Monday, May 7, 2012

The Emperor Is Naked

"People keep forgetting that most government spending is transfer payments, but it is only purchases of labor and goods that go directly into the GDP calculations, and it is these accounts that will get smacked by the sequester of discretionary defense and non-defense budgets." (David Stockman, The Aureport.com)

"Just take one example. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly report, there are 650,000 or so jobs in the U.S. Postal Service alone. That is 650,000 people who pretend to work at jobs that have more or less been made obsolete and redundant by the Internet and who are paid through borrowings from Uncle Sam because the post office is broke. Yet, the courageous ladies and gentlemen on Capitol Hill cannot even bring themselves to vote to discontinue Saturday mail delivery; they voted to study it! That is a measure of the loss of capacity to rationally cognate about our fiscal circumstance."

RTWT

3 comments:

MAX Redline said...

emperor.

Ten Mile Island said...

Thanks, Max.
.

ZZMike said...

Does anybody know if the government (or the BLS) publishes the 'employed' numbers (not just the unemployed).

It would be instructive to see how those numbers have changed over the last decade or so.