Off-Topic: Trump's massive lie about unemployment Trump's absurd claim that 92 million Americans represent a 'nation of jobless Americans'
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/09/16/trumps-absurb-claim-that-92-million-americans-represent-a-nation-of-jobless-americans/ Who are the 94 million not in the labor force? The BLS has data for the year 2015. It turns out that 87.5 million -- 93 percent -- do not want a job at all ... About 40 percent of the 94 million were 65 years and over (including about 19 percent age 75 or older), indicating they were retired. About 12 percent were between ages 16 and 19, indicating they were still in school. About 25 percent had a disability, though just over half of the people with a disability who were not in the labor force were 65 years and over. Of the 41 million people ages 16 to 54 who were not in the labor force, roughly a third were enrolled in school in 2015. People ages 16 to 24 account for a large majority--about 85 percent--of these 15 million students not in the labor force. Finally, of the people who were not in the labor force in 2015, about 14 percent (13 million) were parents of children under age 18. This includes about 4 million people not in the labor force with a child under 3 ... On a technical note, while Trump claims that the 94 million are "not part of our economy," that reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of economics. People in retirement, on disability or in school are still part of the economy, as they buy goods and services with their Social Security checks, disability payments, tuition fees and so forth. Their money helps create jobs for people who actually want to be in the labor force. The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for an explanation of his use of the figure. - - - --Lauren-- Care About Science and Tech? Our Job One: STOP TRUMP: https://vortex.com/stop-trump - - - Lauren Weinstein (lau...@vortex.com): https://www.vortex.com/lauren Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org PRIVACY Forum: https://www.vortex.com/privacy-info Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: https://www.pfir.org/pfir-info Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Google+: https://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 I have consulted to Google, but I am not currently doing so -- my opinions expressed here are mine alone. - - - The correct term is "Internet" NOT "internet" -- please don't fall into the trap of using the latter. It's just plain wrong! _______________________________________________ pfir mailing list https://lists.pfir.org/mailman/listinfo/pfir
