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The NC GOP Recovery

bmoneydeac said:
First of all the graphs were to show that NC did have some statistical noise that CA and TX didn't. I thought that was plainly obvious.

Second, is there an easy way to determine how many of the 70,000 went from unemployed to not looking for work vs retired, died, etc?
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Are we sure that they didn't die because they were so discouraged by GOP leadership? We need every single one of those 70,000 to disappear for the right reasons if we're going to wish away the jobs numbers...
 
jhmd2000 said:
Are we sure that they didn't die because they were so discouraged by GOP leadership? We need every single one of those 70,000 to disappear for the right reasons if we're going to wish away the jobs numbers...
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You defend all this bullshit from Berger and the right, but you'd be one of the first to pull out a calculator were the shoe on the other foot. As long as they're juicing the "job creators" and keeping the gays from getting married they can cock up whatever numbers they want to, huh?
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
You defend all this bullshit from Berger and the right, but you'd be one of the first to pull out a calculator were the shoe on the other foot. As long as they're juicing the "job creators" and keeping the gays from getting married they can cock up whatever numbers they want to, huh?
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I think you may have mixed metaphors there at the end.

I don't think job growth is a bad thing, and if we can learn what we're doing right and replicate that growth by enhancing those efforts, I think we should. Even if it pains 923 to watch policies he opposed succeed. I'm willing to pay that price for the greater good. If the shoe was on the other foot and the Obama admin had created jobs with a balanced budget, I probably wouldn't be the first one to the pulpit, but I would be happy for the people being helped.
 
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myDeaconmyhand said:
No, I meant cock, as in fuck up. Great job not responding to my point though.
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I've never heard that expression. I have heard "cook" in reference to numbers being manipulated, but I'll defer to your expertise on handling legislative phallus.

Aside: the better the employment numbers, the nastier the neg rep. The Tunnels left is quite the catty little sorority when they find themselves on the business end of unwelcome economic data.
 
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jhmd2000 said:
I've never heard that expression. I have heard "cook" in reference to numbers being manipulated, but I'll defer to your expertise on handling legislative phallus.
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Let me try another method. As a fiscal liberal, I'm willing to acknowledge that conservative philosophies on job creation do work sometimes, and are currently working in North Carolina to an extent. As a staunch fiscal conservative, can you admit that Phil Berger is misrepresenting the actual change in the unemployment rate by failing to acknowledge the nearly 75 thousand people who left the work force?
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
Let me try another method. As a fiscal liberal, I'm willing to acknowledge that conservative philosophies on job creation do work sometimes, and are currently working in North Carolina to an extent. As a staunch fiscal conservative, can you admit that Phil Berger is misrepresenting the actual change in the unemployment rate by failing to acknowledge the nearly 75 thousand people who left the work force?
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He's using the BLS numbers. It's not like he's manufacturing them on his own. If their process is flawed, then his citation to them is going to contain the same flaws. I also think it's an open question as to why people are leaving the labor force. It's very weird that it would be so pronouncd in NC based on DOL data, but not in other states. If you go back and look at the definitions, I don't see how people would be dropped from the "employed"/"unemployed" status just because they stopped getting benefits. It's weird to me since they aren't Berger's numbers; they are DOL numbers he's excited about.

When the President touts the number of people who "signed up" for Obamacare, but doesn't filter out people who are moving from an existing insurance policy into the exchange (a net gain of precisely 0 insured persons each time someone migrates between policies) and doesn't filter out the people who don't have the ability to pay the required payments for ACA-provided policies, he's doing much the same thing as Berger---and all politicians do. Is Berger doing the same thing? Sure.
 
Why shouldn't people who signed up for Obamacare count as people who signed up for Obamacare?
 
PhDeac said:
Why shouldn't people who signed up for Obamacare count as people who signed up for Obamacare?
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They should, but don't then follow that up with "Obamacare has helped six million people get insurance....", when 1/2 of them already had it and the other half isn't going to pay for it. That's the disingenuous part.
 
jhmd2000 said:
They should, but don't then follow that up with "Obamacare has helped six million people get insurance....", when 1/2 of them already had it and the other half isn't going to pay for it. That's the disingenuous part.
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myDeaconmyhand said:
You defend all this bullshit from Berger and the right, but you'd be one of the first to pull out a calculator were the shoe on the other foot.
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I'm just saying...
 
Eh. People wouldn't have switched from their insurance to Obamacare without a reason such as affordability, better coverage, preexisting condition, etc. That's what the law is supposed to do.
 
A contrast in records:

Unemployment rate in NC in November 2008 (Perdue/Obama win election): 7.7% Labor Force 4.59M

Unemployment rate when "Perdue" *cough* announces she won't seek second term 26 Jan 2012: 9.5% LF 4.68M

Unemployment rate in NC in November 2012 (when Perdue is replaced with PatMac): 9.0% Labor Force 4.72M

Unemployment rate in NC March 2014: 6.3% LF 4.66M
 
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Yeah, it's definitely a coincidence that the labor force contracted under McCrory and Co.
 
jhmd2000 said:
Think that Pat is wagging the BLS's dog? How can he control their math? Mind control?
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That's an RJ-level rebuttal, so shame on you. You know damn well that the tax and government assistance cuts put in place by this current regressive regime have directly led to people leaving the work force, especially as it relates to rejecting the federal expansion of medicaid. There are thousands of people who would have had to quit their jobs to become subsidy eligible.
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
That's an RJ-level rebuttal, so shame on you. You know damn well that the tax and government assistance cuts put in place by this current regressive regime have directly led to people leaving the work force, especially as it relates to rejecting the federal expansion of medicaid. There are thousands of people who would have had to quit their jobs to become subsidy eligible.
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That doesn't make any sense at all. If I'm getting less government assistance, my incentive is to replace that lost assistance with more private sources of funding. The exact opposite is true, frankly. People who were able to rely on long-term unemployment were able to stay out of the work force longer precisely because of the government assistance. They would have been less likely to be counted as "unemployed" for BLS purposes BEFORE the cuts than after.

Go back and read the definitions of who counts as "unemployed" and you'll see what I mean.
 
I'm not accusing anyone of cooking (or cocking?) the books but it is curious that NC has seen a net reduction in labor force since January 2013 while many other states I've looked at (Cali, Texas, Virginia, Tennessee) are all seeing their labor forces increase over the same time frame (Maryland and SC have numbers more similar to ours). Our unemployment rate has gained 1.3% on the national average in that time frame (from +.9% to -.4%). However as the math showed earlier, our unemployment number is being dropped somewhere between 0 and 1.3% based on reduced participation. Nationally the labor force has increased something like .3% since January 2013.
 
Value statements aside, what is the best hypothesis for why our labor force has dropped while our population has increased? I don't feel like MDMH's theory about people quitting their job to become subsidy eligible is right.
 
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