For a while now, I’ve been annoyed by the unemployment figures. How could we be hovering around the same numbers, and yet be losing jobs EVERY month? I had started to piece together some research, and information on this subject, and someone else was able to do a better job of it, AND WITH PICTURES!!!
I would recommend checking out Political Math – not just this entry, but others – for clever insight into some of our situations broken down in plain speech, and mathematics.
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Filed under: Politics Tagged: | Centrist, Conservative, Democrat, Indepependent, liberal, Math, moderate, Political, Politics, Rate, republican, Third, Unemployment, united states
It’s not that some people have willpower and some don’t. It’s that some people are ready to change and others are not.
Money is not an aphrodisiac: the desire it may kindle in the female eye is more for the cash than the carrier.
The concern for social security is an on going thing….most reports predict its demise on a certain date….and then there is an update which seldom makes the news once the “demise” has been forcast’
I found this on findlaw.com”
“The current trustees’ report, as noted above, estimates that the Social Security trust fund will run out of money in 2037. The emphasis in the press and among politicians has been on the fact that last year’s estimated year of depletion was 2041. This really is not such a big deal, however, for two reasons: First, we are currently facing the worst economic downturn in several generations (making it actually impressive that the change in this year’s estimate was not more dramatic).
Second, year-to-year changes in the estimated depletion date are common. In the last twenty years of reports, the estimated date of depletion of the Social Security trust fund has been as early as 2029 and as late as 2048. Moving from 2041 to 2037, especially in the current economic environment, simply is not big news.
In addition, public discussions about Social Security almost never take note of two complicating factors. First, in addition to the Social Security trustees, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) also estimates the depletion date of the Social Security Trust Fund. Last summer, shortly after the trustees estimated that the trust fund would be depleted in 2041, the CBO estimated the depletion date to be 2049, eight years later than the trustees’ estimate. A few years before, when the trustees were guessing that depletion would occur in 2042, the CBO’s best estimate was that it would happen ten years later, in 2052. The precision of these estimates is, in other words, easy to overstate.”
There is a problem but it depends on who you would like to trust to be the most accurate.
I definitely agree with your points. Well thought-out! For me, the bottom line is that even by best estimate, we’ve overburdened the SS system, and it will be dead in under 50 years, and in some estimates, 20. And you’re right, there are several complicating factors — a burning one is our underestimated numbers of unemployed.
Interesting perspective. Unfortunately, the domino effects of so many things can cause even greater consequences than first thought. Question is, what “overhaul” will they try next?
Actually, it’s even worse than described on Political Math, but not as far as unemployment numbers go. Many of those people who retired will be taking Social Security SOONER than they would if the economy hadn’t tanked. The influx of baby boomers into the system will happen faster than past projections, and there are fewer of us paying into the Ponzi scheme of Social Security. It will be in the red sooner than we think. I know I posted about that somewhere on my blog, but I’m too tired/lazy to look for it right now.