I just heard Thom Hartman say

[greenman3610]

that is unemployment was measured as it
was during the Reagan era, we
would currently be at
10+ percent.
Anyone have any insight on that?

[Bozita]

1. Feds keep changing the definition

McDonalds' workers are engaged in manufacturing.

[Horse with no Name]

2. I thought they were engineers?

Because I KNOW that last Big Mac I ate was genetically engineered.

[JohnnyRingo]

3. Two ways to count unemployed people

The old way was the "establishment survey".
When Buxh realized how many jobs his administration was hemoraging...He switched to the "household survey" method.
*presto* everythings alright!

Here's an explanation from an unlikely source:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,108290,00.html

[Jane Austin]

4. I have thought for a long time that this bunch would skew and fudge

the economic numbers to make themselves look good.

No doubt in my mind that everything is worse than they publish.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

5. I "double the bad news" and "halve the good news"

Unemployment at 7%? make that 14%...

Schools built in Iraq? yes, but we're using them as military bases.


see...? more like reality now, isn't it?

[tom_paine]

6. Unquestionably. Imperial Amerikan statistics under Bush Occupation

are as untrustowrthy, unbelievable, and disinformational as anything the Soviets or Nazis ever put out.

Sad, but true.

I have absolutely no doubt that an honest reckoning of unemployment (or even whatever they used to measure during the Raygun Era, which at least was back when America was free) would reveal very high unemployment.

[rooboy]

7. What you do in the US is the same as how they lie in Australia.

once upon a time (and I believe the stats are still done this way in Germany), if you worked 10 hours a week, you were still officially unemployed. In your country, if you work one hour a week you aren't unemployed. So when people talk about European countries with unemployment rates of 12 and 15 percent, the truth is that their rate is about the same as the USA's.

In australia, for example, they are crowing that our unemployment rate is the lowest in 20 years. But everyone knows it's bullshit.