The American Economy and Labor Market are Completely Dead in the Oil

Editorial Notes
While the focus of this site was much more on the health system failure and much less on the labor market failure in the early days (2009 and the first three months of 2010) this will reverse for the rest of the year. But rest assured, I will continue to report on the failure of “Obama Care”; for example, I’ll be focused on the roughly half dozen states that have laws in opposition, and as another example, I’ll be focused on every last detail regarding the penalty for not having health insurance.

Although the majority of “bloggers” and the vast majority of celebrity bloggers (who get all of the traffic) make numerous, very short postings, I generally make fewer but more valuable and much longer postings. But Unity-Progress is my one site where I mix short and long posts up. This is one of those short but very timely postings....

DEAD IN THE OIL
Aside from the dolphins, the pelicans, and numerous other fish and birds, the US economy is also dead in the oil slick as of summer 2010. The Obama administration’s “Recovery Summer” has become a sick joke. As I said before, Obama is Herbert Hoover on steroids because, not only does he like Hoover mistakenly assume that the private sector will automatically rescue the labor market, he has outdone Hoover in the "I am completely wrong department" by going from “recovery is just around the corner” to “recovery is here and now”. Whereas of course there is no recovery.

The July 2, 2010 Bureau of Labor Statistics “Jobs Report” shows that the private sector created only about 83,000 jobs in May; this is little more than a trivial number. It is a pathetic number that reveals the US economy as nothing more than a pathetic and lame excuse for an economy. More than two and a half times that many is needed just to keep all those who have a job employed. Triple that number would be needed just to begin to very, very slightly cut in to the roughly 25 million unemployed. Five times that number would be needed for there to be a real "recovery".

The bottom line is that for the great majority of people, if you don’t have a job, you are not going to be getting a job. You read that correctly: If you don't have a job, you most likely will not be getting a job unless you have someone who has hiring influence or power to show gross favoritism to you and to pull you up into the status of employed. If you don't have someone who directly "pulls you up into a job" and yet you get a job through your own efforts, you deserve an award and a medal (or at least an Obama pin, laugh out loud) in this economy.

The economy is really that ruined by the super greedy “banksters” and investment shysters.

I’ll have far, far more regarding the collapse of the labor market in the months ahead. You just have to be patient because Unity Progress is only a small percentage of the totality of the work I do, and so only a small amount of time can be apportioned to it. On the other hand, this means that I will only cover the absolutely most important topics with the time that I have.

Remember, always ignore the unemployment rate; it is a meaningless, garbage statistic. See the recent reports about that.

As I said recently, this is a depression, not a recession. It will last at least a decade, through about 2017 at least. There will be up and down fluctuations within it (which will have millions of fools thinking the depression is over when it really is not) but the overall primary theme will be at best stagnation at a level leaving roughly 25 million unemployed, or quite slowly down from there (toward 30 million unemployed) at worst.

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Where is the Mandatory Oil Slick Insurance?

Regarding the peasants losing their fishing businesses and jobs, why didn't Oilbomba get a mandatory oil slick insurance law passed by now so that these losers would not be leeching off BP and off the public dole after they lose their fishing businesses and jobs. These fishermen are irresponsible for not having bought oil slick insurance from a bailed out mega corporation, and/or Oilbomba is irresponsible for not making this a requirement already, as he did with the health insurance.

If this sounds funny to you, forgive me; I'm only trying to look at this in the way that Oilbomba looks at it: there is a solution to be found for every problem from the very well off executives and engineers of huge, bailed out mega corporations. According to Oilbomba, they have all the answers simply because in general people who have almost all of the money must have all the answers.

The above was in response to this article at Common Dreams.
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A Depression Doesn't Magically Turn Around in a Couple of Years

The US far right economy has failed yet the arrogant, mega wealthy elites refuse to recognize this, thus their pretending that a recovery exists. Specifically, the 2.7 percent growth rate of the first quarter, about one third of what is needed were there an actual recovery, and the trivial job gains reveal that the "recovery" is nothing more than propaganda and fantasy. Not to mention that even the 2.7 percent is mostly in sectors (especially finance and health care) where a majority of the players are extremely high income and very wealthy elites who technically don't need a job to survive. Meanwhile, those who have to have a job to survive work in sectors many of which have not yet seen even a mini recovery, sectors such as construction and education.

Some things never change. The rich are still getting richer and the poor are still getting poorer despite the changed economic circumstances from a few years ago to today. This process is seemingly all that really matters in the States anymore. As long as many of the rich are getting richer and regardless of how many tens of millions are getting poorer, the US economy is considered to be a success by the powers that be.

Many elites have conveniently forgotten that there have always been (for many hundreds of years at least) small and ultimately insignificant mini "recoveries" within overall depressions. Depressions simply don't magically reverse themselves after a year or two; they end only when sufficiently large scale counter forces are brought to bear. Things have to change on a scale commensurate with the scale of the depression or it will most likely both in theory and in fact never end the way American recessions used to end for about fifty years after World War 2. Instead, the depression will evolve into stagnation and it will be at least a decade, more likely many decades, and very possibly never before the economy gets back to where it was before the depression started in terms of income opportunities (jobs and business opportunities) available for the masses of unemployed.

Check any number of third world countries for further details about how big economic downturns are not automatically followed by strong recoveries. Roughly but accurately speaking, third world countries are essentially countries that are permanently depressed.

When Paul Krugman pointed out that Obama's stimulus was not going to be sufficient, he was of course exactly correct.

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Hoover 2.0 and Naive, Ivory Tower Partisan Hacks

The following guest comment and Unity-Progress comment were in response to this article at Common Dreams.

Note that most of the title of this posting is thanks to Briggs Seekins, not to the author of Unity Progress. I could not resist installing the phrase "naive, ivory tower partisan hacks" in the title. For one thing, this insures I will enjoy rereading this years from now. Hoover 2.0 is mine.

Guest Comment:

Briggs Seekins May 29th, 2010 9:37 am
"Crises are opportunities. He has consistently missed them. Today was a grand opportunity to pull together the threads - BP and the spill, Massey and the mine disaster, Wall Street and the economic disaster, Anthem BlueCross and health care,"

Lakoff's POLTICAL MIND was one of the most useful books I read last year. Theoretically, he is brilliant. Too bad that in the real world, he is merely a naive, ivory tower partisan hack.

His idea of the moral narrative is an important concept for the radical left to grasp. The thing is, we already do grasp it. We have been framing the moral narrative for years--those of us who are old enough were doing it back during the Clinton years and beyond. It is easy for US to make that narrative--we are the ones that the corporate privateers, the banksters, the energy company thugs, are viciously exploiting and threatening EVERY DAY. We understand the morality because we live with its twisted consequences.

Obama lives with the privileges of that twisted morality. He got elected with there money. He works for them. He isn't going to start presenting a moral narrative that indicts his own bosses.

Lakoff is clearly hopelessly naive--he just doesn't get it. The Federal Government is owned by the corporate overlords. Nobody gets to an important position without their consent.

Many of us were naive enough early on to think possibly Obama could be different--that we could push him and force him to break ranks. But it was very obvious from the earliest appointments he made that it was not going to happen. He is merely Clinton 2.0. The real moral narrative needs to drum home to Americans just how thoroughly Obama and the democrat party stand on the side of our exploiters.

Briggs Seekins
briggsseekins.wordpress.com

Unity Progress Response:
"Theoretically, he is brilliant. Too bad that in the real world, he is merely a naive, ivory tower partisan hack."

Laugh out loud, and I am afraid you can say this about the vast majority of popular political and economics writers who might and sometimes do make the New York Times bestseller list. Naive, ivory tower partisan hacks are popular it seems.

"He is merely Clinton 2.0."

Or "Hoover 2.0: Hoover on Steroids: ..." because Obama skipped Hoover's "the end of the depression is just around the corner" riff and with no justification went straight to "the depression is over" riff.

Unfortunately for Obama and everyone else who thinks the depression (or if you insist the great recession) is over, there are always ebbs and flows within depressions, and a depression is not over until the flowing vastly exceeds the ebbing.

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Obama's Republican Proclivities

Everyone needs to face facts: Obama's economics outlook is Hoover on steroids, his "anti-terrorism" outlook is George W Bush on steroids and most of his other outlooks including his outlook on public education are Reagan on steroids. But unlike those three former Presidents who didn't try to confuse people about who they were, Mr. Obama is a complete fraud.

The above was written in response to this article at Common Dreams.

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The Big Ones: 20 Billion Dollars and up Bankruptcies in the US: Is BP Next?

DON'T YOU DARE MISS THE WONDERFUL NEW FEATURE NICKNAMED THE "WHERE IN THE HELL HAS TREMAINE BEEN LATELY?"
Look around and you will find it right on this page. Better yet, visit the page dedicated in full to the great new feature.
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Liberals Versus Socialists

Editorial Note: As anyone checking this site can tell, Unity-Progress has been since 2010 began experimenting with changes and making some changes in the general and specific editorial parameters of this site. Through the end of 2009, we had one and only one type of post: a response to an article on Common Dreams. If we were responding to someone else's comment or if someone made a comment on our comment, we would usually include those other comments.

Today Unity-Progress produces articles that are not directly tied to specific articles at Common Dreams or anywhere else.

And even when we do post a short writing in response to a Common Dreams article, we will seldom post comments of a third party anymore. But on the other hand, if we see a comment at Common Dreams that is so good that it is better than most of the main articles at Common Dreams, we might post the comment on its own. Here is the first ever example of that type of posting. So what follows is a Common Dreams comment that is as good or better than the articles there. Remember, I am not trying to gain credit for this great piece; the following great item is NOT written by the author of Unity-Progress (me).

mcoyote June 20th, 2010 9:19 pm
Both liberals and socialists empathize with the suffering of society's weaker members, and are sensitive to "man's inhumanity to man." However, the liberal is basically at peace with the socioeconomic system that produces this suffering, while the socialist recognizes that the system itself is the core cause of the suffering.

A liberal might get upset by militarism, but happily invests in Martin Marietta Corp, and rejoices when it increases its dividend. Liberals are also often susceptible to nationalist propaganda appeals, & thus can easily be persuaded to support wars like the NATO war in Kosovo, simply because it was cleverly marketed as a "humanitarian intervention." A socialist would never fall for this sort of ploy.

A liberal might be properly horrified by pollution, waste, hyper commercialism, and many of the ills of modern society, but pays little conscious attention to the underlying issue of capitalism which allows such things to dominate our lives. A liberal will vote for Democrats, despite the obvious fact that these contemptible worms are nothing but bought servants of corporate monopolies or oligopolies. The liberal sleeps easily, figuring, "Well, at least the Dems are better than the Repubs" as though this really implies some sort of resistance to rampant capitalism.

Basically, the liberal tut-tuts disapprovingly at some of the blatantly horrible end-effects of policies, politicians, and economic philosophies that, for the most part, he accepts. A socialist, on the other hand, is conscious of where the roots of these disasters lie....

Now is a good time to cue up some Phil Ochs:

I cried when they shot Medgar Evers
Tears ran down my spine
I cried when they shot Mr. Kennedy
As though I'd lost a father of mine
But Malcolm X got what was coming
He got what he asked for this time
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

I go to civil rights rallies
And I put down the old D.A.R.
I love Harry and Sidney and Sammy
I hope every colored boy becomes a star
But don't talk about revolution
That's going a little bit too far
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

I cheered when Humphrey was chosen
My faith in the system restored
I'm glad the commies were thrown out
of the A.F.L. C.I.O. board
I love Puerto Ricans and Negros
as long as they don't move next door
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

The people of old Mississippi
Should all hang their heads in shame
I can't understand how their minds work
What's the matter don't they watch Les Crain?
But if you ask me to bus my children
I hope the cops take down your name
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

I read New republic and Nation
I've learned to take every view
You know, I've memorized Lerner and Golden
I feel like I'm almost a Jew
But when it comes to times like Korea
There's no one more red, white and blue
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

I vote for the democratic party
They want the U.N. to be strong
I go to all the Pete Seeger concerts
He sure gets me singing those songs
I'll send all the money you ask for
But don't ask me to come on along
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

Once I was young and impulsive
I wore every conceivable pin
Even went to the socialist meetings
Learned all the old union hymns
But I've grown older and wiser
And that's why I'm turning you in
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
======

"By the way, I would reach out to the first George Bush. You know, one of the things that I think George H.W. Bush doesn't get enough credit for was his foreign policy team and the way that he helped negotiate the end of the Cold War and prosecuted the Gulf War. That cost us 20 billion dollars. That's all it cost. It was extremely successful. I think there were a lot of very wise people. So I want a bipartisan team that can help to provide me good advice and counsel when I'm president of the United States."

- Barack Obama on LARRY KING LIVE: March 20, 2008

There it is.

Obama lauding the way GHW Bush "prosecuted" the Iraq War. Remember that? Incredible huh? Not at all. Birds of a feather.

Who is Obama? In a word, he's a company man.

Obama would never have risen so quickly and remarkably to his current position of national prominence and chief errand boy for Empire if he was anything like the egalitarian and democratic “progressive” that liberals imagined. In the corporate-crafted and money-dominated swamp that passes for “representative democracy” in the U.S., concentrated economic and imperial power open and close doors in ways that preemptively suffocate populist potential. Big money is not in the business of promoting genuine social justice or democracy activists.

Liberal thy name is hypocrisy. What's new?

Unity Progress Response:
Wow, just when I was calling liberals (establishment progressives in my terminology) wusses you explained why they are wusses in great detail and very nicely indeed.

The above is from the comments to this article.

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Establishment Progressives Versus Real Progressives

The only time the establishment "progressives" don't seem to be (and are not actually) hapless and politically meaningless wusses is when a far right Republican is in office. At least then they demand a few real changes that are favored by more than half the population. Those changes never happen, of course, but at least they are demanded which is more than happens these days. The establishment "progressives", pathetically and ironically, stopped demanding changes after the "Change is Coming to America Guy" was inaugurated. And there have been no changes from Bush other than trivial ones and for the worse ones.

Laugh out loud at how far to the right this Big Dog and Pony Show is.

While at this forum (Common Dreams) most of us know the multimillionaires running corporations are really in charge, many of the clueless establishment "progressives" think that Oilbomba has some real power over the domestic economy in general and over corporations in particular, so when those faux progressives don't get upset with and don't demand change from their guy Mr. Obama they can be laughed at and derided fairly. Whereas many of us here know that Obama is largely powerless so it isn't logical for us to be demanding things from him.

This was in response to this article at Common Dreams.

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Slimes of our Lives, Part One

Slime One is of course the oil itself: 60,000 to 75,000 barrels of oil a day of it, which is 2,520,000 to 3,150,000 gallons a day of the bird, fish, and economy killing gook. As of July 29 the gusher will be 100 days old and we already know it will be alive and well even on that date. So between 6 and 7.5 million barrels of oil will be in the Gulf as of July 29, or between 252 and 315 million gallons of oil.

As foul as it is, the slime that in southern Louisiana has ruined lives not already ruined by the failed US economy has served to reveal other slimes as bad or worse as the slime of the moment. Before we start on those other slimes, a quick word about the slime most in the limelight at the moment:

THE SLIME OF THE MOMENT
It has gradually become apparent that neither BP nor any other huge oil Corporation knows of a good way to stop a gusher like this within a week or a month or a quarter of a year. They have plenty of resources but the technology to stop it apparently simply doesn't exist or is too expensive even for a huge corporation.

So why was BP allowed to drill the well in the first place and why wasn't all big corporation oil money invested in renewable energy instead? Or, at a minimum, why does the US have to play the role of oversized third world country by for example refusing to adopt Norway's deep see oil drilling regulations which reduce the chance of a gusher to just about zero in the first place?

As for the US government, even if the technology to quickly stop the gusher existed the government wouldn't have the resources to buy it and, in any event, the elites controlling the government rule out the government being in charge of anything currently controlled by huge corporations. All non-military large scale industrial equipment is owned and controlled by huge corporations, which also of course have far more discretionary money than does the government. The rich had to get their tax cuts you know, so that they could invest in companies like BP. So the Government is broke while BP has all the money and all the industrial equipment.

Big corporations including BP are supposed to have all the answers too, but since in US society money itself is more important than the answers I guess we'll have to excuse BP for not having all the answers. BP having all the money will have to suffice. Poor, naive Obama actually thought that BP literally has all the answers with regard to oil but when the gusher became a month and a half old he apparently at least partly abandoned that mistaken belief.

OTHER SLIMES NUMBER ONE: THERE IS NO PRESIDENCY ANY MORE
After President Obama’s oval office speech of June 15, most people (and basically all people in Louisiana) were unimpressed and were disappointed that he wasn’t tough enough on gusher well owner British Petroleum (BP). In fact, Obama’s speech was the same as all his other speeches: long on rhetoric and very short on announcements of real (legally binding) actions that actually change anything. It is a waste of time to listen to his speeches because very little and rather often nothing changes from them. You could listen to frogs at the pond and be just as satisfied about what they say about the oil gusher.

The night before his speech there was talk that Obama would announce a multi billion dollar plan to reroute the Mississippi River so that the wetlands could be substantially rebuilt and so that the oil could be cleaned up more quickly. This was just hot air from Anderson Cooper at CNN and so forth. Obama is someone who would begin a very large new government investment program that would change things for the better only in fantasy land.

There was even more talk in the days before the speech that the President would announce that BP would be compelled to put at least 10 billion dollars and preferably 20 billion dollars into an escrow account controlled by a third party from which claims would be paid. Translated into plain English and into real legal terms, Obama actually announced that he would merely request that BP voluntarily start the escrow and relinquish control of those funds to the third party. He will ask nicely and see what the big bosses at BP have to say about the proposal.

What is the largest overall implication of Obama’s waste of time speech in general and about what was not stated in particular? It’s clearly that Obama is not the President the way, say, Eisenhower and a few before and a very few after him were the President. Obama has less power and less real money to work with than Eisenhower or Jimmy Carter did. Much of Eisenhower and Carter’s power now resides with huge multi billion dollar corporations such as BP. Obama is just a junior partner to top corporate executives nowadays: they call the shots including as in this case the shots about how the oil gusher will be stopped (or not stopped to be more accurate). Obama can seek to advise BP CEO Tony Hayward about things, but the final say is Hayward’s, not Obama’s.

Since the locals don’t understand who really controls the Louisiana coast and whether and how much oil will be sitting on it, they were especially disappointed and frustrated about the speech in particular and about the response (non-response to be more accurate) to the gusher itself in general. For example, Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser (let’s all hope he doesn’t have a heart attack on TV) has repeatedly explained to anyone with a brain that “no one is really in charge” and that it is totally unclear whether BP or the Coast Guard or the federal government in Washington is in charge.

Well, as we have very recently stated, BP executives such as CEO Tony Hayward are in charge, though they do often take orders from the Coast Guard in general and from “Incident Commander” Thad Allen in particular. They don't mind taking orders from the Coast Guard because they have public assets to help with the gusher that BP doesn’t have to pay for and because the Coast Guard doesn’t have the political power to make expensive, multi-billion dollar demands on BP. The Coast Guard can only make small, relatively inexpensive demands of BP. The other branches of the military have little power over huge corporations and the Coast Guard as the little junior partner to the other services has even less power.

So for executives such as Tony Hayward, taking orders from President Obama is another thing entirely. Were President Obama able to and disposed to act like Presidents of yore, if he were to for example demand that BP put twenty or thirty billion dollars in escrow controlled by a third party, Hayward could be saying no because that’s real money needed for BP shareholders and executives. The shareholders and executives are far more important to Hayward and other top BP executives than are President Obama and the people of Southern Louisiana.

If BP eventually agrees to the escrow (and I’ll believe that if and only if I see it) it will be a free choice of theirs and it will be because if they do not BP's credit rating and/or its stock price will collapse completely if they refuse.

And that of course is the root of the problem. When most of the power resides with the executives and shareholders of huge multi-national Corporations and little of the power resides with the government that the people elect, what any government official wants is substantially irrelevant. More broadly, that means that what you, I, or the people of Southern Louisiana want is irrelevant to the executives and shareholders who are in control.

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READING LIST:
A small sample of items discovered recently that I am convinced are important and that are more true than false.

Brazil is far, far ahead of the US in renewable energy

Corporations playing God in unregulated pursuit of massive amounts of ultimately fake money
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Summary of the Unemployment Calculation Scam: the Two Biggest Flaws

In the last post, the one titled "More Than Fifteen Million Unemployed Americans are not Recognized or Counted as Unemployed by the U.S. Government" I reported how the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics distorts unemployment reporting. Today I set out to find out what the real, true unemployment rate is. In other words, I set out to design my own system. I have made quite a bit of progress, but I do not yet have a publishable system. I am currently having a lot of trouble trying to figure out how to deal with college students and I have a few smaller problems to deal with.

While designing this new system, I have become more convinced than ever that much of what the Bureau of Labor Statistics does with respect to employment and unemployment counting is pure garbage. Specifically and especially, the "Current Population Survey," from which all of the unemployment rates are calculated, is total garbage. It is complete and total garbage and is useless with respect to measuring employment and unemployment.

The other main BLS survey, the Current Employment Statistics, is a survey of employers and is nowhere near as flawed as is the Current Population Survey. One problem with the Current Employment Statistics, however, is that agricultural employment is totally ignored. And there are a few other relatively minor flaws but on the whole its a good product. But never forget, Current Employment Statistics is NOT used in any way to determine unemployment rates, so the fact that it is nowhere near as flawed as the other survey is not all that relevant.

Notice that stock market investors react to the number of jobs gained or lost coming out of the Current Employment Statistics and they generally ignore the “official unemployment rate” coming out of the Current Population Survey. Investors do this because they long ago realized that the Current Population Survey and the official unemployment rate are largely garbage.

I gave many and hopefully most of the reasons these are garbage in that previous posting. But I thought it would be useful to emphasize the two biggest flaws of all in what BLS does, to in other words summarize the last, much longer posting.

THE FIRST OF THE TWO BIGGEST FLAWS
The first of the two biggest flaws of all is that BLS assumes that people who are not looking for a job do not want a job. These people are pigeonholed into the Orwellian world of "not in the labor force". BLS is living in a fantasy world, because there are tens of millions who would like a job but who never look for a job except maybe once in a blue moon.

Strange as it may sound, some of them wait for someone to more or less come looking for them with a job (a friend, a former associate, a family member, etc.) which happens more often than most would think.

But for the majority of those who never (or almost never) look for a job, it’s a matter of simple microeconomics. Looking for a job costs money that many millions of people do not have. If you don't make certain job hunting expenditures than you almost certainly will not get a job, period. To look for a job you need money for transportation, you need money for clothes, you need money for producing resumes, you need money to get on the computer for research, and so on and so forth. If there are almost certainly (or definitely as the case may actually be) no jobs for a particular person, than any time and money at all spent looking for a job is 100% wasted. Obviously, if someone doesn't have a job, he or she may have so little money to begin with that wasting even a very small amount of money is going to create a lot more hardship than already exists.

Also, it should be realized that roughly half of the employed population has either never looked for a job or has spent only a small number of days or weeks looking for a job during a working lifetime. But now with the advent of the 2nd Depression, unemployed people are apparently expected to spend months and even years in the unpaid job of "looking for a job". Something doesn't seem quite right about that. A career in "looking for a job" at no pay seems just a little unfair even by American standards if you know what I am saying. Increasing millions are saying "no way" to the total insanity and to the gross unfairness of months and years of unpaid work "looking for a job".

U6 IS A (SMALLER) SCAM
For those who think that the U6 unemployment measure (the one that includes "discouraged workers," but only some of them actually) absolves BLS of being to blame for a misleading and useless unemployment calculation, consider:

(a) Someone is counted as unemployed under U6 only if they have looked for a job within the last year. But there are increasing millions who have been too discouraged and/or too poor to look for work for longer than one year.

(b) U6 is not promoted as the official or real unemployment rate, U3 is. Few people other than economists and policy wonks know about U6 and U6 is rarely if ever reported in the mainstream media. The common man has no idea what U6 is.

(c) U6 counts self employed people who make little money or who lose money as employed as do all of the other measurements (U1, U2, U3, U4, and U5) which leads us to....

THE SECOND OF THE BIGGEST TWO FLAWS
The second of the two biggest flaws is that BLS assumes that anyone self employed is employed. Let me emphasize, its NOT that the self employed are considered to be not in the labor force (which arguably could be partially justified.) It's that they are considered to be employed that puts BLS in that fantasy world again. They are employed whether they make any money or not. They are considered employed even if they lose money!

In the real world, someone is employed only if someone is working AND making money. Those who are self employed but who are making less than about 1.5 times the poverty line per year should be classified as unemployed. Moreover, by rights anyone who is "working" but not making at least above the poverty line (or better yet 1.5 times the poverty line) should be classified as unemployed.

The previous post was wonkish (but very accurate if I do say so myself, laugh out loud). This one sums up the Bureau of Labor Statistics scam more concisely. As I said in the prior post, the list of types of people who are unemployed but are not counted as unemployed seems to go on and on and on.

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More Than Fifteen Million Unemployed Americans are not Recognized or Counted as Unemployed by the U.S. Government

Always multiply the main, most commonly reported "unemployment rate" in the US by two to get a conservative estimate of the real unemployment rate. Multiply by 2.2 to get a middle of the road estimate and multiply by 2.5 to get a high end but still reasonable estimate. You would have to multiply by 2.5, for example, if you wanted to include inmates who would not have committed crimes had they had a job at the time they ran afoul of the law.

That 50% unemployment for blacks in New York that Kay Johnson mentions in these comments must have been calculated in accordance with this calculation reality. Because of the way unemployment rates are falsely calculated, there never has and never will be an official 50% unemployment rate reported out for any group anywhere. The way the unemployment rate is cooked up, probably the highest possible official unemployment rate you could have for the US as a whole is roughly 12 percent (not far from the 10.2 percent that was actually reached recently) and the highest possible official overall or regional black unemployment rate you could possibly have would be roughly twice that (25%).

Note that the multipliers above apply to the current situation. Those multipliers will have to be gradually increased in the years ahead if the growth in jobs remains trivial or worse, because if so, the official unemployment rate will be more and more distorted downward.

Although people who read real news are generally aware that if you stop looking for work because you have concluded you most likely can't get one you are not counted as unemployed, what even they are not aware of is that once you have been unemployed for more than a year or two, you are generally not counted as unemployed even if you ARE actively looking for a job. The "actively looking for a job" thing applies, if not officially, certainly unofficially to only those who did have a job within the last year or two. At the very least, it can be said that the survey and statistical methods used preclude picking up as unemployed many and probably most of those who are actively looking for a job but who have not had a job for more than a year or two.

Furthermore, if you are self employed in any way shape or form (including even if your "business" loses money) you CAN NOT be counted as unemployed in the US even if you would much rather have a job and so you are actively looking for a job at the same time you are self employed. If you are “self employed” (and who isn’t who is “unemployed,” really?) you are BY RULE not counted as unemployed even if you make virtually no money from your self employment, or even if you lose money. This distortion is never ever mentioned even by all the “why the unemployment rate is much more than reported” articles.

The upshot of all of this is that the only real way to get at unemployment in the US is to look at the number of jobs (with any income or else above a certain pay level of your choice) and then divide that number into the number of people who you think in a perfect full employment economy would have a job (for example, say, 80% of those between the ages of 25 and 60). Then you would subtract that percentage ratio from 100% to get a real unemployment rate.

In practice, to save a lot of time you can use the multipliers or, better yet, you can get at real unemployment by using the employment to population ratio, which is, ironically, reported out monthly by Bureau of Labor Statistics itself. (Who would have known that BLS actually does have information with which the actual unemployment rate can be determined, laugh out loud?)

That ratio, expressed annually, declined sharply from a peak of 64.4 percent in 2000 to 59.2 percent in 2009. This means that 5.2% of the population (about one in twenty people) had a job in 2000 but did not have a job in 2009. The latest percentage reported is even worse, about 58%. Note that this methodology is excellent for tracking the real change in the labor market, although to use it to calculate a real unemployment rate would require you to estimate what percentage of the entire population would not need or be able to have a job even if jobs could be automatically obtained.

Then you would have to adjust the raw employment to population ratio accordingly. If you did that, you would probably arrive at a similar place as with the multiplier method: the employment to population ratio right now when those who definitely don’t need or can not have a job are removed from the population is roughly 78%, meaning that the real unemployment rate is roughly 22%.

In summary:

--58% of the population has a job
--20% of the population would not need or could not function on a job even if they could automatically get one. This would include true criminals and also self-employed who do better self employed than they could with a job.
--22% of the population is unemployed: they need a job and there is no job for them.

=================================
Someone begged to differ with the above overall, but he started off with an apparent agreement, which ironically I construed as a disagreement....

Unity Progress said:

Although people who read real news are generally aware that if you stop looking for work because you have concluded you most likely can't get one you are not counted as unemployed....

The Doubting Thomas said:

Correct, that's because you are not considered part of the work force if you don't have a job and are not looking for one.

Unity Progress:

And you are wrong. Most people are part of the work force whether they are looking for a job or not. Anyone who could theoretically work is part of the work force. People who are self employed are part of the work force; whether they are gainfully employed should be determined by whether and how much money they are making.

During World War Two and at the end of the First Great Depression, factory employers virtually came looking for people who were not actively "looking for a job" to work in the war factories.

Where is it written that people have to waste valuable time and money "looking for a job" that probably does not exist for them? Money and time spent looking for a job is money and time not available for self employment or for just enjoying life which, unlike "looking for a job," is free of charge.

What about people who don't have good clothes or who don't have transportation with which to "look for a job"? What about people whose teeth have rotted out because they can't afford dental care? Are they going to get a job after even a year of looking for a job? What about the millions of homeless people? What about people who have no phone service? Unless you toe the right wing line, all of these people are part of the work force.

The most well known requirements for being counted as unemployed are analogous to the requirements for voter registration. How so? Americans have been brainwashed into thinking that it is no big deal to have to register to vote in any way the local government sets up those requirements. And yet voter registration has been a perpetual source of opportunities for shady right wing operators to deny people the right to vote. In recent years brand new identification requirements have been added to the list of voting registration requirements in various states. People have lost their lives in disputes about and there have been numerous court cases over the years over the seemingly innocuous requirements that are actually sometimes onerous and not possible to meet requirements for voter registration.

Americans are conditioned to think that things such as voter registration and needing to look for a job to be counted as unemployed are no big deal, but unfortunately, they are a very big deal indeed when all of the facts and all of the diverse circumstances of real people are taken into consideration. In many other countries, voter registration is much more automatic than it is in the United States. Similarly, being counted as unemployed when you are unemployed is much more automatic than it is in the States.

The person who begged to differ was especially dubious of this line from my original:

What even they are not aware of is that once you have been unemployed for more than a year or two, you are generally not counted as unemployed even if you ARE actively looking for a job.

To which he said:

"I call BS. Where do you get this information and why do you think it's true?"

To which I responded:

In real life, anyone who has been unemployed for more than a year or two will have one or more of the following characteristics:

--They will be homeless, so there is no way they can be interviewed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to be counted as unemployed.

--They will not have a phone at all, so there is no way they can be interviewed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to be counted as unemployed.

--They will have a cell phone number only, which traditionally and so far as I know can still not be used by survey takers including BLS.

--They will have an internet phone number only, and such numbers are most definitely not used by survey takers including BLS.

--They will have joined the military and are not in any BLS classification. But clearly they are unemployed from the civilian labor force, or else employed with respect to the civilian plus military labor force combined, take your pick. They are not, as BLS claims, in no relationship whatsoever with respect to the labor force.

--They are in prison and are not in any BLS classification. But clearly they are unemployed from the civilian labor force.

--Anyone who works even an hour a week is counted as employed! As absurd as that is, it is literally true.

--Anyone who is self employed, who in other words has even the tiniest and/or the flimsiest of businesses, including one with no customers(!) is counted as outside the labor force, and so that person is not employed even if looking for a job while operating that business. The first question in the BLS unemployment survey is: “Does anyone in this household have a business or a farm?” If the answer is yes, than that person (or those persons) are not part of the universe from which employed and unemployed is calculated.

--All persons who did at least 15 hours of unpaid work in a family-owned enterprise operated by someone in their household are classified as employed, even though they made no money!

--All persons who were temporarily absent from their regular jobs because of illness, vacation, bad weather, industrial dispute, or various personal reasons, whether or not they were paid for the time off, are classified as employed!

--Certain ways of looking for a job don't count as looking for a job according to BLS. Only certain, traditional kinds of "active job search" qualifies an unemployed person for being declared to be and counted as unemployed. According to BLS, “passive methods of job search do not have the potential to result in a job offer and therefore do not qualify as active job search methods. Examples of passive methods include attending a job training program or course, or merely reading about job openings that are posted in newspapers or on the Internet.”

And even this is not a complete list of people who are unemployed but are not counted as unemployed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The list of loopholes, of categories of people who are unemployed but are not counted that way goes on and on and on. A certain number of unemployed people commit suicide every year due to the many ravages caused by unemployment.

A very substantial percentage (very possibly a majority) of those suicides are not even considered to be unemployed by the Government. In other words, there are people every year who lose their lives due to a condition that the Government does not even recognize as having affected them!

The BLS page for this matter is here: http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm
You will see that this page covers most of the above loopholes if you take the time to read it through.

The BLS itself publishes more expansive measures than the “official unemployment rate” that is reported by the Corporate Media, but even the most expansive one leaves several of the loopholes above intact.


The above was in response to this article at Common Dreams.

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There is no Evidence That Obama"s "Rube Goldberg Care" Will Improve Things

Editorial Notes: The following was written on March 27 and not posted until now (May 27). Beginning April 15, 2010, Unity-Progress will post anything new we do here first and then later "cross post" at CommonDreams.org if and only if:

(a) There is a relevant article at Common Dreams under which the item can be posted and
(b) I think of cross posting and take the time to do that. I will not cross post everything nor even necessarily the majority of what goes here.

In other words, beginning immediately Unity Progress gets first priority, the automatic tie-in between Common Dreams and Unity is repealed, and therefore the miserable pattern of late postings at Unity will end. None of this is meant to state or imply that I think anything less of Common Dreams, which I continue to look at as the best progressive Site on the Internet. I'm just expanding from the roots, so to speak.

This site will only very seldom show up in Google Search results. If you don't want to lose track of this site, you need to bookmark this site in some way.

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Are they gone yet? I mean the special event guests of Common Dreams stopping by to brow beat and chest pound against the unreformed commies here at Common Dreams, the one and only site among sites with comments and some traffic that I know of that was overwhelmingly against Obama and Big Insurance' Rube Goldberg Care from day one. Firedoglake has been almost as resolute and you have to love Jane Hamsher over there, but even Firedoglake also has a disturbing number of Daily Kos and similar refugees with minds that seem to be seriously watered down by pro Obama corporate mush from the campaign and the early months of Lord Obama’s reign over the peasantry.

No, having read most of the comments, the special guests are thinning out but they are not quite completely gone yet. I see they are still posting their “but it’s better than what we had” and “how can you be so mean as to deny coverage to women and children due to preexisting conditions” riffs. Um, we don’t deny health care to anyone with our plan, not to mention that we don’t even need greedy, monopolistic, health care denying health insurance companies to run our plan. So get a clue before you try the equivalent of lecturing Einstein on physics.

We want our plan which is by far the best plan; we don't want no new plan at all.

Specifically to our guests: first, what is so complicated about understanding that some people will be hurt and some people will be helped by all the new laws? At this time, we can’t say exactly how many will be hurt and exactly how many will be helped, but it is a definite certainty (and admitted up front by the Democrats and the Congressional Budget Office) that there will be large numbers of both.

But is it normal or “to be expected” that major new laws benefit and hurt large (and different) groups of people? Yes, it is normal, that is, it’s normal if you are talking about a third world country! (As examples, removal of food import tariffs in Haiti or privatizations of water in various remote South and Central American countries come to mind.)

But on the good side of town, in the advanced countries, many of which you find in Europe and some of which you find in East Asia, virtually all major new laws benefit many more people than they harm. There are never large groups of people threatening to take up arms against Internal Revenue in those countries, no sir. And in those countries, there’s no “Well, in the years ahead, we’ll just have to keep track of the millions who are helped and the millions who are hurt and then about twenty years from now we’ll know whether the huge new law was a net benefit or a net loss for the citizens.

But it’s going to be a real nail biter. Dan Rather is saying it’s going to be tighter than a tick on a hog on a hot summer day. Laugh out loud. No, in the reputable and credible countries, they know for an absolute fact that the vast majority of people will be helped by major new laws before they even think of passing them. Whereas in the US, both the Democrats and the Republicans recklessly pass laws that are in effect and in part experiments to find out just how many peasants are hurt and just how many are helped.

And whereas, by contrast we know for an absolute fact that various types of single payer based systems work very well for decade after decade because we have more than enough evidence for that from numerous countries throughout the world. Whereas, we have no evidence whatsoever at the moment as to whether Obama's Rube Goldberg Care will work well.

And it almost goes without saying (but I’ve learned from experience you should say most of the “goes without sayings”) that no country other than the United States would seriously consider what actually just passed in the US, a particularly obnoxious, dangerous, and ironic combination of regressive taxation, restrictions on health care freedom, cuts to existing programs, and on the plus side curtailments of many of the most egregious violations of humanity of health insurance companies. ("Whew, that was one whopper of a price paid to stop pre-existing condition and rescission. I can’t imagine what the price the peasants will have to pay if WellPoint and the rest are to be forbidden from being monopolies! I think the peasants will be wearing togas and eating worms from the back yard if we go for anti-trust reform or the public option, so we better stop now.")

Second, what is so complicated about understanding that only in Wonderland can you look at the health care effects only while ignoring the effects on jobs and the economy as a whole? If the new laws prevent the labor market from recovering (to whatever extent it could without those laws which even I would say has to be to some extent) then Obama and company will be responsible for the worst and most reckless economic mismanagement since the Hoover and those who in 1935 and 1936 told Franklin Roosevelt that the Depression was over and it was time to get back to fiscal discipline (which resulted in many more Depression years featuring an extremely low stock market and many more years of additional job losses and lack of new jobs). Obama and company are gambling with the economy in general and with the job market in particular (not that they really care about your job or anyone else's job) but as I already implied, at least historians, who are sort of a “Super CBO,” will care.

Later, Dreamers.

A long discussion was generated by this intentionally provocative article. (Is anything I write not "intentionally provocative," laugh out loud?) Both the original article and the discussion about the article and about my response to the article (above) are here.

Here is by far my favorite among the postings in the discussion generated by my posting:

ardent1 March 28th, 2010 11:07 am
Look, Scott. I think that you are simply playing deaf. Obama called this an 'health care insurance reform' and though that is partially incorrect since it really doesn't even reform the insurance racket, at least it gets it right about this not even being any reform of health care itself. Don't you get it? I don't want health insurance but want health care coverage. The two are not the same at all, Dude! 'Your' insurance will not get you health care coverage much of the time. Your money (lots of it if you have that) will though, since 'care' has been made into a commodity by the US government controlled by the Big Business community.

Even with health care coverage in this country, you get an abomination and Obama and the Democrats don't even pretend to address that. For one example... do you really want the government to put you into a Big Business run 'nursing home' in a box when you get older? Do you really want the government to guarantee that you be 'treated' (tortured) to death if, God forbid, you came down with incurable cancer? The medical community in the US has no standards hardly, since the care given to you is seen as a commodity on a profit making assembly line. You get about as much quality control as a hamburger does at Wendy's on that assembly line.

Public community health does not exist in the US. It was all privatized and mainly disassembled decades ago. You have the CDC when you really need sick leave guaranteed to sick workers now having to work for minimum wage while ill. You have Planned Parenthood (maybe?) instead of single payer for all health issues being available. There are so many issues here that would fall under real health care reform. However we are talking only about what Obama calls only semi-correctly as 'health insurance reform'. Yes, it is about health insurance. No it is not a reform of even that, but a forced bailout of this racket to be paid for by those who hardly ever benefit form the so-called care that will then be DOLED out to some of them ONLY.

You want to believe in this 'reform' more than a Jesus Freak wants to believe in 'salvation' through Jesus. We just aren't buying your religion though no matter how starry eyed and vacant faced you get about it. Sorry... There just is no Obama, Pal. There just is no 'reform' being made. This plan is a deform of a deformity, not a reform. Get it yet?

To answer your question of .... "Do you think keeping the current healthcare system in place would provide you with better care and benefits than the reform?'

Yes actually I do. I think that from having next to nothing guaranteed by the current situation, that now I will actually have to pay for that next to nothing even more than I already do because of this Deform legislation put into motion by the Democrats. That's sad but exactly how I see the sad situation unfolding. It is a proposal designed to allow the current disintegration of Health Care to hold together by threads yet still longer, by victimizing the working poor even more! How sick is that, Scott?

'If you do, I hope you are wrong. I find it hard to believe so many people know exactly how this all is going to unfold.'

Well nobody does, least of all yourself, Scott. But I think that it is easy to see that the Democrats have advanced nothing of this cause for any of us Working Class folk. Why should they? They are a corporate made party made for the corporate class to act against the rest of us. You don't seem to get that though? This is deform legislation made to help the insurance business stay in operation at our expense.

Both the original article and the discussion about the article and about my response to the article (which is above) are here.

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Sign Your Health Insurance Policy Contract with a Gold Pen or you will be out of Place

The three most basic reasons why the concept of insurance is not appropriate for financing health care are:

(1) Insurance is for things that are not supposed to happen, seldom happen, and rather often never happen to individuals in a lifetime. But health care is inevitable and therefore insurance is not by itself an appropriate funding mechanism for health care. The vast majority of people need health care during their lives at some point, usually due to both one or more accidents and to one or more sicknesses. Even if you live and die without ever getting sick or getting injured, you are still by rights supposed to get preventive care such as annual or biannual check-ups.

(2) Insurance was invented as a luxury product for wealthy people. The real purpose of insurance was and still is to protect most of the wealth of well off families if they happen to suffer a major misfortune or two. To this day, insurance has not really lost its' association with the high income and high wealth population. Simply because of the nature of and the mathematics of wealth itself, insurance is much less valuable to those who are not well off than it is to the well off.

Quite frankly, lower income and lower wealth people who "load up" on insurance are rightly regarded as kind of foolish by most financial people in the know, and even by insurance sellers themselves, who if they are honest at least caution people of lesser means to avoid going overboard on buying insurance that they can not afford and/or that will not prevent them from becoming impoverished if and when misfortune strikes.

(3) Health insurance in the US, to anyone who is neither relatively poor nor very rich, is an absolute necessity since health care itself is an absolute necessity unless you want to take risks of dying young. The health insurance industry therefore has a captive market, which gives them far more power with which to charge higher prices and with which to dictate fine print terms in contracts in their favor.

But during the 20th century, in the most economically successful countries, things which people desperately need were gradually removed from the vagaries and ravages of the private sector and into the public sector. It was more and more understood in the successful and well off countries that people should not be at the mercy of private, profit-making companies always free to just say no (and free to go out of business) for things which everyone perceives that people absolutely have to have.

America, however, much more so than other countries, resisted the trend over the decades of the 20th century. While between 1900 and 1980 other countries were making utilities such as electricity and local bus service public, the U.S. resisted, although certainly not entirely. For example, even in the U.S., the interstate highway system built starting in the 1950's was considered a public enterprise.

But in the late 1970's, in much of the world the winds shifted against the common good in favor of private interests. The well off moved to take control of things. In the last 30 years, while the US became a very right wing economy indeed and moved to privatize enterprises among its relatively small number of them, the countries with the most public enterprises (such as in Europe) reduced them but certainly did not eliminate them entirely or renounce the concept the way the US did.

This is the context or background for the scrapping of for profit insurance companies in favor of public financing of health care in most of the world outside the US. There were ebbs and flows between public and private world wide, and in some places the common good made much more headway than in others. But while most of the rest of the world accepted the concept that health care (and certain other absolute necessities) are not appropriate for the private, profit making market because for one thing people are absolutely desperate for the product, the U.S. never accepted the concept and, indeed, didn't much accept it for anything else.

ORIGIN OF INSURANCE
Insurance companies began about 1680 (about 330 years ago) in England and the first policies insured ships, which were about the most expensive things in existence at the time, especially considering that England was at that time in its' fairly lucrative mercantile and colonial era. Obviously, it was well off people who owned the ships.

One of the most well known insurance companies has always been and is still today Lloyd's of London. This company was founded in 1689 by a group of men who met in Lloyd’s coffee house in London, and originally sold only ship insurance. From its' inception right on down to today, Lloyd's of London has specialized in offering insurance products which are customized to the needs of the well off and of well capitalized businesses. Give credit where credit is due: Lloyd’s is one insurance company that doesn’t very much try to turn a buck by selling insurance to less well off people who will really not benefit from it.

In the United States, the first insurance policies were offered in the early 1860’s, when the Civil War was raging. Obviously, well off people in both the North and the South were worried about losing what they owned directly or indirectly due to the War, so the concept of insurance was, under duress, imported from Mother England despite the fact that, overall, both the American political and the American economics systems were clean breaks and fresh starts from those of England. Note that for about 85 years after the Declaration of Independence, America got along just fine with no insurance industry at all.

Just as in England 170 years earlier, insurance in the States started out as a product exclusively for well off individuals (and businesses owned and operated by those individuals) to insure against losses associated with very, very expensive things. Of course, insurance of various types gradually became more and more popular in the 20th century in America. But in the first half of the 20th century, insurance was sold mostly to wealthy people and to businesses mostly owned by relatively wealthy people.

Insurance was the type of product that was and still is seemingly custom designed for enterprising or conniving sales people to sell to those who were worried about this, that, and the other thing. And to those who are worried about financially "keeping up with the Jones'". More broadly, insurance turned out to be one of the mainstays of the great American commercialization and industrialization from 1860 on.

Eventually, along about 1950, banks granting mortgages required all “homeowners” with mortgages to carry house insurance. Similarly, virtually all of the states eventually required those to whom drivers’ licenses were issued to carry liability car insurance, which can pay for damages caused by the driver.

So during the 20th century, insurance began to be sold more and more to people not so financially well off. When after and due to Franklin Delano Roosevelt the American middle class grew by leaps and bounds, the insurance industry, armed with more and more types of insurance products and with more and more and ever niftier sales pitches, pursued this vast new market without hesitation. Since during the 20th century the American middle class had its' apex, the insurance industry naturally penetrated this class of the population so that it could vastly increase its' sales.

Thus by the late 20th century, insurance was as much an everyday industry among large sectors of the American population as is food sold at the grocery store.

And yet insurance was and is still, well, insurance. Legally it hasn’t really changed much from 17th century England. The problem is that insurance as a product is at heart still far more appropriate for the wealthy than it is for the non-wealthy. When a wealthy person has a misfortune and files a claim with his insurance company, he or she has plenty of money to pay all of the deductibles, co-pays, and uncovered items associated with the claim. In fact, the wealthy person often technically has enough money to pay for the entire misfortune lock, stock, and barrel, but that could make that wealthy person not wealthy anymore, thus the need for the insurance. Again, the objective of insurance was and still ultimately is primarily to keep wealthy people wealthy, not exactly as wealthy as they were before the misfortune, but almost as wealthy as they were.

But when a non-wealthy person who happens to have an insurance policy files a claim, he or she can become destitute even if the insurance company honors both the spirit and all of the fine print of the contract. We have seen this in the massive number of medical bankruptcies filed by those with health insurance policies that have occurred in recent decades in the States.

With the new health insurance laws, we will continue to see large number of medical bankruptcies in the future in the United States, although many of them will be disguised for political reasons as old fashioned "the debtor made bad decisions" bankruptcies.

Under the Democrats' unconstitutional health insurance laws, people who think they can but really can not afford premiums and all of the other less talked about health insurance expenses that come up from actual claims (deductibles, co-pays, disallowed items, uncovered items, prescription drugs, vision care, dental care, etc.) will end up in bankruptcy court. Meanwhile though, other, wealthier people will avoid bankruptcy thanks to the new health insurance laws, because for example they really need health insurance but they were denied it prior to the new laws due to a preexisting condition.

This is why we have already stated in a previous article that bankruptcy is "moving down the income scale". The total number of medical bankruptcies will neither greatly fall nor greatly increase due to Obama Care, but the income and wealth of the bankrupts under Obama Care will be lower than it was before. The gap between assets and liabilities among the bankrupts will be lower than before due to the subsidies and due to new annual “out of pocket” limitations.

The annual out of pocket limit regulations in the new laws do take direct aim at bankruptcies, but will not help one iota those who “live paycheck to paycheck” and so don’t have $5,000 or $10,000 or $20,000 lying around to cover the amount they are supposed to pay for the deductible, the co-pays, the prescription drugs, and the uncovered items. Ironically, a much higher percentage of Americans live paycheck to paycheck than do people in other countries who don’t have to worry about any of the things we are discussing because their health care expenses are taken care of completely (or at least virtually completely) by the general tax system of the country they are living in (which is the core idea behind “single payer” financing of health care).

If you wanted to be crass about it, I guess you could say that thanks to the Democrats, medical bankruptcy is moving to the "bad neighborhood" where the rest of the bankruptcy family lives, laugh out loud. In other words, the Democrats’ unconstitutional health insurance laws are all about moving medical bankruptcy to what is in their view its’ rightful address on the wrong side of the tracks.

It is interesting to note that in the final days before passage, the Democrats who were the most insistent that the new laws be passed despite heavy opposition often brought up the notion that people who refused to buy grossly overpriced insurance simply because it is unaffordable were freeloading. The freeloaders were getting care in emergency rooms effectively almost for free. This is known as uncompensated care, the cost of which is partly passed on in the form of health insurance premium hikes but is also partly absorbed by the commons.

But the Democrats are all about supporting wealthier people these days, so unlike Democrats of decades ago these Democrats were disgusted with common people trying to “freeload” off the wealthier. So there was an undercurrent of disdain and disgust toward the common people freeloaders, who of course are merely innocent bystanders to the US health system wreckage in general and to unaffordable health insurance in particular.

Not only will the Democrats' unconstitutional health insurance laws move bankruptcy to (in the view of the Democrats) back to where it belongs on the income and wealth scale, but the new laws will also remind us over and over again in the years ahead that insurance is not a fully appropriate concept for those who are not above average in wealth and income (before any misfortunes strike). Because despite having insurance (that they were bribed to buy with subsidies and prodded to buy under threat of tax penalties) people with lower incomes and little wealth will be going bankrupt right and left under Obama Care when they discover the hard way what the wealthy already know: that insurance certainly can not and will not pay for everything, and when misfortune strikes you will take a hit despite having insurance.

Unlike the wealthy, if you are lower down the income and wealth scales, you won't be able to take the financial hit that comes despite the insurance and financially live to tell about it. That "hit despite insurance" is relatively small to a wealthy or to a high income person but hardly so for others. So if you are induced to buy health insurance and then you can’t cover all the things that the insurance won’t cover, it will be off to bankruptcy court for you to file an "Obama Care bankruptcy". There may be a waiting list, so get your bankruptcy filing in early, please.

Remember, if you do buy health insurance, make sure you are wearing expensive, formal attire and have a gold pen when you sign your policy contract. Otherwise, you will look like a fish out of water.

By the way, did you know that bankruptcy has become so commonplace that you can largely do it on the Internet with no attorney?

READING LIST
Wall Street loots Birmingham

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Who is Helped and Who is Hurt by Obama Care: The Blood in the Water

Among the health insurance contract aspects, a few things were fixed by Obama Care (at least fifty years late; what took the Democrats so damn long?) but many more were not fixed. For example, insurance companies can still deny payment for unusual and novel treatments even if doctor requested and doctor approved. If the new or unusual treatment is not in the Government mandated health insurance package, you don’t get coverage for it whether it is approved by doctors and scientists or not. The new health insurance policy management system will be quite inflexible, slow moving, bureaucratic, and financially conservative due in part to the overall economic context.

Also, insurance companies can still deny payments and rescind policies if they declare fraud. Unlike before when whatever the insurance company said was automatically worshipped as gospel and dutifully obeyed by every governmental and judicial official, the companies may now have to "prove" fraud at a hearing IF the consumer actively contests the fraud. But with huge staffs of extremely high paid attorneys, the insurance companies will be able to prevail in most hearings when they decide to kick someone off the policy they don’t want to pay on by declaring fraud.

The concept of fraud, which is still alive and well with Obama Care, is vague and wide ranging enough to allow for a lot of successful attacks on consumers by the insurance companies. (And no, there is nothing you can do to eliminate the chance that your insurance company will falsely declare something you filed was fraudulent. Along with the huge staffs of highly paid shark type attorneys, they have plenty of legal tricks up their sleeve with which they can successfully accuse anyone of fraud.)

As I have said before, all these new laws do is rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. The system will eventually go to the bottom of the briny blue, but in the meantime, some people will enjoy a better position on the deck than they have now. In particular, here are some who will be helped:

--Higher income people who know how to "do health insurance" and have a big enough and dependable enough income to back up those skills and make all the right payments at all the right times will be helped by Obama Care.

--Those who have been hammered by the “donut hole” (that big gap in Medicare Part D prescription coverage) will be better off in about ten years when it is finally gone (assuming no repeal).

--Those who simply can not get health insurance under the status quo but have enough resources to pay for premiums, deductibles, co pays, uncovered items, prescription drugs, dental care, and vision care in full and on time year after year after year. These would be fairly rich people by definition and it is no surprise that the right of center Democrats are strongly behind them.

Here are some of the groups of people who are harmed:

--Those who are ignorant about the many complexities and consumer traps of private, for profit health insurance. Such people will still be subject to disasters caused by such things as lapsed coverage due to missing premium payments, for example, interrupted health care, incomplete health care, and inadequate health care.

--Lower income people in general, especially those between 133% and 250% of the federal poverty line. Those with less than 133% will get Medicaid, but actually getting quality treatment with Medicaid (especially in a quasi depression when states are completely broke) will be at best a very dicey proposition.

--Some people who would have declared one or more bankruptcies pre Obama Care will now never have to declare bankruptcy. But lower income people (mostly among those with incomes less than 500% of poverty) have been often avoiding medical bankruptcy by not attempting the impossible (for them) task of feeding the private health system beast year after year, but now they will be induced to feed that ever growing beast, and numerous bankruptcies among them will inevitably follow. In other words, medical bankruptcy is moving down the income scale. Going forward, the people filing medical bankruptcy will be lower income and will perhaps have a smaller gap between assets and liabilities than the prior group of bankrupts. But this is obviously a key way in which Obama Care does nothing but rearrange those Titanic deck chairs.

--Those who become unemployed due to a bankruptcy filing. Many professions and employers become very negatively disposed to employees who have filed bankruptcy in the US and they start looking for pretenses to get rid of such employees.

--There will be a good number of people who get so totally carried away by "their responsibilities" under Obama Care that they will end up homeless when they would never have been homeless under the status quo. These people will ironically end up in much worse health than they would have been with no Obama Care since homelessness is usually devastating to a person's health.

--Medicare Advantage enrollees, since that program has been heavily cut. My understanding is that many will simply drop out of that program in the wake of the big cuts to it.

--Existing Medicaid beneficiaries, since the demand for service among the big influx of new Medicaid people will be much in excess of new resources for the program. The number of people on Medicaid is supposed to increase by roughly 50%.

--Small businesses, especially those with roughly 50-250 employees, which operate with their heads just above the waterline financially speaking.

--Employees of those small businesses who are fired so that those small businesses can offset the new health insurance mandate they must take on, or so that the small business can reduce it's workforce below 50 employees and thus escape the new regulations that target small businesses.

--People who harbor a lot of resentment about being denied health care freedom. Different people come at this from different perspectives but end up in the same place: very much in opposition to the Obama Care “mandate”. Generally speaking, everyone but especially right of center people very much resent being told by the government to buy a particular product. (This is of course unprecedented not only in the US but world wide.) Rather then being told what they must do, people want the freedom to buy it, to buy something different, or to buy nothing.

Progressive people are more often most resentful of being indirectly blamed for the mess when a health system is a governmental responsibility that the government should discharge with ordinary public and progressive financing methodologies, and/or they are very resentful of having to help pay the massive salaries, massive perks, and massive profits of private health insurance companies.

--In my wide angle view, probably the most outrageous thing of all about Obama Care is that it is a slap in the face of basically the entire rest of the planet on the issue, which has decided that health care is ultimately a societal and governmental responsibility rather than an individual responsibility.

Coming next is a complete exposé focusing on this last aspect.

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Comments are very much appreciated. Comments are moderated but all comments will be approved except for those that do not belong on Unity-Progress. For example, comments that contain any commercial advertising and ones that contain objectionable hatred will not be approved. Many comments that appear will receive a return comment by Unity-Progress. To comment click the green "comments" link at the bottom of this post.

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The Republican Proposals Versus Obama Care

GUEST COMMENT
Mookie March 22nd, 2010 1:35 pm
What Republican plans? The absolutely only thing Republicans harped on was tort reform. Yeh, let's let the existing poor health care system in the United States continue to kill 200,000 a year through malpractice and unclean medical care.

No one who thinks Republicans are worth a frack is worth listening to.

UNITY PROGRESS
Laugh out loud, I don't agree with Republicans very often and I suppose I am playing the novelty of the moment for all it's worth, but I do agree with them regarding how bad Obama Care is. I mean, it may never happen again so I have to enjoy the novelty of it now.

Seriously though, if you want specifics, the Republicans' allowance of interstate health insurance purchasing and their proposal for allowance of a very low cost but limited insurance policy, useful for full out health/financial catastrophes only, are economically well grounded proposals within the context of the current bad system and would slightly (or marginally if you prefer) improve it.

Although a few Republican ideas were included in the thousands of pages of new laws, I do not believe the two I just mentioned, which were among their best, were included. If I were a Republican economist (laugh out loud at the thought) I would know enough to be able to tell you definitively whether or not it is generally true that the best or at least the biggest Republican ideas were not included while the lesser and not so good ones were included. But I do suspect this is true.

Moreover, the mandate is so extremely regressive that the mere absence of it in the Republican proposals means that they are much more progressive than Obama Care (or much less regressive, to put it more accurately).

So of course I stand by my rankings. Technically the Republican proposals are more progressive than Obama Care despite the fact they are still overall quite regressive by world standards and doomed to eventual total failure as is Obama Care. And then we don’t know whether the Republicans would actually vote for them or whether they are just for public relations.

The truth is neither the Republican plans nor Obama Care are really worth even discussing if your objective is a truly good working system. No serious person in most other countries of the world who had any say in system design would take either very seriously. On my ranking scale, the Chinese system is much better than the Republican modifications of the US status quo while the distance between the Republican proposals and Obama Care is less than that.

The issue of Republican proposals versus Obama Care is only a side issue by world standards and amounts to just a matter of deciding which would be better among two very bad health systems. But for the record, the Republican system would be a little better than Obama Care if both economics and health care are taken into account. If ONLY health care is taken into account without regard to costs and economics, I suppose Obama Care is better than Republican proposals. But only in Wonderland can you support one health system over another while totally ignoring costs and economics, especially in the current context of labor market collapse.

The above was in response to this article.

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Obama Care: A new low in Health Care Systems; A Very bad System Gets Even Worse

Just to make sure everyone who visits here understands exactly where this Site is coming from, here, based on tried and true economics and health care theory, is a rank order of health care systems from best to worst:

1. Single Payer with insurance companies eliminated for everything except for luxury types of care intended for rich people. (For example, United Kingdom, Sweden, and Canada.)

2. Modified or indirect Single Payer with people required to sign up with a heavily regulated but technically private insurance company. The company "selling" the insurance at the bequest of the government is strictly not allowed to make a profit on the insurance package that the government requires people to buy: they get reasonable costs only. Moreover, low income people pay only token amounts or nothing (beyond anything they already pay in other taxation) since the subsidies are huge and are much larger relative to income than proposed American subsidies for people to buy grossly expensive private US policies. (Examples of countries that most closely represent this system would be Switzerland and The Netherlands.)

3. The (mainland) Chinese Plan (a work in progress): heavy subsidies of community based health providers and other various interventions, provisions, and system organization plans to keep health care prices low enough for most people in diverse situations to afford. Note that at least for most people in China, for profit health care insurance is a totally foreign concept. Due to not being tied down to the concept of for-profit insurance (which fails for health care) the Chinese in effect get a big head start in their quest to design a good system for their country with its gigantic population.

4. Various Republican plans existing in 2009 and 2010 to modify and slightly improve the status quo.

5. The U.S. status quo as of March 21, 2010 (outside Massachusetts which already had drunk the kool-aid). There were actually progressive features in the status quo, backdoor as they were. Most notably, you had a small ( much smaller than claimed by the Democrats, however) subsidy of poor people lacking insurance by those with it, brought about by the 1986 Act which mandates that those without insurance be treated in emergency rooms of hospitals. Technically this backdoor progressive subsidy will apparently continue on, although now the amount will be even smaller than before.

6. Obama Care.

Yes it’s true; Obama Care is virtually the worst possible system and represents a new low in humanities’ efforts in the area. It not only maintains but reinforces and gives new official backing to all of the bad elements of the existing system and also makes things worse in many ways, for example, by subsidizing items that are drowning not only the health care system but the economy as a whole, particularly health insurance. When you subsidize something you raise the cost of it. It has been downright amusing to see Democrats claim that health insurance prices will be restrained or even go down going forward when roughly 15 million new people (a good number of them sicker than dogs) suddenly buy the product. (Do Democrats never take any economics courses?)

In other words, the Democrats’ new system digs the hole deeper cost wise and sooner or later health care wise as well. And now the hole is deeper still because now the new authoritarianism in the US system is unprecedented among such systems.

The Americans' refusal to follow the rest of the world into a single payer approach (and to end their unhealthy obsession with for-profit health insurance) has caused them to end up very, very deep in the health care hole indeed. They now have:

--By far the most expensive system

--By far the most unfair system

--By far the most dysfunctional system (many get care they don't really need and many more don't get care they really do need.)

--By far the most authoritarian and regressive system: the system with the least freedom, the most needless bureaucracy, and the most regressivity.

The last one is added into the toxic mix by Obama Care. How ironic is it that the country that supposedly has the most people obsessed with freedom from authoritarian, heavy handed government now has the most authoritarian health care system among advanced countries? Very ironic indeed.

Laugh out loud. They always say truth is stranger than fiction. Indeed, I couldn’t with a straight face have written a fiction book about how the Americans would make their health system even worse after having an election driven by fear of massive unemployment. I would have laughed myself out of the room at the thought of writing such a work of fiction (but it would now be fact, so laugh out loud.)

And I told you the Americans will never get health care right. I guess hell will freeze over before they get it right. The same would appear to be true about unemployment (despite the motivations of voters in the most recent presidential election): hell will freeze over before the Americans take real action to get unemployment down now and keep unemployment in check in the future.

READING LIST
The Health Care Hindenberg has Landed

The Hindenberg has landed indeed (a very sharp analogy). I can't wait until it blows up. And I have a folder ready for downloading 2010, 2012, and 2014 concession speeches of Democrats who voted for this and then lose their re-election. This folder will hopefully include Obama's 2012 concession speech.

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