Intelligent Analysis of Labor Force Participation

"In other words, you should stop talking about labor-force participation."

Well, that certainly simplifies the debate.

You don't want to know how much dedication it takes to research and comprehend this statistic. The cbo is non-partisan:

(report on which article is based)

Their conclusions are as near to science as this can get.

Most of the media and especially rabble-rousing right wing manipulators don't know what they're talking about, all they care about is confirming the misbeliefs of the mindless by telling them what they want to hear.

Since the biggest single problem with US labour force participation seems to be that more of the population is over 65, one can begin to understand James Arthur's objections to Obamacare.

If the US population continues to stay alive after retirement, the economy is shot. The US health care system is currently doing well by the economy - the US is at 37th on the international list of life expectancies

but with a little more sabotage by the Tea Party, Americans can be expected to die even younger.

Can't you follow simple directions?

"you should stop talking about labor-force participation."

after the vacant SED babble by individuals too ignorant to fathom they're o ut of their league.

ehind-it/

rehend this statistic. The cbo is non-partisan:

don't know what they're talking about, all they care about is confirming th e misbeliefs of the mindless by telling them what they want to hear.

You've been learning text-chopping from James Arthur. The actual message wa s that you should stop talking about labour-force participation after you'd read enough to realise that the crude numbers include a large - and increa sing - number of retired people whose capacity to participate in the labour force is limited by their age.

I want to rejoin the labour force, but I'm 72, and very few people - not en ough - take my job applications seriously.

When you average in premature births that other countries don't count.

after the vacant SED babble by individuals too ignorant to fathom they're o ut of their league.

ehind-it/

rehend this statistic. The cbo is non-partisan:

don't know what they're talking about, all they care about is confirming th e misbeliefs of the mindless by telling them what they want to hear.

Although originally intended as an economic indicator, the statistic is now overwhelmed by demographic factors, mainly age, to the point of being unus able as such. No need to get all excited by thoughts of "super-productive" people churning out super-sophisticated robots to perform all the work to b e done.

Where are the detailed statistics that show this to be a significant influence, as opposed to a plausible excuse?

Histograms of age at death might make the point - if the US population typically survives to a greater age, you'd have a point.

Here's an example for Switzerland

The discussion points out that median age of death is lower in the USA which does contradict your claim.

Demographics causes don't explain away the reality. It's still important, for a couple of reasons.

1. There are millions of people who have nothing to do. That's bad for them, and their kids, and their neighborhoods.
2. Fewer and fewer people have to support more and more. And too many "employed" people work for government, and make a lot of money and get expensive pensions. The resulting tax structure kills jobs. Death spiral.

The big thing economists go out of their way to avoid mentioning is immigration. The word does not appear in the document that you referenced.

Demographics only makes sense if people suddenly started getting older upon O's o-lection.

Total non-farm employees is a better big-picture

We took a big hit in the crash, but never got back up to the exponential population-growth trend line. We're still on the escalator, but several steps back.

All the excuses aside, ~9 million people aren't working who formerly would have been working. That's a lot.

The non-farm graph counts a brain surgeon in a part-time Obama-job waiting tables as 'employed.' The situation is worse if you factor O-job quality, pay, & hours.

Cheers, James

now overwhelmed by demographic factors, mainly age, to the point of being u nusable as such. No need to get all excited by thoughts of "super-productiv e" people churning out super-sophisticated robots to perform all the work t o be done.

First, it is not "overwhelmed," as Fred writes. But you kind of have to wo nder why these exiting workers were not replaced by employers.

My objection to Obamacare is that giant federal welfare programs take our choices, wreck the quality, kill innovation, and drive up the cost. It's a trifecta + 1.

Putting the whole country on public assistance to 'save money' is kind of stupid.

Obamacare's got death panels to handle seniors, so that's not a problem.

Democrat constituents have the shortest lifespans, thanks to 50 years of clueless Hope and Change social experiments.

Cheers, James Arthur

s now overwhelmed by demographic factors, mainly age, to the point of being unusable as such. No need to get all excited by thoughts of "super-product ive" people churning out super-sophisticated robots to perform all the work to be done.

wonder why these exiting workers were not replaced by employers.

THOUGHT CRIMINAL! Unapproved thinking is not allowed.

Expect to be audited, soon.

Cheers, James Arthur

There are about 10 million people on disability. Check out any handy golf resort.

It's too expensive to have employees. Automation is cheaper. Reselling Chinese stuff is even cheaper. Going out of business is another excellent way to cut expenses.

There are simple things that would help, and they are not going to happen.

I have a neighbor who'd love to work, but would lose disability.

Plotting population and civilian employment is pretty dramatic:

So much for the demographics excuse.

Cheers, James

after the vacant SED babble by individuals too ignorant to fathom they're out of their league.

behind-it/

A trifecta of ill-founded assertions. On any measure of quality, US health care isn't any better than anybody else's when it comes to fully insured pa tients - who are a selected group who could be expected to do better than a verage. Since everybody else in the competition is a universal health care provider, they are - in fact - outperforming the US system.

The US used to be a leader in medical innovation. It's now merely a leading player, while the other advanced industrial countries are doing just as we ll.

Since everybody else delivers universal health care for no more than two-th irds of the cost per head of the US system, what you've got at the moment h as already "driven up costs" and make it more different from the rest of th e world is more likely to drive up costs further, rather than to reduce the m.

Tunnel-vision ideologues may find this an unacceptable proposition, but the ye've not got a lot to contribute to rational discourse.

Except that it works at least as well - and more cheaply - in every other a dvanced industrial country.

As Sarah Palin will tell you.

"For 2009, "death panel" was named as PolitiFact's "Lie of the Year",[6] on e of FactCheck's "whoppers",[7] and the most outrageous new term by the Ame rican Dialect Society.[8]"

The message from "The Spirit Level" is that it's their rich Republican neig hbours who seem to be doing the real damage.

One of the more interesting observations in that book is that inequality is bad for everybody's health. Being rich makes you live longer everywhere, b ut the poor in egalitarian countries live longer than the rich in the US, a nd the poor in the US face a double whammy - being poor in an an inegalitar ian country is worse for you health than being poor in a more egalitarian c ountry, and whatever kills off the rich early in the inegalitarian countrie s is working even more effectively on the poor.

One of the features of "The Spirit Level" is that they replicate their anal yses by comparing US states, and they show exactly the same effect - which takes out American exceptionalism as an explanation.

Something that most right-wingers refuse to address is what to do with poor people, including the unemployed as well as those who are "just lazy", or mentally or physically unable to work. Their favorite mantra seems to be "let 'em starve" or "they'll work if things get tough enough". More realistically, without a reasonable universal safety net, desperate people will resort to various forms of crime, which causes direct financial harm to society as well as violence and danger to citizens. If they are put in jail it will cost even more than "welfare", and it will produce people who are even more violent and less able to find jobs.

Perhaps these conservative extremists would advocate mass genocide as happened in Nazi Germany and Stalinist USSR, or China or North Korea. It may be "distasteful" to provide handouts for people who appear to be fully able to work, but the fact is that many of them lack the education and work ethic to fill jobs adequate for a reasonable living. If "forced" into the labor force, they will likely cost greatly in terms of extra supervision, sabotage, and danger to other workers.

My own solution to the problem involves social engineering in the form of cooperative communities where people can pool resources and learn to live in peace and harmony in a more natural and healthy environment. But that may seem too much like "evil communism", or possibly excessively "KumBaYa" for the tastes of wannabe rugged individualists and competitive capitalists. If adopted on a large scale, it would threaten the status quo of economy based on infinite (and unsustainable) growth, but at this point we need only address the problems of a fairly small segment of society. However, it would also be good for the health of the middle and upper classes to cut back on their workload and learn to enjoy free time and recreation more than the mere accumulation of material wealth.

Paul

The first thing would be to stop making so many of them.

Most poverty is, literally, from poor choices: dropping out of high school, kids out of wedlock, failure to get any kind of job.

Don't do those, and you're light-years ahead.

If kids had parents to teach them (and schools teaching them that too instead of 'diversity'), they'd better off.

Let there be jobs! Get those Barack-types out of the way!

Those we take care of, and already do. Federalizing it guarantees the service is poor, inefficient, and that non-deserving will drain the resource from people who really need it.

"Liberalism" and the "safety net" have produced generations without fathers. They're the main source of poverty and criminality, AFAICT.

Traditional marriage--two parents--strongly prevents both.

It's the Progressives who've been pushing genocide forever, from babies to de-populating to save the planet from starvation / carbon / .

The federal government has what, fifty work-training programs?[1][2] We need another! Baltimore got $1.8 billion in stimulus money. That worked great--let's send more!

Google hits: [1]

Not at all. If people want to do it, great. Just don't impose it.

How hard people want to work and accumulate is up to them--that's freedom. If someone wants to work more and harder, good for him.

And don't worry about people accumulating material wealth--Barack Obama's curing that!

Cheers, James Arthur