On Mon, 2009-08-03 at 14:56 -0700, Jim Devine wrote: > BTW, it's interesting that Obama has said stuff that indicates that he > knows of the limitations of the official unemployment rate. What used > to be a staple of radical political economists (in contrast to the > orthodox) has become mainstream. That, of course, why the BLS started > calculating alternative unemployment rates (under Clinton). Who says > there's no progress?
Yes it's a positive point. > Maybe this happens in France, but so far the US BLS has not given in > to this kind of political pressure. Reagan proposed modifying the > official unemployment rate a little -- by counting > domestically-employed military workers as part of the official labor > force -- that lowered it a bit, but that change didn't last. (Thatcher > was much, much more successful than Reagan at de-defining the > unemployment rate.) Did you look at the 1948-2008 graph I pointed to? So far I still have exactly zero explanation for why the "inactive" rate for men 25-54 went from 3% in 1948 to near 10% now (and without much up and downs, pretty linear). Do you have one? Or any (peer-reviewed or not) paper refering to this data? Dean Baker wrote that the BLS is definitely "missing" some population due to methodology, but that's far from all of the issue. > Frankly, it's quite unlikely that unemployment -- however measured -- > will ever equal zero in the US, a capitalist country. As Kalecki > pointed out (applying Marx's concept of the reserve army of the > unemployed), the existence of unemployment gives employers power over > workers, allowing profits to be produced. If unemployment goes down > "too far" (by capitalist standards), it squeezes profits, so they > punish us with inflation and more inflation. I of course made up the 20% and 0% number :). 1% jobless rate for 25-54 means that "on average" a person is out of a job for less than 4 monthes over the 30 years period so zero doesn't make much sense indeed. Laurent _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
