Slashdot Mirror

CNN is reporting on a study that shows that not only did Americans buy more fuel efficient vehicles in 2005 (although sadly this trend reversed itself in the later half of 2006) but they also drove slightly less on average, according to the article

Yeah, well, it's easy to drive less when you don't have a job to go to.

Of the 2.7 million youth who graduated from high school between October
2004 and October 2005, 1.8 million (68.6 percent) were attending college in
October 2005. ...

Between October 2004 and October 2005, about 400,000 young people dropped
out of high school.

in general i agree with you, but i have to take issue with the pay. the national average is typically less than the average teacher salary. also, remember the typical school year is 9 months, most people work 12. holidays? teachers get 'em all. in-service days? from my personal experience very little gets done. health care? typically fully covered. retirement? excellent. lets not forget our good friend tenure.

"There are not enough engineers with the appropriate skill sets."

That would be the skill set that includes an MS in Software Engineering and a willingness to work for $10/hour.

"The IT work force is not skilled enough and almost never can be skilled enough," said Robert Cresanti, undersecretary of commerce for technology

And just why would that be, Mr. Cresanti?

Lack of education? I'm sure that college costs rising 6.3% from last year for public colleges, and 5.9% for the very expensive private colleges has nothing to do with it.

Oh, but college enrollment is off. I'm sure that has nothing to do with the media drumbeat announcing that entry level engineering positions are being offshored, reducing interest in college majors leading to software and IT positions. [1][2]

Of course, even getting into these college programs requires a high school education with a strong grounding in the fundamentals of mathematics and science. This seems to be a problem area for United States high schools. [3]

Or are you just proclaiming that the US Commerce Department thinks this is an area Americans just can't compete in? Perhaps American nationals should just know their place in life and stick with "Would you like fries with that?" Hey, even H1B Visa Guy has to eat somewhere. At least your suppliers of Freedom Fries will be secure in their ability to find new employees.

1. http://www.computerworld.com/printthis/2006/0,4814 ,111202,00.html
2. http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos110.htm#outlook
3. http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/25/news/scienc e.php
4. http://www.ed.gov/inits/TIMSS/overview.html

OK, you're right, inflation has been 1.6 - 3.4% per year.

From the Consumer Price Index.

Do you have something that you think is a better indicator of US inflation than the Consumer Price Index?

M2 and M3 are measures of the money supply, which is NOT inflation. CPI is a measure of inflation.

Inflation is determined by how much money there is chasing after how many goods. As the economy expands and contracts- seasonally, with productivity, etc, the amount of goods and overall size of the economy change. Inflation happens when the money supply expands faster than (or contracts less quickly than) the quantity of goods for the money to pursue.

Did you really think those monetary supply graphs you linked to were measures of inflation? You think US currency deflated 13% from 1984 to 1995 like the M2 graph shows?

And what's your reasoning with Weimar? Weimar, Argentina, Zimbabwe, Albania- tons of countries have had hyperinflation. The US hasn't, and we haven't even had significant inflation in 25 years, since Jimmy Carter. But when we had 10% deflation, we had The Great Depression. We have a very stable currency, so you point to an example of a country that didn't, and use that to claim we should make our currency much less stable by pegging it to the value to a volatile commodity?

Take a look at 10-year volatility in US Currency vs. Gold. Yes, the gold chart is in US dollars, so it's confounded by inflation. But that doesn't make much difference, since in the past five years, CPI went from 164.7 to 199, an increase of 21%, while gold went from $252.8 to $725, an increase of 186.79%. After adjusting for inflation in the dollar price of gold, the real price of gold changed by 137% while the CPI changed by 21%. Plus, it's generally considered that it's much harder for economies to deal with deflation than inflation, and Gold was deflating while the dollar was inflating. For inflation, prices and interest rates rise. If you have significant deflation, prices can fall if they're allowed to (and a lot aren't, like labor costs), but banks can't well have negative interest rates. They pay you to borrow money and charge you to deposit it? It doesn't work. Banking collapses. Look what happened to Japan's economy under exceedingly minor deflation in the 90's.

Gold is less stable than the US dollar. It's a commodity. Look at everything affecting the price of gold- new mines prospected, new mining technologies, mining labor rates, jewelry demand, investor demand in markets all around the world, the performance of competing economies, the decisions of foreign governments. Indeed, gold hit it's 25-year high a few weeks ago when Chinese Economist Liu Shanen suggested that China should use part of its $988 billion in reserves to buy 1,900 metric tons of gold. A lot of the inflation in gold prices over the past five years is due to the rapidly rising GDP's of India and China, whose combined populations of 2.4 billion can now afford to buy a lot more gold. This is an excellent reason to invest in gold, as one can expect the prices to continue to increase as rising global wealth competes to buy not-so-rapidly increasing stockpiles of gold. But it's also a very good reason not to peg your currency to it, or to any other commodity. We don't want to abandon control of our currency and let external factors cause massive inflation or deflation.

When the currency isn't pegged to some commodity, the Fed can make adjustments to track whatever they want. By manipulating the monetary supply to stabilize CPI, they can control inflation and deflation and stop them from getting out of hand, which is impossible by definition on a bullion standard. This is what they've been doing since 1980 when Reagan appointed Greenspan, and it's why the US dollar has been more stable than Gold in that time.

OK, you're right, inflation has been 1.6 - 3.4% per year.

From the Consumer Price Index.

Do you have something that you think is a better indicator of US inflation than the Consumer Price Index?

M2 and M3 are measures of the money supply, which is NOT inflation. CPI is a measure of inflation.

Inflation is determined by how much money there is chasing after how many goods. As the economy expands and contracts- seasonally, with productivity, etc, the amount of goods and overall size of the economy change. Inflation happens when the money supply expands faster than (or contracts less quickly than) the quantity of goods for the money to pursue.

Did you really think those monetary supply graphs you linked to were measures of inflation? You think US currency deflated 13% from 1984 to 1995 like the M2 graph shows?

And what's your reasoning with Weimar? Weimar, Argentina, Zimbabwe, Albania- tons of countries have had hyperinflation. The US hasn't, and we haven't even had significant inflation in 25 years, since Jimmy Carter. But when we had 10% deflation, we had The Great Depression. We have a very stable currency, so you point to an example of a country that didn't, and use that to claim we should make our currency much less stable by pegging it to the value to a volatile commodity?

Take a look at 10-year volatility in US Currency vs. Gold. Yes, the gold chart is in US dollars, so it's confounded by inflation. But that doesn't make much difference, since in the past five years, CPI went from 164.7 to 199, an increase of 21%, while gold went from $252.8 to $725, an increase of 186.79%. After adjusting for inflation in the dollar price of gold, the real price of gold changed by 137% while the CPI changed by 21%. Plus, it's generally considered that it's much harder for economies to deal with deflation than inflation, and Gold was deflating while the dollar was inflating. For inflation, prices and interest rates rise. If you have significant deflation, prices can fall if they're allowed to (and a lot aren't, like labor costs), but banks can't well have negative interest rates. They pay you to borrow money and charge you to deposit it? It doesn't work. Banking collapses. Look what happened to Japan's economy under exceedingly minor deflation in the 90's.

Gold is less stable than the US dollar. It's a commodity. Look at everything affecting the price of gold- new mines prospected, new mining technologies, mining labor rates, jewelry demand, investor demand in markets all around the world, the performance of competing economies, the decisions of foreign governments. Indeed, gold hit it's 25-year high a few weeks ago when Chinese Economist Liu Shanen suggested that China should use part of its $988 billion in reserves to buy 1,900 metric tons of gold. A lot of the inflation in gold prices over the past five years is due to the rapidly rising GDP's of India and China, whose combined populations of 2.4 billion can now afford to buy a lot more gold. This is an excellent reason to invest in gold, as one can expect the prices to continue to increase as rising global wealth competes to buy not-so-rapidly increasing stockpiles of gold. But it's also a very good reason not to peg your currency to it, or to any other commodity. We don't want to abandon control of our currency and let external factors cause massive inflation or deflation.

When the currency isn't pegged to some commodity, the Fed can make adjustments to track whatever they want. By manipulating the monetary supply to stabilize CPI, they can control inflation and deflation and stop them from getting out of hand, which is impossible by definition on a bullion standard. This is what they've been doing since 1980 when Reagan appointed Greenspan, and it's why the US dollar has been more stable than Gold in that time.

OK, you're right, inflation has been 1.6 - 3.4% per year.

From the Consumer Price Index.

Do you have something that you think is a better indicator of US inflation than the Consumer Price Index?

M2 and M3 are measures of the money supply, which is NOT inflation. CPI is a measure of inflation.

Inflation is determined by how much money there is chasing after how many goods. As the economy expands and contracts- seasonally, with productivity, etc, the amount of goods and overall size of the economy change. Inflation happens when the money supply expands faster than (or contracts less quickly than) the quantity of goods for the money to pursue.

Did you really think those monetary supply graphs you linked to were measures of inflation? You think US currency deflated 13% from 1984 to 1995 like the M2 graph shows?

And what's your reasoning with Weimar? Weimar, Argentina, Zimbabwe, Albania- tons of countries have had hyperinflation. The US hasn't, and we haven't even had significant inflation in 25 years, since Jimmy Carter. But when we had 10% deflation, we had The Great Depression. We have a very stable currency, so you point to an example of a country that didn't, and use that to claim we should make our currency much less stable by pegging it to the value to a volatile commodity?

Take a look at 10-year volatility in US Currency vs. Gold. Yes, the gold chart is in US dollars, so it's confounded by inflation. But that doesn't make much difference, since in the past five years, CPI went from 164.7 to 199, an increase of 21%, while gold went from $252.8 to $725, an increase of 186.79%. After adjusting for inflation in the dollar price of gold, the real price of gold changed by 137% while the CPI changed by 21%. Plus, it's generally considered that it's much harder for economies to deal with deflation than inflation, and Gold was deflating while the dollar was inflating. For inflation, prices and interest rates rise. If you have significant deflation, prices can fall if they're allowed to (and a lot aren't, like labor costs), but banks can't well have negative interest rates. They pay you to borrow money and charge you to deposit it? It doesn't work. Banking collapses. Look what happened to Japan's economy under exceedingly minor deflation in the 90's.

Gold is less stable than the US dollar. It's a commodity. Look at everything affecting the price of gold- new mines prospected, new mining technologies, mining labor rates, jewelry demand, investor demand in markets all around the world, the performance of competing economies, the decisions of foreign governments. Indeed, gold hit it's 25-year high a few weeks ago when Chinese Economist Liu Shanen suggested that China should use part of its $988 billion in reserves to buy 1,900 metric tons of gold. A lot of the inflation in gold prices over the past five years is due to the rapidly rising GDP's of India and China, whose combined populations of 2.4 billion can now afford to buy a lot more gold. This is an excellent reason to invest in gold, as one can expect the prices to continue to increase as rising global wealth competes to buy not-so-rapidly increasing stockpiles of gold. But it's also a very good reason not to peg your currency to it, or to any other commodity. We don't want to abandon control of our currency and let external factors cause massive inflation or deflation.

When the currency isn't pegged to some commodity, the Fed can make adjustments to track whatever they want. By manipulating the monetary supply to stabilize CPI, they can control inflation and deflation and stop them from getting out of hand, which is impossible by definition on a bullion standard. This is what they've been doing since 1980 when Reagan appointed Greenspan, and it's why the US dollar has been more stable than Gold in that time.

According to this page, the $199.00 price point in 1991 inflates to $296.45 in 2006. The original NES came closer at $375.25 (or $471.40 for the deluxe set), but that's still a tad shy of the $600.00 price point.

Where did you ever get the idea that police should not be proactive in trying to prevent crime? Apparently you want them to sit in their offices and wait for someone to call and report a robbery.

Police on patrol are doing exactly what their job is all about: trying to prevent crime and apprehend perpetrators of crimes. I know of several situations where police on patrol have apprehended individuals in the act of committing a crime. Here's one for you: the stopping of Timothy McVeigh by a police officer on patrol who noticed irregularities in McVeigh's car registration. Had that officer not been on patrol it is highly likely we would never have known who destroyed the Murrah Federal Building.

From the Department of Labor Statistics comes this:

Uniformed police officers have general law enforcement duties, including maintaining regular patrols and responding to calls for service. They may direct traffic at the scene of an accident, investigate a burglary, or give first aid to an accident victim. In large police departments, officers usually are assigned to a specific type of duty. Many urban police agencies are involved in community policing--a practice in which an officer builds relationships with the citizens of local neighborhoods and mobilizes the public to help fight crime. http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos160.htm

I know it's de rigueur on here to think that all police are evil and should be put in jail but engage your brain. You complain that police don't do anything to prevent crime then say that all you want them to do is investigate things after a crime is committed. So which is it?

For the record, what you advocate police should be doing is already being done. They're called detectives.

In the same way it is illegal to radar gun everyone driving by

No it's not. In fact, that's exactly what's happening when a radar gun is used. The beam hits everything in its path but only the strongest signal is returned. It might be your car or the guy next to you but every vehicle is being hit by the radar beam.

I don't need, want, or expect the police to protect me.

Have you told your local and state police departments about this? I'm sure they'd be happy not having to respond to any call for help you might have.

1. You eat, presumably? Maybe drink? That's the FDA's bailiwick. Spending on food is ~13% of household income in the US (http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2006/may/wk4/art05.ht m)
2. You're not an old person, probably, so you don't take lots of drugs. But many do.
3. You're not a drug addict, probably, so you don't take lots of drugs. But many do.
Add up the above and you easily get 20%.

The highest insured unemployment rates in the week ending Sept. 16 were in Puerto Rico (3.7 percent), Alaska (2.5), Michigan (2.5), New Jersey (2.5), Pennsylvania (2.4), Arkansas (2.2), Connecticut (2.0), Massachusetts (2.0), Oregon (2.0), and Rhode Island (2.0).

The highest insured unemployment rates in the week ending Sept. 16 were in Puerto Rico (3.7 percent), Alaska (2.5), Michigan (2.5), New Jersey (2.5), Pennsylvania (2.4), Arkansas (2.2), Connecticut (2.0), Massachusetts (2.0), Oregon (2.0), and Rhode Island (2.0).

Dear Lord, my bullshit detector just pegged. Please note: I am rather a lefty and in favor of social programs to help those who are poor or otherwise disadvantaged.

The US has a fairly high rate of poverty and starvation

That "poverty level" is by U.S. standards, which means USD 4700 per person per year. That seems pretty low, but consider that most of the world is at approximately USD 700 per person per year. So our "poor" are nearly 7 times better off than the average person around the world. Also, starvation is virtually impossible in the U.S., even for homeless people. In fact, the very poor are one of the most likely groups in the U.S. to be grossly overweight.

The richest country in the world has over 10% of its population not able to meet basic needs

This is predicated on your phony insinuation about poverty in the United States. Below the poverty line it is possible in many parts of the country to not only meet basic needs but to have comforts that are totally unknown in most of the world. Hell, our market basket includes things like beer, tobacco, computers, TV, jewelry, and sports equipment.

I know it's superfashionable to bash the U.S. at every opportunity, and frankly it is embarrassing that we have a problem with health care in this country (but that spans the middle class as well, so it's not a poverty issue), but at least pick on the problems we actually have rather than make up new ones.

Strange BLS shows in increase in tech jobs. Must be the Jews manipulating us with their mind control beams again.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t14.htm

White Power!

I thought we were in the middle of an IT growth trend? Some of the projections that I've seen from the U.S. Department of Labor and other sources say the growth is ongoing for at least the 6 years from now to a decade. Job growth and demand for IT is second only to those of Nurses, CNAs, and similiar medical fields.

Hell, check it for yourself at:
http://www.bls.gov/oco/oco2003.htm

You can look at The Bureau of Labor Statistics' Foreign Labor Statistics to get an idea of unemployment in European countries based on the American concept of unemployment. It appears that the article is using these figures.

http://www.bls.gov/fls/

This is often stated as the way the unemployment rate is determined, but it is completely wrong.

The method by which the U.S. goverment determines the unemployment rate is far more accurate than that. They do a survey every month of 60,000 households collecting various data including employment status. It's really quite detailed and the methodology seems to be pretty good.

"I can certainly tell you that the massive influx of money is NOT going towards my salary."

That's amazing, because the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports teachers as the highest paying jobs in the country, short of doctors and airline pilots.
http://www.bls.gov/ncs/ocs/sp/ncar0002.pdf

I'm not destitute, but I have a hard time justifying a $50 present for a child, much less a $250 one.

The real, industrial-strength pseudo-scholars who want to watch TV rather than crack a book turn their tight-leather-clad attention spans toward Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Can you prove me wrong?

The high prices of oil; WHo can afford these?
Here's a small link that might interest you http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

You might be fooled by the small number of 4.8%, but keep in mind that it yields 7 million people of the whole population!

7 million without a job, and Bush is out there sucking the oil of a country yet to be proved of having WMDs.

You may believe me or may not. You may agree with some thoughts or none. But you just can't hide from the facts. (Katrina? Late aids -- Iraq? What does the US has to do with it anyway? ... the list of things against the Bush admin. is nothing but growing)

I always like it when people work out the math of problems on /. And while your math seems fine, I think a few of your assumptions are...well, a bit on the high side. That said, I am not a statistician (and statistics was one of my weaker engineering degree subjects).

For starters, you assume that each person talked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (6.5KB/s * 2 * 86,400 sec = 1.066GB/day). Longest time I ever spent on the phone in one shot was 10 hours. I think perhaps there are numbers out there that might show it's slightly lower than that. We could say up to 2 hours a day, on average, for fun. My guess is it's closer to that of the link I cited, about .18 hours a day (again, on average). That gives us 93.6MB/day, or 34GB/yr. The numbers from the table would be about 8.5MB/day or 3.1GB/year.

Second, you assume that all 250 million people in the US have phones. Five live in my house, and we have a land line and two cell phones (my oldest is 5). There are about 110 million households in the USA. The last census said about 93% had phones. There are more than 100 million cellphones out there. But I don't use both at once. There are 220 million people in the US, age 16 and up, arguably the predominant class of phone users.

You also assume that no two people are talking to one another (250 million bi-directional conversations). That's 500 million "conversers" (assuming no three way calling). Hopefully a sophisticated spying system wouldn't record both conversation directions on each end.

Anyway, I work out that, assuming more probablistic use of the phone system, in terms of raw storage, they'd need:

6.5KB/s * 648sec/day * 365days = 1.58GB/yr per channel (on average nationwide)
220 million users, one 'speaking' channel each * 1.58GB/yr = 347,600,000GB/year.
347,600,000GB / 300GB = 1,158,666 $100 hard drives, or $115 million. Peanuts.

My math could be wrong though, I did use windows calc ;).
Oh, and there are also pretty good compression routines for voice out there (much better than 53kbps/channel), speech recognition for suspicious keywords that would allow routinely deleting obvious calls to grandma about aunt Mildred's bunions, etc.

I hope this didn't come off as a flame. I thank you for motivating me to actually think about it, actually :).

In my web-search to better understand what the heck HQ is, if it isn't some sort of stealthy copy protection scheme, I came across an interesting site (US dept of Labor: http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpivcrp.htm). The following tidbit was embedded within their report:

"There seems to be no discernible difference between VHS and VHS-HQ. Manufacturer reporting of this information was inconsistent, and it became clear that consumers would have difficulty in discerning if the units they were purchasing were equipped with HQ."

Hmmm, so there was no discernible difference between HQ and non-HQ ... mfg's reporting was inconsistent ... Maybe that's because it wasn't about improved video quality. Maybe it really was a way to get the MPIA off their backs by giving them a "feature" that could be exploited to copy protect tapes. Wrap some sneaky marketing around it (High Quality - improved video, sharper picture) and voila, problem solved. It's probably no surprise each manufacturer's claims were inconsistent ...

I would still love to see a technical description of what HQ is, beyond "spec tightening".

The Bureau of Labor Statistics considers anything over 50 employees (over the course of five weeks) to be a mass layoff: http://www.bls.gov/mls/ (first paragraph)

Living in the York-Hanover, PA area, I can tell you that the statistics are lying. The author should have dug at least slightly deeper here. If you look at the site used for the article, the "Computer Application Software Engineer" sub-category is way out of line with every other sibling under the "Computer and Math Occupations" major category http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_49620.htm#b15-0 000/. Also there are spreadsheets available that include additional data... And sure enough, when you find the data that is used in the article (listing York-Hanover Computer Application Software Engineers), there are 4 columns where data is missing. I could get on my soapbox to rant about journalism (or lack there of) today, but I will spare you all.

I'm not saying that this might cause problems in the long term, but the unemployment rate in the US is pretty low, at 4.6, a five year low point and it's not too far from the dot bomb/Enron era.

http://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.us.htm

The impression that times are bad don't really ring true based on these numbers, they all seem to point to a pretty good employment situation.

Although many states do require that, it's hardly ever in all cases.

For example, if you have 4 hours off before you go into work on election day (and the polls are open for those 4 hours), the employers rarely have to let you off.

That works for most people. Unfortunately, what if you have another job prior to that? That job lets you off several hours before the polls close, so they don't legally have to let you off either.

It may sound like an extreme case, but a surprisingly large amount of people are multiple jobholders.

There are some jobs that require an advanced degree to advance. Primary and secondary teachers in many districts are given a mandatory raise when they get their masters or (very rarely) doctorat. Other jobs do not allow people to advance into higher management without such a degree. I think it really depends on what specifically you want to do. Call around, check out the Bureau of Labor Statistics and decide if you want to or can do it.

Except unemployment isn't rising. In developing countries, there is usually an abundance of low paying jobs.. and in first-world countries like the US unemployment is declining.

from 1960 to 2000, US unemployment rates improved from relatively high to the lowest among the G7

Generally speaking the US has a per-capita GDP about 30-50% higher than that of the major European countries. If Sweden were a US state it would rank in per capita GDP around that of Mississippi or Alabama.

War is good for creating jobs, if only we could be at 1999 military and civilian casualty and injury levels.

http://icasualties.org/oif/Cumulative.aspx

Of course, I don't have a problem with our gov't safeguarding us and preventing another 3,000 of our citizens from being killed by terrorists, but I guess I'm not blinded by hatred of our President.

So when we get to 3000 kids, dubya sent to die, we'll be even, right. I guess the 18,350 kids who were wounded is a fair price to pay for you to "feel safer"

Those unacceptable numbers pale in comparison to the casualties and injuries incurred by non-us civilians. Estimated to be 35,000 to 42,000 people. Hmmm. 40,000 family members all love the US now. No reason they would join the insurgents. Was only dad, brother, son.....

War sucks, however, war is sometimes necessarry. Unecessarry war is morally repugnant. Red State/Blue State makes no damn difference.

We clearly see where the priorities of this adminstration are. Forget the rising unemployment rate, the balooning deficit, and the fact that medicare is getting slashed to the bone.

Let's continue to invest in war, because as we all know, war is good business, right?

women having equal rights, being paid the same as men.

Uh, try again. Most women make ~75% of what a man makes. See or just google for 'gender pay gap'.

Please cite one.

Every study I can recall has American workers at or near the top of productivity metrics. Just poking around the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, every measure has the US near the top (well ahead of Canadian labor, by the way).

A total of 5,703 fatal work injuries were recorded in the United States in 2004, an increase of 2 percent from the revised total of 5,575 fatal work injuries reported for 2003. Bureau of Labor Statistics

"Consumer electronics aren't affected by inflation."

"From capacitors and resistors to DVD lasers, they're all cheaper today than ever before."

My thoughts exactly. A "correction" in hardware prices would imply that they're overpriced (or underpriced, I suppose), but expensive != overpriced, and prices are a function of what the market will bear. As long as millions of parents will fork out the cash for little Johnny, we can expect to see high prices for consoles. In fact, the success of the 360 indicates that, if anything, prices could probably stand to go a little higher.

On the other hand, HD displays are expensive because of research into new technologies, the relatively low scale production, and the costs of producing new components. As time passes, as technology matures, and as economies of scale increase, displays will naturally come down in price. Plasma screens, for example, have gone from upwards of $10,000 for all models to around $1,500 for many models. That's a pretty healthy drop.

I'm no economist (obviously), but there's no getting around supply and demand, and I don't see demand dwindling in the near future. According to the Consumer Expendature Index, spending for entertainment rivaled that of healthcare in 2004, the last year for which statistics are currently available. Granted, external pressures such as rising energy costs and natural disasters may well limit spending on entertainment, but the gaming market appears otherwise healthy, at least from my perspective.

[small businesses] also employ 51 percent of private-sector workers

Weren't you the one running around here yesterday decrying everyone who had a problem with this as holding "fringe kook views?"

Sure didn't take long for the American People to reconsider that one, did it? Come to think of it, that's a perpetual problem for you Bush-loving dead-enders: the moment people get a chance to think through what you're selling, most recognize it for the crap it is.

(In reality, of course, the WaPo poll clearly had some serious problems, but you guys don't have much to hold on to these days, so I understand you latching on to it like Jack Abramoff clutching at Tom Delay.)

Try this on for size: you are part of a small and shrinking minority of people who still think Bush is doing a good job. By your definition, that makes you a member of a "fringe kook minority".

Enjoy that petard you've hoist yourself in.

Oh, and you do realize you're dead wrong about that "record job growth" and "record economic growth" thing, right?

Try getting your information from someone other that Bill O'Reilly. People will laugh at you less. Promise.

http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServle t?data_tool=latest_numbers&series_id=CES0000000001 &output_view=net_1mth
http://www.bea.gov/bea/dn/nipaweb/TableView.asp?Se lectedTable=1&FirstYear=1990&LastYear=2006&Freq=An n

Food and energy is not removed from the CPI. However, most news articles and economic columns, etc, these days look at 'core-CPI' to estimate inflation. 'Core-CPI' is the CPI minus food and energy. If you go here, you'll see that "all items" is the top choice, with "all, less food and energy" underneath.

How about the food and electronics you pointed to? Food has not really gotten cheap, in fact food is fscking expensive.

A computer that is 50% the price a comparable machine cost last year is great, a computer that will last for 1/3 the length of time but is 50% less than the otherwise comparable machine cost last year is a price INCREASE... Want a comparison? Compare an HP Laserjet 3 to an HP Laserjet 4100. Every laserjet 3 I know of was removed due to upgrades not failure. Every Laserjet 4100 I know of was removed because you had to replace the fusers every few months.

For a laser printer of similar print quality and speed, you would have to pay more than 50x as much (in inflation-adjusted terms) if you bought one 17 years ago than if you bought one today. So your argument for printer price inflation is not very strong.

Your price comparison doesn't hold for other computer electronics either. 17 yrs ago, the standard price for RAM was $50/meg and now it's $50/gig--a difference of 1000x, and that's before we take into account inflation or improved access times.

The original NES retailed for $199.00 or $249.00 in 1985, depending on which bundle you purchased. http://www.classicgaming.com/museum/nes/ Adjusted for inflation, this equals about $371.00 or $464.00 in 2006 dollars respectively. http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl Based on eBay resales, the price of the 360 probably could have been set marginally higher and the units would have still sold out. It doesn't seem to matter now though.

The statistics I linked to is output per hour, not output per year. It does take into account the shorter work days and more vacation times of our European friends. Here's links to other comparative measurements.

I'm not sure on what basis you're drawing your conclusion that French, German and British's worker productivity per hour is "way higher" than US worker productivity. The comparative statistics released by U.S. Department of Labor shows that American worker's productivity per hour in manufacturing has been significantly higher than France, Germany, and UK in recent years.

The actual numbers for traffic, from his source, are 1.6 million man-hours and 8 million gallons of gas. The average American makes $16.49 per hour, and gas costs $2.78 per gallon. So traffic consumes $48 million dollars per day.

(Note that at 800 million gallons a day, the gas alone would cost $2.22 billion per day, or $812 billion a year - or 6.5% of GDP.)

It may be improving. But it's most likely not improving by as much as the government claims it is. Of course, they have the incentive to make such claims, as it helps keep the current administration and its party in greater power. Even though Dubya is on his way out in 2009, they will still be trying to make it look like good things happened on his watch, whether or not he was even responsible for the bad things that actually happened (some of it was Congress's fault).

Additionally, the government also has the means to get bad statistics. The U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics uses methods to just people as being employed, unemployed, or not in the work force that unfairly misclassifies many people. A computer programmer or network administrator who is currently delivering pizza part time is counted as employed, making things look rosier than they really are. There is no category for "mis-employed" or "under-employed" (but there needs to be). Another source of error is that people are considered not looking for a job if there are no jobs even being offered in their area that they could apply for. If you're one of those who gets surveyed by the BLS and you say you are checking newspaper ads and job postings, but have not found any to send a resume to, or don't have any interviews to go to, and this is all you've done for 4 weeks, you are counted as "not in the work force", not as unemployed (and this helps lower the unemployement rate).

For more information, see "How the Government Measures Unemployment".

It may be improving. But it's most likely not improving by as much as the government claims it is. Of course, they have the incentive to make such claims, as it helps keep the current administration and its party in greater power. Even though Dubya is on his way out in 2009, they will still be trying to make it look like good things happened on his watch, whether or not he was even responsible for the bad things that actually happened (some of it was Congress's fault).

Additionally, the government also has the means to get bad statistics. The U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics uses methods to just people as being employed, unemployed, or not in the work force that unfairly misclassifies many people. A computer programmer or network administrator who is currently delivering pizza part time is counted as employed, making things look rosier than they really are. There is no category for "mis-employed" or "under-employed" (but there needs to be). Another source of error is that people are considered not looking for a job if there are no jobs even being offered in their area that they could apply for. If you're one of those who gets surveyed by the BLS and you say you are checking newspaper ads and job postings, but have not found any to send a resume to, or don't have any interviews to go to, and this is all you've done for 4 weeks, you are counted as "not in the work force", not as unemployed (and this helps lower the unemployement rate).

For more information, see "How the Government Measures Unemployment".

http://www.bls.gov/opub/hom/homch1_h.htm

any other questions?

Then "many places" are printing incorrect information.

Unemployment numbers count people who are not employed and who are looking for work, regardless of whether they're receiving money from unemployment insurance. The rate does decline when people can't find work and give up looking, but it includes recent graduates who are looking for work.

More information than most people could even find interesting is available here.

I've read in many places that the nationwide unemployment rate issued by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics counts only people who are drawing unemployment insurance...