Paul Craig Roberts
Credit: www.paulcraigroberts.org
Do you remember when real reporters existed? Those were the days before the Clinton regime concentrated the media into a few hands and turned the media into a Ministry of Propaganda, a tool of Big Brother. The false reality in which Americans live extends into economic life. Last Friday’s employment report was a continuation of a long string of bad news spun into good news. The media repeats two numbers as if they mean something—the monthly payroll jobs gains and the unemployment rate—and ignores the numbers that show the continuing multi-year decline in employment opportunities while the economy is allegedly recovering.
The so-called recovery is based on the U.3 measure of the unemployment rate. This measure does not include any unemployed person who has become discouraged from the inability to find a job and has not looked for a job in four weeks. The U.3 measure of unemployment only includes the still hopeful who think they will find a job.
The government has a second official measure of unemployment, […]
Commodities are falling because production is falling.
Production is falling because consumption is falling.
Consumption is falling because incomes for most people have been falling for a long time.
Incomes have been falling because a criminal elite has been making itself rich at the expense of everyone else.
By using the term “discouraged workers” Dr. Roberts becomes part of the problem. These are people who have exhausted their benefits and are living on disability income and food stamps because so many jobs have been shipped out of the country. The “discouraged” term is a way of blaming the people for the problems caused by their corrupt “leadership.”
Good information. However, with the economy and the government controlled by the plutocrats no action will be taken. The U.S. will eventually join the long list of empires that fell because of corruption from within.