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Showing posts with label Philosophy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Philosophy. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Friday, September 12, 2008
Unemployment: Another Crisis for the American Economy?
“The nation's unemployment rate bolted above the psychologically important 6 percent level last month for the first time in five years, and it's likely to go even higher in the months ahead, possibly throwing the economy into a tailspin as Americans pick a new president,” screamed our favorite AP economic writer Jeannine Aversa last Saturday, following the release of the August unemployment figures.
“A blizzard of pink slips propelled the jobless rate from 5.7 percent in July to 6.1 percent in August, the Labor Department reported Friday,” she continued, adding, in case readers weren’t properly frightened, that “such a sharp increase is usually a strong recession warning, and it dashed investors' hopes for a late-year recovery.”
The rise in the unemployment rate is the new weapon with which to bash the Bush Administration, using it to demonstrate just how awful the current economic environment is, and help everyone understand why we need a Democrat in the White House. Ms. Aversa’s hysterics certainly help make that job easier.
But perhaps Ms. Aversa is right. After all, we lost 84,000 jobs in August and have lost a total of 605,000 so far this year. In August, 9.1 million Americans were unemployed. Those numbers are enough to scare anyone, aren’t they? Especially when they are amplified by a hyperbolic reporter who chooses loaded words like “blizzard” and “propelled” for a straight news story, and thinks that’s her job.
But tossing around numbers without perspective is a reckless exercise. It allows demagogues to manipulate the uninformed and the unsuspecting, leading to gross misunderstanding, and that leads to bad policy making.
Combining the actual numbers and Ms. Aversa’s the-sky-is-falling rhetoric may convince many that the situation is dire, but in fact it isn’t as bad as you are led to believe. Of course, if you have lost your job—and need and want a job—then being unemployed is a serious problem. If the government didn’t pay you for a period of time while you looked for another job, it would be far worse. But as bad as things are for some out-of-work people, looking at the big picture—the unemployment data for the entire nation—tells a very different story.
Historically, 6.1 percent unemployment is neither unusual, nor a particularly high rate. In every year between 1980 and 1987 the unemployment rate exceeded 6.1 percent, and stood at more than 9.5 percent for two consecutive years. From 1991 to 1994 unemployment was higher than it is today, reaching 7.5 percent in 1992. In fact, in the 29 years since 1979 the unemployment rate was 6.1 percent or higher in 14 of those years, almost half the time, and many times significantly higher. In only seven years between 1979 and 2007 was the unemployment rate lower than 5.0 percent—25 percent of the time. It should be noted that periods of high unemployment plague both Democrat and Republican administrations.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Standards considers full employment to be when 94 to 96 percent of the workforce has a job, and when the unemployment rate is 4.0 to 6.0 percent. Today’s rate of 6.1 percent is barely outside that range, and 149.2 million Americans have a job. Putting the unemployment rate into perspective, a rate of 6.1 percent means 93.9 of every 100 people wanting a job have one. In most schools, a grade of 93.9 percent gets you an A.
It is also instructive to know that in 2007, the estimated unemployment rate for all nations averaged 30 percent, and France, Greece, Spain and Germany were all at 8.3 percent or higher. Next to those numbers, the U.S. doesn’t look so bad.
But when the political season is in full bloom, a party that hasn’t held the White House for eight years and heads a Congress with the lowest approval ratings in history will use every possible weapon to try to win the presidency. In this atmosphere even fairly good times have to be made to look bad. And times like these, when the country is facing economic challenges, have to be made to look like the end of the world.
Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama availed himself of the opportunity to make political hay on unemployment recently. "You would think that George Bush and his potential Republican successor John McCain would be spending a lot of time worried about the economy and all these jobs that are being lost on their watch," the first-term Senator said. "But if you watched the Republican National Convention over the last three days, you wouldn't know that we have the highest unemployment rate in five years because they didn't say a thing about what's going on with the middle class."
Notice that Senator Obama didn’t say that unemployment is not really very high in historical terms; he exaggerated the situation for political gain. Perhaps, rather than wondering why John McCain isn’t losing his cool over this exceedingly normal unemployment situation, we ought to be concerned that Barack Obama is blowing the unemployment situation out of all perspective.
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“A blizzard of pink slips propelled the jobless rate from 5.7 percent in July to 6.1 percent in August, the Labor Department reported Friday,” she continued, adding, in case readers weren’t properly frightened, that “such a sharp increase is usually a strong recession warning, and it dashed investors' hopes for a late-year recovery.”
The rise in the unemployment rate is the new weapon with which to bash the Bush Administration, using it to demonstrate just how awful the current economic environment is, and help everyone understand why we need a Democrat in the White House. Ms. Aversa’s hysterics certainly help make that job easier.
But perhaps Ms. Aversa is right. After all, we lost 84,000 jobs in August and have lost a total of 605,000 so far this year. In August, 9.1 million Americans were unemployed. Those numbers are enough to scare anyone, aren’t they? Especially when they are amplified by a hyperbolic reporter who chooses loaded words like “blizzard” and “propelled” for a straight news story, and thinks that’s her job.
But tossing around numbers without perspective is a reckless exercise. It allows demagogues to manipulate the uninformed and the unsuspecting, leading to gross misunderstanding, and that leads to bad policy making.
Combining the actual numbers and Ms. Aversa’s the-sky-is-falling rhetoric may convince many that the situation is dire, but in fact it isn’t as bad as you are led to believe. Of course, if you have lost your job—and need and want a job—then being unemployed is a serious problem. If the government didn’t pay you for a period of time while you looked for another job, it would be far worse. But as bad as things are for some out-of-work people, looking at the big picture—the unemployment data for the entire nation—tells a very different story.
Historically, 6.1 percent unemployment is neither unusual, nor a particularly high rate. In every year between 1980 and 1987 the unemployment rate exceeded 6.1 percent, and stood at more than 9.5 percent for two consecutive years. From 1991 to 1994 unemployment was higher than it is today, reaching 7.5 percent in 1992. In fact, in the 29 years since 1979 the unemployment rate was 6.1 percent or higher in 14 of those years, almost half the time, and many times significantly higher. In only seven years between 1979 and 2007 was the unemployment rate lower than 5.0 percent—25 percent of the time. It should be noted that periods of high unemployment plague both Democrat and Republican administrations.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Standards considers full employment to be when 94 to 96 percent of the workforce has a job, and when the unemployment rate is 4.0 to 6.0 percent. Today’s rate of 6.1 percent is barely outside that range, and 149.2 million Americans have a job. Putting the unemployment rate into perspective, a rate of 6.1 percent means 93.9 of every 100 people wanting a job have one. In most schools, a grade of 93.9 percent gets you an A.
It is also instructive to know that in 2007, the estimated unemployment rate for all nations averaged 30 percent, and France, Greece, Spain and Germany were all at 8.3 percent or higher. Next to those numbers, the U.S. doesn’t look so bad.
But when the political season is in full bloom, a party that hasn’t held the White House for eight years and heads a Congress with the lowest approval ratings in history will use every possible weapon to try to win the presidency. In this atmosphere even fairly good times have to be made to look bad. And times like these, when the country is facing economic challenges, have to be made to look like the end of the world.
Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama availed himself of the opportunity to make political hay on unemployment recently. "You would think that George Bush and his potential Republican successor John McCain would be spending a lot of time worried about the economy and all these jobs that are being lost on their watch," the first-term Senator said. "But if you watched the Republican National Convention over the last three days, you wouldn't know that we have the highest unemployment rate in five years because they didn't say a thing about what's going on with the middle class."
Notice that Senator Obama didn’t say that unemployment is not really very high in historical terms; he exaggerated the situation for political gain. Perhaps, rather than wondering why John McCain isn’t losing his cool over this exceedingly normal unemployment situation, we ought to be concerned that Barack Obama is blowing the unemployment situation out of all perspective.
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Sunday, January 21, 2007
Thoughts on the Unknowable
Many years ago I had an interest in astronomy. I read magazines such as Omni, and Sky and Telescope; the heavens and the pictures and descriptions of those extraterrestrial bodies that scientists had studied and written about fascinated me.
I bought a 4.5-inch reflector and began to look around for myself, but of course such a small telescope severely limited what I could see. I began reading more about the universe and theories of its origin. I read books on anthropology and cosmology, wondering about the origins of life and of man. They were fascinating, profound subjects.
Through that search for knowledge I accepted the Big Bang theory as the explanation for how it all began and the theory of evolution for the origins of life.
As a youngster I attended a Presbyterian church, and at church I heard that version of the origin of the universe and of life.
Many people today see religious explanations as fairy tales, lacking in hard evidence. And, of course, the key to every religion is faith, faith in the spiritual center of that belief system. These folks embrace the scientific explanation of our origin.
For my part, I don’t see the Biblical story and the scientific story as mutually exclusive; believing one does not negate the other. I believe they fit very nicely together: Neither is absolutely provable; both require faith from their adherents.
“What’s that?” you say. Yes, it’s true: Darwin’s theory is not a seamless story; it has gaping holes in it that scientists have thus far been unable to fill with provable data. You may have heard the term, “the missing link?” Well, there are a few of them in the story of evolution, and lacking proof to fill in the gaps, to provide the links, it is faith that enables one to accept evolution as real and true. How, then, is evolution substantially different from religious belief?
Professor G.R. Kerkut has written that “[i]t is therefore a matter of faith on the part of the biologist that biogenesis did occur and he can choose whatever method of biogenesis happens to suit him personally; the evidence for what did happen is not available.”
The reality is that it takes no more faith to believe that God created the Heavens and the Earth than it does to believe that creation occurred as a sort of magnificent accident. This concept is expressed eloquently by Harrison Matthews, FRS, in the book Intro to Darwin’s “The Origin of the Species,” who wrote, “The fact of evolution is the back bone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an unproved theory—is it then a science or a faith? … Belief in the theory of evolution is thus exactly parallel to belief in special creation—both are concepts which believers know to be true but neither, up to the present, has been capable of proof.”
Most evolutionists will not be persuaded by my effort to point out the flaw in their theory, and will continue to believe that the wonders of the universe just happened, just because an improbable group of factors came together at just the right time in just the right circumstances producing the Big Bang and starting a chain of events which brought us to the here and now. And religious folks will continue to have faith that their theory is correct, that an omnipotent being willed the creation of the universe and all it contains.
However, regardless which camp you reside in, regardless of how avidly you believe what you believe, you have a thorny question to deal with.
For scientists, the question is: Where did all the matter released in the Big Bang come from?
For the religious, the question is: Where did God come from?
Friday, December 15, 2006
Jeb Bush Goes PC
(AP) - Gov. Jeb Bush has suspended all executions in Florida on Friday after a medical examiner says the lethal injection of a convicted killer was botched.
The execution of a convicted killer Angel Nieves Diaz took 34 minutes — twice as long as normal — because officials botched the insertion of the needles that delivered the lethal chemicals, a medical examiner said.
Bush responded to the findings by halting the signing of more death warrants until a commission he created to examine the state's lethal injection process completes its final report by March 1.
Okay. A killer convicted of murdering a man in a robbery takes 34 minutes to die a relatively peaceful death instead of a relatively peaceful death in 17 minutes. What’s the problem? Did the murder suffer a little bit? Oh, what a shame. I wonder if he suffered as much as the man he killed for no good reason did? Did if he suffer as much as the family and friends of the man he killed in cold blood?
If he suffered a little: good. If he suffered a lot: better.
Jeb Bush needs to wake up and smell the coffee. This is a non-issue.Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Worth Thinking About
“I don’t know how you can explain five years of no attacks, five years of successful disruption of attacks, five years of defeating the efforts of al-Qa’ida to come back and kill more Americans. You’ve got to give some credence to the notion that maybe somebody did something right.”
“The biggest story since 9/11 is that there hasn’t been an other 9/11. According to our hysterical media culture, everything’s always going wrong. The truth is that we’ve gotten the big things right... Does that mean everything’s perfect? Of course not... [S]ome terrorists will manage to hit us again. But if attempt No. 500 succeeds, it doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth stopping the other 499. Yet, after the next attack, we’ll hear no end of trash-talk about how the War on Terror ‘failed.’”
“Islamic protests against the slightest Western criticism of or doubt about the religion of Mohammed ring hollow... [S]o long as their religion is noted for its willingness to persecute and employ violence around the globe, they have little credibility to complain of offenses by others.”
“If 9/11 had really changed us, there’d be a 150-story building on the site of the World Trade Center today. It would have a classical memorial in the plaza with allegorical figures representing Sorrow and Resolve, and a fountain watched over by stern stone eagles. Instead there’s a pit, and arguments over the usual muted dolorous abstraction approved by the National Association of Grief Counselors. The Empire State Building took 18 months to build. During the Depression. We could do that again, but we don’t. And we don’t seem interested in asking why.”
“A Western civilization that will not recognize the essential role that Judaism and Christianity played in its development and will not defend its faith in these religions and the right of other faiths to exist unthreatened, will fall victim to the irrationality and violence of Islam, and the light of reason will be turned off.”
Technorati Tags: Conservatism, Ideology, Philosophy, Politics
—Vice President Dick Cheney
“The biggest story since 9/11 is that there hasn’t been an other 9/11. According to our hysterical media culture, everything’s always going wrong. The truth is that we’ve gotten the big things right... Does that mean everything’s perfect? Of course not... [S]ome terrorists will manage to hit us again. But if attempt No. 500 succeeds, it doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth stopping the other 499. Yet, after the next attack, we’ll hear no end of trash-talk about how the War on Terror ‘failed.’”
—Ralph Peters
“Islamic protests against the slightest Western criticism of or doubt about the religion of Mohammed ring hollow... [S]o long as their religion is noted for its willingness to persecute and employ violence around the globe, they have little credibility to complain of offenses by others.”
—Doug Bandow
“If 9/11 had really changed us, there’d be a 150-story building on the site of the World Trade Center today. It would have a classical memorial in the plaza with allegorical figures representing Sorrow and Resolve, and a fountain watched over by stern stone eagles. Instead there’s a pit, and arguments over the usual muted dolorous abstraction approved by the National Association of Grief Counselors. The Empire State Building took 18 months to build. During the Depression. We could do that again, but we don’t. And we don’t seem interested in asking why.”
—James Lileks
“A Western civilization that will not recognize the essential role that Judaism and Christianity played in its development and will not defend its faith in these religions and the right of other faiths to exist unthreatened, will fall victim to the irrationality and violence of Islam, and the light of reason will be turned off.”
Technorati Tags: Conservatism, Ideology, Philosophy, Politics
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