Ever
More Official Lies From The US Government
By
Paul Craig Roberts
July
11, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- The false reality constructed for Americans
parallels perfectly the false reality
constructed by Big Brother in George Orwells’
dystopian novel 1984.
Consider the constant morphing of “the Muslim
threat” from al-Qaeda to the Taliban, to al-Nusra,
to ISIS to ISIL, to Daesh with a jump to Russia.
All of a sudden 16 years of Middle East wars
against “terrorists” and “dictators” have become
a matter of standing up to Russia, the country
most threatened by Muslim terrorism, and the
country most capable of wiping the United States
and its vassal empire off of the face of the
earth.
Domestically, Americans are assured that, thanks
to the Federal Reserve’s policy of quantitative
easing, that is, flooding the financial markets
with newly printed money that has driven up the
prices of stocks and bonds, America has enjoyed
an economic recovery since June of 2009, which
must be one of the longest recoveries in history
despite the absence of growth in median real
family incomes, despite the growth in real
retail sales, despite the falling labor force
participation rate, despite the lack of high
value-added, high productivity, high wage jobs.
The
“recovery” is more than a mystery. It is a
miracle. It exists only on fake news paper.
According to CNN, an unreliable source for sure,
Jennifer Tescher, president and CEO of the
Center for Financial Services Innovation,
reports that about half of Americans report that
their living expenses are equal to or exceed
their incomes. Among those aged 18 to 25
burdened by student loans, 54% say their debts
are equal to or exceed their incomes. This means
that half of the US population has ZERO
discretionary income. So what is driving the
recovery?
Nothing. For half or more of the US population
there is no discretionary income there with
which to drive the economy.
The
older part of the population has no
discretionary income either. For a decade there
has been essentially zero interest on the
savings of the elderly, and if you believe John
Williams of shadowstats.com, which I do, the
real interest rates have been zero and even
negative as inflation is measured in a way
designed to prevent Social Security cost of
living adjustments.
In
other words, the American economy has been
living on the shrinkage of the savings and
living standards of its population.
Last
Friday’s employment report is just another lie
from the government. The report says that the
unemployment rate is 4.4% and that June
employment increased by 222,000 jobs. A rosy
picture. But as I have just demonstrated, there
are no fundamentals to support it. It is just
another US government lie like Saddam Hussein’s
weapons of mass destruction, Assad’s use of
chemical weapons against his own people, Russian
invasion of Ukraine, and so forth and so on.
The
rosy unemployment picture is totally contrived.
The unemployment rate is 4.4% because
discouraged workers who have not searched for a
job in the past four weeks are not counted as
unemployed.
The BLS
has a second measure of unemployment, known as
U6, which is seldom reported by the presstitute
financial media. According to this official
measure the US unemployment rate is about double
the reported rate.
Why?
the U6 rate counts discouraged workers who have
been discouraged for less than one year.
John
Williams counts the long term discouraged
workers (discouraged for more than one year) who
formerly (before “reforms”) were counted
officially. When the long term discouraged are
counted, the US unemployment rate is in the
22-23 percent range. This is borne out by the
clear fact that the labor force participation
rate has been falling throughout the alleged
“recovery.” Normally, labor force participation
rates rise during economic recoveries.
It is
very easy for the government to report a low
jobless rate when the government studiously
avoids counting the unemployed.
It is
an extraordinary thing that although the US
government itself reports that if even a small
part of discouraged workers are counted as
unemployed the unemployment rate is 8.6%, the
presstitute financial media, a collection of
professional liars, still reports, in the face
of the government’s admission, that the
unemployment rate as 4.4%.
Now,
let’s do what I have done month after month year
after year. Let’s look at the jobs that the BLS
alleges are being created. Remember, most of
these alleged jobs are the product of the
birth/death model that adds by assumption alone
about 100,000 jobs per month. In other words,
these jobs come out of a model, not from
reality.
Where
are these reported jobs? They are where they
always are in lowly paid domestic services.
Health care and social assistance, about half of
which is “ambulatory health care services,”
provided 59,000 jobs. Leisure and hospitality
provided 36,000 jobs of which 29,300 consist of
waitresses and bartenders. Local government rose
by 35,000. Manufacturing, once the backbone of
the US economy, provided a measly 1,000 jobs.
As I
have emphasized for a decade or two, the US is
devolving into a third world workforce where the
only employment available is in lowly paid
domestic service jobs that cannot be offshored
and that do not pay enough to provide an
independent existence. This is why 50% of
25-year olds live at home with their parents and
why there are more Americans aged 24-34 living
with parents than living independently.
This is
not the economic profile of a “superpower” that
the idiot neoconservatives claim the US to be.
The American economy that offshoring
corporations and financialization have created
is incapable of supporting the enormous US debt
burden. It is only a matter of time and
circumstance.
I doubt
that the United States can continue in the ranks
of a first world economy. Americans have sat
there sucking their thumbs while their “leaders”
destroyed them.
Dr.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of
the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate
editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was
columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News
Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many
university appointments. His internet columns
have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts'
latest books are
The Failure of Laissez Faire
Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West,
How America Was Lost,
and
The Neoconservative Threat to
World Order.
See
also
PCR Given Marquis Who’s Who
Lifetime Achievement Award
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views expressed in this article are solely those
of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of Information Clearing House.