Re:The Big Lie: 5.6% Unemployment
by joe_the_user on Tuesday February 03, 2015 @04:11PM
(#8993397)
Indeed,
In the former USSR and other totalitarian states, the government put out a false, rosy picture of the economy which was generally held in contempt.
In the US, the government puts out a "true after these many caveats" picture that most people are fairly doubtful of.
It seems like the present order is simply developing more defensible propaganda.
The government puts out a range of statistical measures and the media promptly ignores 95% of the data. In what way is that propaganda?
To be fair, it's not as though the government treats the wealth of data as equally important and the media just fixates on one measure. The government wants to tout that low unemployment rate as well, and they make sure to do so whenever it fits their purposes.
Still a far cry from saying they're lying to us, but they're not exactly innocent victims either.
That the "lie of the official unemployment statistics" keeps on getting rediscovered is a testament to the general lack of numeracy in the population at large; and to the construction of political reality by the media and the political class.
And in a political sense, the unemployment statistics are a lie; since we are supposed to be reassured that the situation is fine when in fact it's not. If the vast majority of people in their prime earning years ( 35-55 ) are drastically un- or under- employed what does that mean a decade out? Are we going to have millions of 60 year olds who haven't held a straight job in a decade? What's going to happen to them? Are they all going to survive by panhandling in the parking lot at Walmart? What?