Fucking voters...

[SpankMe]

From today's LBN here on DU:

Unemployment down to 5.8% after gain of 214k jobs in October. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

World stocks rise ahead of US employment report. http://apnews.excite.com/article/20141107/financial_markets-b1cf2d3b47.html

So, naturally, they voted out the party that got us these things. The fuck...WHY?!

[B Calm]

1. They're stupid. They don't like affordable health care with tax cuts

either. They want to clear cut the forests, rip the tops off of mountains to get the coal, they don't want to know what the hell is in the food they eat, they like drinking toxic sludge water, etc etc etc etc. . .

[Man from Pickens]

2. Official unemployment numbers are a baldfaced lie

Please explain to me how 92.4 million people not in the labor force can possibly be reconciled with a 5.8% unemployment rate.

The first number is a straight-up, unadjusted statistic, and the second one is the output of a highly politicized sausage factory that both parties have encouraged because it makes the performance of the political system look a lot better than it really has been.

[tridim]

5. The UE numbers have always been caluclated the same way.

You're welcome to compare apples to bananas, but it doesn't change the result.

[B Calm]

6. That was my thoughts too!

[Man from Pickens]

8. Not so

Look up "1994 discouraged workers BLS"

Basically, if you've been out of a job long enough, you are no longer counted in the unemployment rate, even though you don't have a job.

That's just one of many changes that have been made over the years to the calculation of the official unemployment. To the benefit of politicians, all of these adjustments have made the figure go down.

http://what-when-how.com/social-sciences/discouraged-workers-social-science/


The same kind of cynical political adjustments have also been made to the CPI (to make inflation appear lower) and to GDP (to make the economy seem larger).

[stevenleser]

11. There are six measurements to choose from. Your underlying point is wrong.

The unemployment picture is vastly improved no matter which measurement you use, U1, U2... U6. U6 at a time of very high employment is at around 8-9%. It went to a high of 17.2% at the height of the great recession and is now at 11%.

[BeyondGeography]

7. I'm not impressed with this economy either, but you have to admit

that if a GOP President produced those same numbers he would be canonized by the media, his own party would ride his coattails and voters would give him all the power he needed to do more.

[SpankMe]

9. I don't disagree with this entirely, but...

...even though it's somewhat bogus as a stand-alone statistic, it is still valid as an indicator of a long-term trend in the employment picture.

If an increase in the the unemployment number causes the electorate at large to become discouraged and cynical then a decrease should push those emotions the other way. Bogus or not, people should respond to increasing or decreasing numbers with a certain logic.

The point of my post is that they're not: When unemployment is reported higher, they clamor for a change in leadership. Now that it's reported as lower, they still clamor for a change in leadership. This is ass-backwards to me.

[tridim]

3. They're all nostaligic for the Bush years.

Remember how awesome that guy was!!!!!11

Let's see how leader Cruz handles the rollback to those wonderful times of yore.

[riqster]

4. The Fox Newsies turned out, and sane voters didn't.

[hughee99]

10. The problem isn't the people who voted,

It's the people who didn't.

[NaturalHigh]

12. I've always found that...

cussing at voters for casting their votes, calling them stupid, etc., is a great way to win them over. You could also throw in a few derogatory comments about white guys, Christians, old people, gun owners, etc., just to make sure they really see things your way next time.

Or...you could put together a real GOTV campaign explaining why they should vote for your guy. It might help to motivate the non-voters (the single biggest electoral bloc in this country) too. I voted (like always), and I imagine that 90% of the people who post here probably did too. There wasn't a lot on the ballot to excite me, though, and I mostly cast my vote just out of a weary sense of duty. When that's all that's on the plate, don't be surprised at how things turn out.

[Ykcutnek]

13. Because complete morons believe the government is lying about unemployment.

And some of those morons are on our side.