I wonder where they figure this out. I have two friends (and I donât have a huge social life so that is a large percentage) who have been trying to find work for several months. One had unemployment after having her hours cut to 0 when the place she worked was bought out, but it ran out - the other was denied unemployment because he was injured on the job and needed to go through workmanâs comp, but workmanâs comp refused his claim so he is waiting for his lawyer to settle something.
It sounds like neither of them would count as unemployed people actively seeking employment. Most of their job applications turn out to be either scams or donât pay enough to live off of and one is an experienced diesel mechanic trying to find over $20 an hour. South Carolina is a horrible place for wages.
You are right, every askewed.
Holy crap⊠Tell them to get on a plane. I know two different companies looking for certified diesel mechanics who pay starting $80K/year with healthcare here in Northern California. More if they want to work the service truck with overtime and double time for harvest calls. My kids friends dad is a diesel mechanic for New Holland in our area, and he makes more than my wife with a masters degree and a 30 year professional career. He is gone a lot, but he will retire before us and his wife gets the choice to work or not. (he does not have an average mechanic job)
I told him 
he said once his kids graduate he just might do that, live in an RV and work until he has enough saved to retire.
The east coast of SC is especially bad, Myrtle Beach was hiring RNâs for $15/hr. Minimum wage is still the federal $7 something, while rent is $2000 for a 2 bedroom.
That, I canât tell you. I ASSUME itâs a balance between ânew unemployment claimsâ and recurring unemployment claims +/- an employment survey of some sort. I just remember it coming up once in discussion - either in NPRâs Marketplace, or my HS econ class. More likely on Marketplace, though.
Appreciate the detail. Fascinating, but not something I would have looked into on my own. So it is a (government) survey.
The key words there are âIn the Current Population Surveyâ.
They actually contact people monthly for a period of time (6 months as I recall) and ask a long list of questions about what they are doing.
The surveys determine who has left the work force â âAre you actively employed? Are you actively looking for employment?â and so on.
We were on those surveys a couple different times over the past 10 or 15 years and had the same lady doing the survey each time.
Our answers skewed the results by a bunch!
At the time my wife was working at the store 6 or 7 days a week and putting in 8 to 10 hours a day. I am/was working from home and I spent/spend 8 to 12 hours a day on the computer â most for work on inventory and packing for shipping.
Since her crash with the drunk â and her most recent one with the idiot that pulled out in front of her (still not settled) she is down to about 7 or 8 hours a day and only 6 or 7 days a week. 
The nurses in intensive care called her a âtough old broadâ which is a basic understatement of reality.
If riding my â â â was a job, my wife would have been employed 365 days a year for the last several decades, eschewing the numbers.
Your wife phoned in the corrections âŠ
I hate when they say ârecord lowâ with no context of how long the numbers have been followed. Then I feel even worse when I remember the numbers have been around for about 80 YEARSâŠ
From Market Watch this morning.
âU.S. consumer sentiment falls to record low. Iran war blamed.â
âA survey of consumer sentiment fell to a record low of 47.6 in April from 53.3 in the prior month, the University of Michigan said.â
That is a HUGE drop.
FDR when Social Security was adopted clearly and emphatically stated it was not going to provide enough money to fund anyoneâs retirement.
Social Security was adopted at a time when there was a major campaign for a National Old Age Pension, funded by a fixed percentage of the Federal Governmentâs tax receipts.
It was denounced by the supporters of the National Old Age Pension and welcomed by the retirees who were going to receive lifetime benefits while having paid little or nothing into the system.
Over the years, the idea of being able to live on Social Security has been suggested by politicians, and people who have no savings and no other source of income. The numbers have never supported the idea that one can retire with only Social Security and have an adequate lifestyle.
The National Old Age Pension was a far more humane way of dealing with the problems of old people, and might even have survived the politicians best efforts to exploit it, so it had to be prevented at all costs.
Yet, it is constantly being used as a financial reference point for every day retirement, instead of its core purpose of being a safety net for the disabled and destitute.
I just wish my business insurance was dumb enough stop going up when I hit $184K and still cover all the other business. I mean, at $200K income, that $960 difference is going to really going to impact my G Wagon payment. Just kidding, nobody pays that except working schleps, as the rest of us would just take a distribution or equivalent capital gains, avoiding silly payroll taxes and social security.
Misinformation about Social Security is always in great supply, and comes from many sources.
For years, people who have reached the early retirement deadline have been advised to wait until later to claim their benefits, showing how much her their monthly benefit will be.
I never expected to be able to live on Social Security. I had other retirement investments.
When I reached 62 yo, I ran the numbers. It was far more to my advantage to take Social Security early and to allow my retirement investments to continue to grow, tax free. Of course, I was correct, even with the stock market gyrations.
I was not solely depending on Social Security at any point. FED policy made it harder to live without depleting some investments.
For most of my life, one could count on safe investment in savings account to yield a 5% return.
Ben Bernake and company sought to juice the economy with near zero interest rates. Finding a passive investment return which was adequate was near impossible.
I had played with Master Limited Partnerships, BDCs and REITS, all of which were created to take advantage of income tax preferences to avoid double taxation, and as a result at the mercy of the FED policies on interest rates. I have lost money on every one of those investments which relied on tax policy. I still own some because I would have to pay income tax at my personal tax rate on these losing investments if I sold them. The taxable basis is higher than their value. My kids will be able to sell them after I am gone because the taxable basis will be raised upon my death. Assuming the Congress and the President do not change the rules.
Lots of fuss about allowing 401k accounts to invest in hedge-fund like private capital investments. This is more of the same effort to screw us by helping us. The recent private lending scares are the same as the experience with BDCs, only with less liquidity, Just another sucker bet.
There has in recent months been some improvement in recommendations for what people should do when they reach the early retirement age. More financial advisors are advising people to run the numbers I ran. But the numbers cannot account for what the members of the FED Board of Governors will decide is appropriate monetary policy, or what the Congress and President decide is appropriate fiscal policy.
I do not believe this is the average American viewpoint, which was my point. Too many people use social security as a retirement plan and as a measure of poverty in conversation, when it clearly was not intended to be used for either purpose.
IMO, like every other kind insurance, it should be means or loss tested for use, not simply paid out because someone put into it.
I have no intent of burning my house down, collecting workers comp, unemployment, or crashing my car, so why should I use it in my retirement calculations? I support the recent idea of having a 401K made for every child in America, as many, if not most Americans cannot even comprehend the concept of compounding interest, let alone moderate knowledge of investment strategies for exiting the workforce. At least a hormonal 18 year old can look at their statement from age .01 and see the growth (or loss) right before they liquidate it to pay for their useless social justice college degree.
This is a class and education related viewpoint.
Social Security was created to avoid providing more reliable retirement system in the US. No politician has proposed a an alternative system to what we have.
Income redistribution is the refuge of a larcenous mind. Usually one that has forsaken traditional religions and adopted social justice as a religion.
Well, the use of the word âalternativeâ being you get money automatically and cannot opt in or out can be a bit dubious. There is this howeverâŠ
trumpaccounts.gov
which is what I was referring to. I know BNY is not complaining one bit about it.
Ah, but the question for all libertarian points is to ask if the market/game is rigged in the first place, making it all a grift. Is stealing something back from a thief a crime or simple justice?
Income is not made in a vacuum.
Perhaps, but I doubt Joseph Smith cared about what the Catholics thought when he opened up the golden tablets from Moroni in 1823. The game changes so often, everyone thinks they are on the winning team.
This is the core issue. There are no answers really. Laws donât make better societies. People make better societies. History just repeats itself in this specific sense of power dynamics and narratives. A simpleton would see it otherwise.
Is a simpleton one who would seek out Brazilian support for a simple resolution or is a simpleton the Brazilian support who simply nukes an account as a simple resolution?
Why?
Just trying to establish a base line for when the discussion involves a simpleton.
a double double
Some cans of worms are impossible to close back up
WellâŠ
All those larcenous minds out there January 1, 1863 when we (apparently to some) redistributed a large chunk of âpropertyâ to a large group of âpeopleâ.
There will always be those out there who will disregard the value of a moral society for their capitalistic endeavors, the drum beats are the same, just the names change from -ist to -ist every few generations.