Yes, but everywhere people are likely to hear about it--the media, politicians--it is presented as the latter.
" It's really not anything approaching a secret, though I suppose it's fun to dress it up as one."
Sure, it's not really a secret if one knows how to dig through BLS data, let alone fully understand the ideological assumption of bourgeois economics (not a trivial task, which is one of the many reasons why LBO is so important, yes?). It's only a secret if one gets her information from the sources of 99% of the information of the average person.
Most people need data explained to them. This is as it should be, BTW. Everyone shouldn't have to go through data independently to figure out what is happening in the world--the expert is not a meaningless category. And what people think of as "unemployment" they think of as "total number of people without jobs"--a very reasonable assumption. And that's how the media present it. And it's incorrect.
This is from the article in question:
"In an extraordinarily cynical act, the government is effectively saying that because the job situation has been so bad for many millions of unemployed people in their 40s, 30s, 20s and teens, they can no longer be considered to be potential participants in the work force at all. Because there is no hope for them - they no longer need to be counted. And it is this steady statistical cleansing from the workforce of the worst of the economic casualties - of these very real millions of individual tragedies - that is being presented as a rapidly improving jobs picture."
Take away the first clause, the first five words. Do you have any serious argument with this paragraph?
The url is here, BTW:
http://danielamerman.com/articles/2012/WorkC.html
On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 6:22 AM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Mar 20, 2012, at 11:46 AM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
>> But Doug's logic is the stupid logic of someone who is utterly in the dark
>> of how public opinion gets formed. If those 9 million (or 3000) have to be
.....