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The Weekend Edition of the Wall Street Journal for December 6-7 features a front page story headlined "Job Losses Worst since '74: 533,000 Shed in November."
As the Journal reported, nonfarm payrolls declined 533,000 for the month, which was the largest one-month drop since 1974. The newspaper went on to say that revisions to earlier figures showed that employers shed almost 1.3 million jobs since September. In addition, the tally of 1.9 million jobs pared thus far in 2008 surpasses the losses of the past two recessions, signaling that the current downturn could be the worst since the years immediately following World War II. While such headlines are certainly attention getters, a key piece of information is missing that would put the current job losses in proper perspective—the size of the labor force. In December 1974, total nonfarm employment decreased by 602,000, slightly more than the one-month drop in November of this year. But, the labor force at that time was 93 million, as opposed to 155 million today, or two-thirds larger. A better measure for contrasting the employment situation is the unemployment rate, the percentage of labor force who are unemployed. As shown in the accompanying chart, the current rate of 6.7 percent is not out of line with the experience of other 10 post World War II recessions. The unemployment rate for those 10 downturns averaged 7.6 percent. Thus far, the recession has not been extraordinary in terms of employment changes.
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Two philosophical areas seem to be the umbrella under which such labor sumps are built; policing morality and administering altruistic endeavors. Morality is used here to mean human behavior that does not interfere with the life of another human being without the other’s consent. Both areas you will notice are actually functions of the Church, not the state. If one were to tabulate by percentages all the people employed in the services of provide moral policing, including those being warehoused for such crimes stemming therefrom, plus those managing and implementing the giveaways, both domestic and foreign, we would start to get an honest picture of just how many people we actually have unemployed and what the cost really is for society to underwrite the “make job/unemployment” industry. Back in the 20’s and 30’s there existed a group of men who ran what has been called a “protection racket.” While the government worked very hard and diligent to rid society of this inhuman practice, on the heels of its success it happened to notice that the scheme they had just eliminated was an excellent way to collect taxes, pay up or we’ll take your property and/or send you to jail. That, I think, is a little more realistic picture of the actual status of unemployment in this Republic.
Regardless of the financial crisis this country seems to have lost the moral code that binds it. I would not place a bet on it's future.