| HappySqurriel said: I kind of have to wonder about how many people are being mislead by the spin that is being put on employment numbers rather than understanding the reality of the situation ... The spin is (essentially) that things are getting worse for people at a slightly slower rate which must mean that things are getting better. How anyone can think that unemployment is bottoming at a time when continuing claims on unemployment benefits have reached an all time high (since the statistic was measured in 1967), where first time claims are over 500,000 per week, and the only reason the unemployment rate is growing at a slower rate is because people have given up on the possibility of finding a job? |
All time high in actual numbers, not as a percentage. The country's population has grown a lot since this data started being measured, so your point really isn't relevant.
And the reason why it is important that jobs are being lost at a slower pace is because that is how economic trends typically work. As NJ5 was pointing out, things just don't change overnight. It took people about six months to a year to even figure out we were even in a recession in the first place.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
