As far as youth and immigrant unemployment, America actually is doing better than France. This also goes for unemployment as a whole, albeit by a much smaller margin. (Currently 9.7% vs 10.1%)
"Of late, the media has been abuzz with cheerful-ish newsthe country's unemployment rate is down from 10.2% to 10% as of November. But some experts are questioning the validity of both this percentage and the alleged decrease, according to
DailyFinance.
The unemployment rate we see in newspapers and the like is calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which interviews state unemployment offices for its numbers. The thing is, these offices can only report numbers on laid-off employees collecting unemployment benefits; thus, if you're in the BLS's 10%, you are:
- Recently laid-off. Eventually you will stop qualifying for unemployment.
- Someone who was fired after 14 or more weeks of employment. Any less and you can't get any benefits.
- Probably not self-employed. Only self-employed workers with unemployment insurance are eligible for help from state offices.
- Still a member of the workforce. If you become "discouraged" and stop looking for a job, or take yourself out of the workforce for any other reason, you are no longer counted as unemployed but rather "marginally attached." There are an estimated 2.3 million "marginally attached" workers in the country.
But before we start hating on the BLS, DailyFinance reports that the agency
does actually calculate a more comprehensive rate of unemployment, we just don't know about it. For example, BLS researchers use household surveys to figure out more gray-area data, like the 9.3 million part-time workers who can't find full-time work.
When you add up these unhappy part-timers, the "marginally attached," and the laid-off workers collecting benefits, the unemployment rate is 17.2%a lot higher than 10%."
http://www.dollarish.com/718262472/whats-the-actual-unemployment-rate/
Only be levying much higher taxes, and suffering a less productive economy with historically weaker growth.
Is there not a point where a country doesn't really need to be more productive economically? One might want to ask themselves if how America 'achieved' it's growth is actually a good thing or not.
If you say so. Personally, I'd be more inclined to listen to the people whose cars were burned and whose houses destroyed about whether or not it's a good thing.
It would be like asking Nixon if the popular dissent against the Vietnam War was a good thing.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure what this post is referring to. I'd say that those "guesstimates" seem to err more towards out-and-out guessing though, since even the most conservative are above what nearly every current labour survey says.
Addressed in first point.
Well, you certainly seemed to do so in your opening post, when you talked about the "federal allocations" of the "Russian government" and the complaints of "high-ranking Russian officials" and offered them up as part of your argument for why only the "mega-wealthy" in the US are benefitting.
I didn't say only the American wealthy are benefiting, all wealthy are benefiting in the global market under continued liberalization of trade barriers and increased factories in 3rd world countries were pay is significantly less.