During the Great Depression, roughly 30 percent of the US workforce, some say more, were unemployed and were left wandering the countryside looking for jobs.
The SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated "discouraged workers"
defined away during the Clinton Administration added to the existing BLS estimates of level U-6 unemployment.
http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_dataIf you scan down to the graph detailing annual consumer inflation, you find this:
The CPI on the Alternate Data Series tab here, reflects the CPI as if it were calculated using the methodologies in place in 1980.
Annual inflation is now flirting with 12 percent.
Remember 1980? Remember how high prices went right after the Iranian Revolution when Iran's oil was basically now under the control of an anti-US dictatorship instead of a pro-US dictatorship? Under Carter and previous presidents, the inflation reported in government reports did include energy and food in CPI calculations.
If you look up the primer on how he figures unemployment, you can see how he comes to his numbers:
http://www.shadowstats.com/article/54However, I must highlight this section about half-way through the primer:
The popularly followed unemployment rate was 5.5% in July 2004, seasonally adjusted. That is known as U-3, one of six unemployment rates published by the BLS. The broadest U-6 measure was 9.5%, including discouraged and marginally attached workers.
Up until the Clinton administration, a discouraged worker was one who was willing, able and ready to work but had given up looking because there were no jobs to be had. The Clinton administration dismissed to the non-reporting netherworld about five million discouraged workers who had been so categorized for more than a year. As of July 2004, the less-than-a-year discouraged workers total 504,000. Adding in the netherworld takes the unemployment rate up to about 12.5%.
The Clinton administration also reduced monthly household sampling from 60,000 to about 50,000, eliminating significant surveying in the inner cities. Despite claims of corrective statistical adjustments, reported unemployment among people of color declined sharply, and the piggybacked poverty survey showed a remarkable reversal in decades of worsening poverty trends.
Somehow, the Clinton administration successfully set into motion reestablishing the full 60,000 survey for the benefit of the current Bush administration's monthly household survey.
Now, if you want to figure out how he comes to his inflation numbers, you can read his primer here:
http://www.shadowstats.com/article/56The CPI was designed to help businesses, individuals and the government adjust their financial planning and considerations for the impact of inflation. The CPI worked reasonably well for those purposes into the early-1980s. In recent decades, however, the reporting system increasingly succumbed to pressures from miscreant politicians, who were and are intent upon stealing income from social security recipients, without ever taking the issue of reduced entitlement payments before the public or Congress for approval.
...
Up until the Boskin/Greenspan agendum surfaced, the CPI was measured using the costs of a fixed basket of goods, a fairly simple and straightforward concept. The identical basket of goods would be priced at prevailing market costs for each period, and the period-to-period change in the cost of that market basket represented the rate of inflation in terms of maintaining a constant standard of living.
The Boskin/Greenspan argument was that when steak got too expensive, the consumer would substitute hamburger for the steak, and that the inflation measure should reflect the costs tied to buying hamburger versus steak, instead of steak versus steak. Of course, replacing hamburger for steak in the calculations would reduce the inflation rate, but it represented the rate of inflation in terms of maintaining a declining standard of living. Cost of living was being replaced by the cost of survival. The old system told you how much you had to increase your income in order to keep buying steak. The new system promised you hamburger, and then dog food, perhaps, after that.
The Boskin/Greenspan concept violated the intent and common usage of the inflation index. The CPI was considered sacrosanct within the Department of Labor, given the number of contractual relationships that were anchored to it. The CPI was one number that never was to be revised, given its widespread usage.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
