What we think vs. What we'd like vs. What is

Courtesy of Discover Magazine's Cosmic Variance:

What does it imply that most Americans think the distribution of wealth is much more even than it really is, and would like it to be more even still? By itself, nothing at all. These are just data — descriptions of the world — and science doesn’t imply morality. The data are just useful to keep in mind when we do think about how a just society should be ordered, and what strategies (“share the pain!”) might be most appropriate when thinking about how to recover from our recent economic pratfall.

"How many comments do you think we’ll get before someone claims that taxation = slavery? I’m guessing five." - Sean Carroll

Why real, permanent, structural unemployment is closer to 20%

"If you ask people how an unemployed person stops being unemployed, they'll probably say that the person gets a job. But that's not the only answer: A person can stop being counted as unemployed if she gives up looking for a job. That's the worst of all worlds, of course. Giving up on working when you want a job is bad for income, for skills, and even for health and happiness. But as this graph from Mike Konczal shows, it's become increasingly common" (Washington Post).

SOURCE: Washington Post

If we've explained this once, we've explained it a thousand times. The definitions are all there for anyone to read. This isn't hyperbole, it's reality, whether you choose not to believe in it, or not. The true rate of unemployment that we all feel is called U-6 Total Unemployment, it's defined by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, as follows:

"U-6 Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force.

NOTE: Persons marginally attached to the labor force are those who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the past 12 months. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached, have given a job-market related reason for not currently looking for work. Persons employed part time for economic reasons are those who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule. Updated population controls are introduced annually with the release of January data."

The real numbers go like this:

Not Seasonally Adjusted

Jan 2010	Dec 2010	Jan 2011
18.0	16.6	17.3

If you believe these numbers aren't also understated, you have far greater faith than I do.

The fact that these numbers are "coming down" overall is ZERO aid or comfort to the millions of humans living in distress, despair, and depression due to these numbers. This isn't because they are sick people, it's because humans can only take a certain amount of stress and dire economic conditions are a major cause of depression. You'd develop clinical depression pretty quickly, too, if you were among these millions. Also, given the evolution of market economies, it's very highly likely that these numbers are the New Normal. They'll plateau here, and then get worse again with the next "correction."

We can't afford to keep stalling. It's time for a U.S. Basic Income and Global Basic Income.

The myth of 'American exceptionalism' implodes

Richard Wolff, Guardian.co.uk: "Until the 1970s, US capitalism shared its spoils with American workers. But since 2008, it has made them pay for its failures."

The Future of Money & Technology Summit

Finally. The step function to the next increment (the ++) may be nearing readiness for implementation with The Future of Money and Technology Summit, February 28, 2011.

Billionaires Gone Wild. It Doesn't Work. Isn't Sustainable.

"There's a model of the economy in which the rich create the growth that sustains everyone else ... but I see no evidence in either graph that that's how the economy actually works." - Ezra Klein

Live Images of the New Normal: Unemployment Extension Won’t Help 99ers - WSJ

SOURCE: Unemployment Extension Won’t Help 99ers - WSJ:

The extension for unemployment benefits that is part of the compromise tax deal is good news for many of the unemployed, but it won’t provide aid to anyone who’s been out of a job over 99 weeks.

That’s a concern because the number of 99ers may be increasing. The number of people who have received their final payments from extended-benefits programs this year through the end of October — the most recent month for which data are available — is over one million, and that number has been steadily increasing. Separately, the Labor Department reported that nearly 10% of the unemployed in the third quarter of 2010 — more than one million people — had been out of a job and looking for work for about two years or more. Meanwhile, initial claims for unemployment have been trending lower recently, but the biggest surge came in early 2009. The peak of 643,000 claims in a single week came in March of last year, 89 weeks ago. Anyone still unemployed since that peak is likely to run out of benefits soon, if they haven’t already.

The New York Times adds that amidst this mancession:

Misplaced confidence in market forces is making it virtually impossible for the unemployed to man up — or woman up.

None of these figures even begin to take into account those who fell off of the 99-week edge-of-the-economic-Earth, prior to this most recent capitalist extremist economic cleansing. A post-information, post-scarcity economy is by definition a public-private partnership. Neither side can be the supreme commander; each must do their part.

We need Free Markets to create new products, services, innovations, and the number of jobs possible. It's utterly absurd to mandate non-productive, make-work J.O.B's (Justifications Of Being). It's even worse to panic and claw back industrial jobs that are needed for development throughout the rest of the world.

We need Basic Income to provide for social stability and human dignity in a nation where nearly 20% U-6 Unemployment is already the norm; and it's heading to 30% because we keep becoming more and more labor efficient. We should not roll back those efficiency gains just because we've never encountered such breakthrough levels of achievement ever before in history. In the so-called advanced west, should look at the world as it is and make the adaptive changes required to show the way forward. If we do not, why would today's developing nations seek to emulate us at all, if widespread unemployment, poverty, and panic are the final outcomes of mastering the efficiencies of advanced industrialization?

It's time to increment our understanding, time to move forward. That's the PlusPlus in Capitalism++. BasicIncome.Org | USBig.Net

Crisis of Capital, Crisis of Theory

Forum on Capital as Power: "Crisis of Capital, Crisis of Theory." Conference Program and Videos. Co-sponsored by Routledge and Springer. Brennan, Jordan and Cochrane, D. T. and Starrs, Sean. (2010). Conference held at York University in Toronto on October 29-31 2010.

Trend of Unemployment Claims as % of Continuing Unemployment; US Population vs. Employment, vs. Labor Force, vs. Continued Unemployed

Inquiring minds might be interested in a pair of charts courtesy of Mish's reader Tim Wallace.

Note the trendline of new unemployment claims as a percentage of continuing unemployment.

SOURCE: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MishsGlobalEconomicTrendAnalysis/~3/bYS8QnW6vbA/trend-of-unemployment-claims-as-of.html

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