A Patriots Manifest Sept. 11 2008
William White
The accounting and legal gimmicks that have accumulated since Carter was sworn in are many and a few of them include:
Redefining the labor force mostly under Reagan.
Redefining interest rates and fees to conceal debt mostly under Carter but congress and the president have been tweaking this ever since.
Redefining unemployment mostly Clinton but also Reagan.
Redefining Inflation under Clinton.
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That last one is a real killer. “Core” inflation is now computed minus “fluctuations” in energy and food. If total inflation has averaged 8% since 1996 but the GDP deflator has been based on bogus “core” inflation of 3% then instead of a published GDP of 13.5T the actual GDP is about 10T maybe less, a whole bunch less.
Well if the US economy is actually the same size as the Japanese economy but our population is three times bigger shouldn’t we be buried in unemployment? Well it depends on what you define as unemployment. If you mean full-time employment vs. everyone looking for or holding fulltime employment I would suspect that about 20+% of the population is unemployed but the way the Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates unemployment it’s 6.1%.
The polite term for these stunts is hedonics the term I learned when I was sopping up my GI Bill bennies getting a BA in finance was cooking the books. Except for the short period when Reagan was dealing with double digits in both inflation and unemployment, hedonics have been a Democratic party specialty. Does it sound good, does it look good are the major criteria for Democratic party policies. Google ACORN or Public Allies, both of which are supporters of Obama, to get a quick understanding of how nice hedonics sounds and looks. Then when you are feeling all warm and fuzzy about BOH look up the criminal and civil prosecutions of these groups. (More about these two in the voter fraud and ballot access article.)
You have no doubt heard from Democrats about how great things were under Clinton. Might I suggest reading “High Wire” by Peter Gosselin? Wild fluctuations in year to year income and those wild swings moving up the educational scale really took off under Clinton. The result were so bad at ground level that Bush won two elections for president running on the unofficial slogan “Yeah, I’m an idiot but my opponent is a raving lunatic.” And sure enough Gore and later Kerry proceeded to demonstrate the proof of that proposition. Obama is proceeding to show he is more out of touch than the poster child for PTSS John McCain.
The big problem with hedonic economic data is that people treat them as real. Take the illegal immigrant problem. Numbers from 12-20 million get thrown around, net economic impact is computed and so on. One question: where is the primary data for knowing how many illegals are in the country? I don’t recall the census question asking me if I was in this country illegally. When applying for a job I need a copy of two forms of ID that agree with the name I put on the application but I know how to get hold of ID that will pass inspection and I suspect everyone reading this could do the same. However I am part Indian and I have been mistaken for Jewish, Italian, Persian, the other kind of Indian (rarely) and of course Arab. How many terrorist cells will be granted amnesty by the Democrats if they win in November? How many have sterling ID due to liberal activists?
However the killer app that the Dems have handed the Reps is the effect on Cost of Living Adjustments of core inflation. The disabled, the aged, the civil service, armed forces and the early retired almost all get COLA raises but if inflation is understated by the omission of food and fuel price hikes then they fall further behind each year. I don’t know if the Republicans should have tried to boot him out of office but the Democrats certainly should have. This one change in the CPI has done more to fuel regionalism than any other act of any other president: Clinton reduced financial payments to the remaining Democratic party loyalists in Flyover country. As political stupidity goes this has got to be one of the top ten non-lethal political blunders in history.
So here is the breakdown:
Republicans practice commanding heights lemon socialism like the Fred and Fran takeover. This is extremely bad.
Democrats cook the books and assume that this makes no difference in real life except for making them look better. This is a whole lot worse.
Until and unless an alternative to these turkeys is found greater technological innovation will lead to more stagnation, in other words an American version of the Soviet Brezhnev era. The duopoly pursues many paths to prevent alternative from arising.
The views expressed by William White are his and his alone and may not be the views expressed by A Patriots Manifest. Thank you .... Michael Roller...