobs tree? Many people want to work but can't find jobs, at least not jobs that would allow them to stay off of the welfare and food stamp rolls.

When we talk about raising taxes, class warfare, the poor barely being able to survive...keep in mind that NEARLY HALF of all Americans are out of work because they choose to be for one reason or another. They aren't technically unemployed; they aren't even looking for a job.

Are you saying that if everyone looked for a job that enough jobs would grow on the magic jobs tree for everyone? Do you live in some sort of a cuckoo-cloud free market fantasy world where the free market will allow roast chickens to magically appear on the plates of poor capitalist workers?

 

[Pr0d1gy]

Yes. When your government allows millions of jobs, many of them middle class jobs, to get exported overseas AND imports foreigners on H-1B, L-1, TN, and J-1 visas to displace Americans from jobs domestically and to drive down wages AND imports tens of millions of impoverished people from other countries (legal and illegal immigrants) to displace Americans from jobs and to drive down wages...your nation just might have an employment problem. (Understanding how global labor arbitrage works is not rocket science, though I would expect "no think" free market dogmatist morons to fail to understand it.)

What makes you think that people don't want to work? Do you live in a world of rainbows and sunshine where jobs grow in abundance on a magic jobs tree? Many people want to work but can't find jobs, at least not jobs that would allow them to stay off of the welfare and food stamp rolls.

Are you saying that if everyone looked for a job that enough jobs would grow on the magic jobs tree for everyone? Do you live in some sort of a cuckoo-cloud free market fantasy world where the free market will allow roast chickens to magically appear on the plates of poor capitalist workers?

hahahah wow, someone actually has been paying attention.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Why is it that 41% of Americans are "allowed" to not work but they still keep using our resources?

Because the way our society is structured where all of the arable land and water access is pretty much privately owned, it's impossible for someone to attempt to be a self-sufficient subsistence farmer. By protecting private property rights we're also depriving people of the ability to be self-sufficient if they need to be.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Out of the 100 people that applied...guess how many bothered to send that Questionnaire back in?

Maybe 10?

Writing job-seeking grade answers to those questions is NOT free. It is time consuming. You have to ask yourself, "Do I want to gamble away my free time to humor some HR person when I have a very small chance of a return-on-investment?"

From the perspective of an applicant, who says that the job even exists and that it isn't just some heartless guy with a big ego snickering with enjoyment at the thought of desperate people spending two or three hours to complete his questionnaire?

 

[Wreckem]

That's like saying when you take out a mortgage that you suddenly have hundreds of thousands of dollars in unfunded liabilities.

A mortgage is backed by real property.

Medicares unfunded liabilities for the baby boom generation is the single largest threat to the long term economy of the United States. It is backed by nothing but future promises to pay.

We could cut off medicare, but well thats never going to happen. Medicare needs massively reformed because the $40trillion in unfunded liabilities will have to come from other funding sources. Which means massive tax hikes.

SS, Medicare, and Medicad are projected to exceed 100% of yearly US tax revenue by 2045, the bulk of that is Medicare.

 

[fskimospy]

A mortgage is backed by real property.

Medicares unfunded liabilities for the baby boom generation is the single largest threat to the long term economy of the United States. It is backed by nothing but future promises to pay.

We could cut off medicare, but well thats never going to happen. Medicare needs massively reformed because the costs associated to it and SS will eventually exceed 100% revenues.

Medicare is funded by the production value of the largest economy on earth.

My point was that people don't understand what unfunded liabilities are.

 

[Wreckem]

Medicare is funded by the production value of the largest economy on earth.

My point was that people don't understand what unfunded liabilities are.

Your point is pointless when three programs, but mainly medicare, will balloon to more than the entire US yearly revenue.

And you are really naive to think the US will be the largest economy on earth in 20 years, let alone 30.

Medicare is unfunded because very little of the payroll taxes goes to pay for medicare. Every year more and more general revenue will have to be spent on Medicare until medicare(SS, and medicaid) exceed 100% of US revenues.

 

[fskimospy]

Your point is pointless when three programs, but mainly medicare, will balloon to more than the entire US yearly revenue.

And you are really naive to think the US will be the largest economy on earth in 20 years, let alone 30.

Of course its not pointless. No one other than an exceptionally naive person would think that the power of the entire US economy would be pointless.

If your argument is that US health care costs are on an unsustainable trajectory of course that's true, but that has little to do with government spending on it.