I listen to business stuff everyday on CNBC radio. I find it interesting to know these things. Oh, it is much too much too much, but I am me. :) My wife puts up with me. I'm fine.
There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call The Twilight Zone. - Twilight Zone Season 1 Intro. - Rod Serling
I submit for your approval:
This pretty chart was found in an article praising the growth of productivity in the United States. Hurray!!! It is astounding, that straight upward slope at the end... that is, until one realizes that the reason for it is that there are so few actual workers doing the jobs IN America for American companies. And American companies are making record profits off these kinds of strategies. Productivity increases a lot when unemployment is high and the jobs are performed by subsistence workers in other countries. It's easy to see that productivity per U.S. worker would increase rapidly if the number of workers went down and the number of workers not even counted in the graph are in other countries. So, another thing I studied in school, productivity, is basically a meaningless concept for our outsourced times and less than meaningless for the average unemployed person. Could it be that the statistical meaning presented in this chart is simply there because it includes the productivity of American workers but excludes the productivity of those in other countries which make this possible? I don't know if I'm right here. It seems too obvious. At any rate, it's a win-win for American worker statistics for anyone who wants to misrepresent. But... if we are in that zone of twilight info....
Next, signpost up ahead:
Now this one is an absolute sparkling gem of Twilight from the Romney camp (oh, yes, he STILL has my vote in the primary over.. well... others who scare the tea plum pudding out of me.) This chart looks really good. It looks as if it proves a point. Just above the most "sticky out" and startling point of the graph are the words: "The Obama Recovery." Do you see the problem? Check the dates. See it?
2007 - a year of absolute "end of the world looking" job figures. Gosh, remember the month after month slide? Also, 2007 is not a year Obama was even a twinkle in the eye of a policy. He was actually undergoing a fight to calm fears over whether he would be able to answer his telephone in the middle of the night and abject fear over what would happen to a couple of cute rich kids if he became President. What would happen to these poor sleeping kids? Nothing, their Dads wouldn't lose their tax breaks, no problemo.
While I criticize all the politicians, including Obama, for not putting more money into the economy for stimulus, Mitt Romney's party (he's the guy that still stands behind that ill considered chart even after the obvious is pointed out by numerous critics) seems heck bent on cutting government spending or cutting stimulus. Sorry, there are economic rules here that will act like they always have. If we don't stimulate the economy and work towards a long range government agenda of producing jobs, we will not have a lot of jobs and the jobs we do have will be the McJobs we have seen growing for decades. And the concentration of wealth in the hands of the wealthy is the underlying cause of it all. I have to always repeat this ultimate cause of our problem. It is the new paradigm. Because, this is the real information.... that there is not too much of.
Oh, yes, a smiley goes a long way sometimes to help soften the blow. So... :)
