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★ The most important economic overview that I have read in many years ★
In the Off-Topic section @Mark has posted "Voters Were Right About the Economy. The Data Was Wrong", a non-political economic report which I believe to be absolutely accurate, and of major significance. It describes how the government information on the major facets of American economic life fails miserably to accurately reflect reality.
I strongly recommend that anyone interested check out Mark's posting.
I think we've all suspected that the statistics (sadistics!) were misleading or incomplete. Ludwig expertly, starkly, clearly and utterly exposes the flaws. AND he's devised an alternative "measuring stick" by which to report economic realities on the ground. This article is sharply and clearly written. He expresses what I suppose many of us were suspicious of; as for myself, I just couldn't put the pieces together as coherently as Ludwig has done in this article. ********** So, a new metric, a new tool is required, and his team has created one. I'm going to be watching what he says, going forward. ***** ...Yet, if cost of living and stagnant wages and (actual) unemployment loom so large, the bigger obvious question is: how do we create conditions in which fewer and fewer people must live "sucking hind teat," forever? There will always be an unfortunate element who just don't have the internal means to compete, to succeed, to function in this capitalist society. I think we are doing a retched job of watching out for them and providing for them. My younger, more idealistic self was convninced that we could totally eliminate poverty. Not so, anymore.
I’m not an expert @davidrmoran, but I’ll opine nevertheless. What Ludwig and his team have apparently uncovered should be taken seriously and could be the basis for forming a political movement capable of capturing the votes of those disaffected and left-behind Americans who voted (if they voted at all) with no enthusiasm for either the Republican or Democratic candidate. It’s not only demagogues who can decry the malfeasance of those in power; if the real people of the country saw what Ludwig, et al, revealed they ought to be mad enough to throw many of the bastards out and elect people who would truly represent their interests. I think chicken eggs are terrible for human health, but I’d be willing to join forces with egg consumers whose pain is just as palpable as that of the home owner who can no longer buy hasard insurance on his most valuable asset. Our citizens who are being gored by health insurance behemoths need a voice, a political movement unallied with the current parties who have failed to provide more than ACA policies full of loopholes and exceptions that leave many unable to get the proper medical care. I’m sure others could do better than I at framing the issues. Please do so.
Re: chicken eggs: a cause of unhealthy high cholesterol in the blood? I do consume a goodly share. My statin pill works well to counter any ill effects. But eggs do offer us protein, too.
For most people, an egg a day does not increase your risk of a heart attack, a stroke, or any other type of cardiovascular disease. ... Of course, it matters greatly what you eat with your eggs. The saturated fat in butter, cheese, bacon, sausage, muffins, or scones, for example, raises your blood cholesterol much more than the cholesterol in your egg. And the highly refined "bad carbs" in white toast, pastries, home fries, and hash browns may also increase your risk of heart disease, stroke, and other cardiovascular diseases.
It's saturated fat in eggs, not cholesterol, that leads to the recommendation that egg consumption be capped. The USDA guideline that capped cholesterol consumption was removed a decade ago. "When the facts change, I change my mind."
We confirm from the review of the literature on epidemiological data, meta-analysis, and clinical interventions where dietary cholesterol challenges were utilized that there is not a direct correlation between cholesterol intake and blood cholesterol. ... A great number of epidemiological studies and meta-analysis indicate that dietary cholesterol is not associated with CVD [cardiovascular disease] risk nor with elevated plasma cholesterol concentrations. ... However, if the cholesterol sources are consumed with saturated and trans fats, as happens in the Western diet pattern, increases in plasma cholesterol may be observed. The most recent epidemiological data and clinical interventions for the most part continue to support the USDA 2015 dietary guidelines that removed the upper limit of dietary cholesterol.
Fernandez ML, Murillo AG. Is There a Correlation between Dietary and Blood Cholesterol? Evidence from Epidemiological Data and Clinical Interventions. Nutrients. 2022 May 23;14(10):2168. doi: 10.3390/nu14102168. PMID: 35631308; PMCID: PMC9143438. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9143438/#sec6-nutrients-14-02168
In my own case, lowering my blood pressure from the numbers observed in the office visit to where they are normally--when I test at home--had a greater impact on my risk of ASCVD than would cutting my cholesterol numbers in half. YMMV.
My BP numbers were up because the annual Medicare Wellness Visit irritates me enough to angry up the blood.
Lest my passing comment about eggs be misconstrued: I abandoned the standard American Diet (SAD) quite a number of years ago. I consume no animal products, processed foods, no chemical additives and try to limit sugar and oil consumption to strict minima. Eggs, therefore, do not have a place in my diet. Nor does bacon, the other hot-button grocery product mentioned frequently during the last presidential election campaign. It appears to be one of the worst foods one can consume. The most influential sources that pushed my wife and me towards this diet are The China Study by Campbell and Campbell, and two books by Michael Gregor: How Not to Die and How Not to Age. According to a workshop presentor I heard just recently, Dr. Gregor’s next book will consider how not to get cancer. In a nutshell, we follow a Whole Foods Plant Based (WFPB) diet. I try to respect others’ choices, fully aware as I am that challlenging others’ perceptions of what constitutes a healthy diet may instigate a food fight. The science behind the Campbells’ and Gregor’s work appears sound to me; however my academic training and professional work are not in science. My cholesterol level has dropped to 103 from about 135 20 years ago, but there are practitioners in the dietary field who say that 100 and below is the right target.
Thank you, @BenWP, for sharing. Whole Foods Plant Based (WFPB) diet takes a lot of will power and cooperation from other family members. I can only imagine inflammation markers do not register in your tests. Are there online (or physical) groups that practice this type of diet?
*. Deleted my post. Probably should have posted in off topic. Plus, it sounded a bit braggy. And as we have learned, those who brag are either A) Losers B) Liars or C) both.
Less discussed is Stress in the context of Cholesterol levels. When I reduced stress, everything else remaining the same, my cholesterol levels dropped, without decreasing HDL. I agree that total cholesterol over HDL ratio should be the target. I quite my job to avoid taking statins. For some bodies no lifestyle change helps enough and statins (or equivalents) may be necessary. Listen to your body (not to your mind).
One can not be enough overzealous about reducing sugar, alcohol and any other inflammation causing inputs (stress is one of them). Sugar is my Achilles heel.
@Junkster: thank you for letting us know how you stay healthy. I had my share of alcohol a long time ago, so I don’t think of not drinking as part of my diet. I will not part with serious coffee, however. I agree that it is frequently difficult to follow these strictures. My wife really knows how to interpret a food label and can still read the little suckers. You probably don’t want to know why we buy organic Ceylon (Sri Lanka) cinnamon powder as opposed to Vietnamese. She’s also willing to put in the two or three hours daily that it takes to cook from scratch. We travel quite a lot and often have to devote a lot of time to finding acceptable food, more so in the US than overseas. Gradually, US eateries are changing their menus to offer vegetarian and vegan dishes. Our local Zingerman’s, once a temple built to honor cheese and meat, had a vegan chocolate cake to offer me for free on my birthday last night. How ‘bout them apples!
1 - How do you get your zinc, iron, calcium, D3, and B12?
2 - and while @msf nicely blew it up, and you did add a meaningless 'lest I be misconstrued', why would you post nonsense like this in the first place?
>> chicken eggs are terrible for human health
No misconstruing involved with such a falsehood, right?
The proposition that the government economic statistics (presumed valid as far as what they are measuring) are not accurately reporting useful information as to what is going on in the real world of the real voter seems to me to be one hell of a lot more important than eggs and chickens. Thanks for burying the hed.
@davidrmoran: thanks for your views. Have you already consulted the books I cited? It seems a fair question to put to you who query members about their failure to read your linked sources. I grew up hearing commercials about the need to drink three glasses of Connecticut fresh milk every day and watching MDs on TV claiming that Parliament cigarettes would not harm you.
Kyrie Irving has been a Vegan since 2017 and playing pro Basketball at All Star level.
I knew some vegetarian families that for 1000s of years only ever had milk and yogurt for animal products.
I was a vegetarian for more than 40% of the years of my life. After that I ate everything available, including snakes. Now I am down to fish and egg whites. Though no eggs for the last one month because of shortage and I do not miss them. There are other vegetarians in this forum.
I can not imagine there is a standard diet that is a fit for every individual.
His point, as I take it, is that the numbers, though accurate are misunderstood. So things are worse than people get from the numbers reading them simplistically. True enough. But then he goes and does the same thing by simplistically presenting some reasons why the numbers don't say what people think they say.
For example, he says that U-3 (full time employment) disregards "does not take into account many Americans who have been so discouraged that they are no longer trying to get a job". Something well known to anyone in Washington who relies on this datum for policy decisions as opposed to making political points.
More importantly, this is a petty distortion. The U-4 figure, which includes these out-of-the-labor-force people, is 4.3% (Jan 2025), as opposed to 4.0% for U-3. And since U-4 is always higher than U-3, this "distortion" cannot have grown much if any over the past two decades.
He gives a figure for unemployed that includes not only those employed part time and those discouraged from seeking employment (U-6, 7.5% in table cited above), but those earning less than poverty wage. His figure adds 16.2% to the U-6 number.
Delving deeper (Table 6 in the report), it gives the total number of people working at all (1 week or more) over age 16 as 172M. The number of those working who are below the poverty level is 8.6M. That's 5% of people who worked at all. This is not precisely comparable to his 16.2% figure because definition of poverty may be different, but it does give one pause.
Bottom line: I agree with his broad thesis that headline numbers don't present an accurate picture and that politicians take advantage of this. But at the same time, ISTM he's playing a similar game with figures.
As someone here already said, a pox on all you guys.
Your abuse is uncalled for. You have two threads to discuss the same thing. In both the threads sufficient evidence has been given to show the intellectual dishonesty of the author. It is your prerogative to chase or fascinated by what you want to but there is no good reason to force other people to feel the level of importance you ascribe to something that others do not feel deserves their attention.
It is exhausting to see forum members continually unable to show empathy, love and respect to fellow forum members but spend so much time talking about country and the world. I may have to take the route of many esteemed members of this forum and post less.
Its funny what we consider "employment" and what we consider important "statistics".
I stopped my "full time career employment" at age 51. I spent the next 7 years caring for my elderly mom. I went from a well paying 8 hour job to a non-paying 24 hour job. Since this new job paid nothing and provided no resources it required many long nights of research to identify resources and funds for my mom's care. Over these eight years, I managed both my mom's diminishing health and her dwindling net worth.
Most of my other seven siblings were too busy with their employed lives to help much when it came to this non-paying family care position. As alone as I was, I am not the only one who has taken on this type of non-paying work.
From young Moms and Dads who stay at home to care for their children to middle aged adults taking care of their elderly parents, many working age Americans choose to work outside of the workforce, often for their entire working life.
My mom raised 8 Kids; never took a day off in her life, but also never had an "employment record". When my dad passed, at age 54, she received nothing more than a survivor's benefit. At age 88, adjusted for inflation, her survivor benefit was a meager $800/month.
For me, working until 65 would have made a huge difference in my retirement savings, but I am not sure I could have lived with that decision. I chose to care for my mom because she chose to care for the eight of us.
These articles focus on workplace employment statistics, yet ignore the very important non-paying and non-workplace work many of us chose to do for our loved ones and how these hard choices impact the workplace.
The proposition that the government economic statistics (presumed valid as far as what they are measuring) are not accurately reporting useful information as to what is going on in the real world of the real voter seems to me to be one hell of a lot more important than eggs and chickens. Thanks for burying the hed.
Depending on your health issues you might have strong opinions about some of the numbers, opinions, and guidance some parts of the government put out on health. Maybe your post touched that nerve? Or, maybe I should say, it rhymes?
IMHO he overstated the adjustments necessary to come up with values that represent what people think they represent. That's a second level exaggeration. It still gets closer to the truth.
His points and thinking merit consideration. It's his presentation, what seems to be a similar reliance on popular (mis)interpretation of numbers, that I question.
@bee “These articles focus on workplace employment statistics, yet ignore the very important non-paying and non-workplace work many of us do for our loved ones and how these hard choices impact the workplace.”
I think this is a valuable insight. I imagine the financial pressure (not to mention the emotional/psychological impact) would be experienced very differently.
Comments
**********
So, a new metric, a new tool is required, and his team has created one. I'm going to be watching what he says, going forward.
*****
...Yet, if cost of living and stagnant wages and (actual) unemployment loom so large, the bigger obvious question is: how do we create conditions in which fewer and fewer people must live "sucking hind teat," forever? There will always be an unfortunate element who just don't have the internal means to compete, to succeed, to function in this capitalist society. I think we are doing a retched job of watching out for them and providing for them. My younger, more idealistic self was convninced that we could totally eliminate poverty. Not so, anymore.
>> chicken eggs are terrible for human health
though I do have trouble taking your plaints seriously enough, given this sort of wack thought
https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/are-eggs-risky-for-heart-health
It's saturated fat in eggs, not cholesterol, that leads to the recommendation that egg consumption be capped. The USDA guideline that capped cholesterol consumption was removed a decade ago. "When the facts change, I change my mind." Fernandez ML, Murillo AG. Is There a Correlation between Dietary and Blood Cholesterol? Evidence from Epidemiological Data and Clinical Interventions. Nutrients. 2022 May 23;14(10):2168. doi: 10.3390/nu14102168. PMID: 35631308; PMCID: PMC9143438.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9143438/#sec6-nutrients-14-02168
More on saturated and trans fats:
https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/in-depth/fat/art-20045550
More on dietary cholesterol and blood cholesterol:
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=h_&q=correlation+between+dietary+cholesterol+and+blood+cholesterol&ia=web
In my own case, lowering my blood pressure from the numbers observed in the office visit to where they are normally--when I test at home--had a greater impact on my risk of ASCVD than would cutting my cholesterol numbers in half. YMMV.
My BP numbers were up because the annual Medicare Wellness Visit irritates me enough to angry up the blood.
One can not be enough overzealous about reducing sugar, alcohol and any other inflammation causing inputs (stress is one of them). Sugar is my Achilles heel.
Thanks, @Junkster.
1 - How do you get your zinc, iron, calcium, D3, and B12?
2 - and while @msf nicely blew it up, and you did add a meaningless 'lest I be misconstrued', why would you post nonsense like this in the first place?
>> chicken eggs are terrible for human health
No misconstruing involved with such a falsehood, right?
The proposition that the government economic statistics (presumed valid as far as what they are measuring) are not accurately reporting useful information as to what is going on in the real world of the real voter seems to me to be one hell of a lot more important than eggs and chickens. Thanks for burying the hed.
I knew some vegetarian families that for 1000s of years only ever had milk and yogurt for animal products.
I was a vegetarian for more than 40% of the years of my life. After that I ate everything available, including snakes. Now I am down to fish and egg whites. Though no eggs for the last one month because of shortage and I do not miss them. There are other vegetarians in this forum.
I can not imagine there is a standard diet that is a fit for every individual.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/02/11/democrats-tricked-strong-economy-00203464
For example, he says that U-3 (full time employment) disregards "does not take into account many Americans who have been so discouraged that they are no longer trying to get a job". Something well known to anyone in Washington who relies on this datum for policy decisions as opposed to making political points.
More importantly, this is a petty distortion. The U-4 figure, which includes these out-of-the-labor-force people, is 4.3% (Jan 2025), as opposed to 4.0% for U-3. And since U-4 is always higher than U-3, this "distortion" cannot have grown much if any over the past two decades.
Here's my source:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/release/tables?rid=50&eid=4773
He gives a figure for unemployed that includes not only those employed part time and those discouraged from seeking employment (U-6, 7.5% in table cited above), but those earning less than poverty wage. His figure adds 16.2% to the U-6 number.
The latest (2022) BLS figures on the working poor (over age 16, working at least 27 weeks) is 4.0% of the labor force.
https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/working-poor/2022/home.htm
Delving deeper (Table 6 in the report), it gives the total number of people working at all (1 week or more) over age 16 as 172M. The number of those working who are below the poverty level is 8.6M. That's 5% of people who worked at all. This is not precisely comparable to his 16.2% figure because definition of poverty may be different, but it does give one pause.
Bottom line: I agree with his broad thesis that headline numbers don't present an accurate picture and that politicians take advantage of this. But at the same time, ISTM he's playing a similar game with figures.
As someone here already said, a pox on all you guys.
Never mind. It's too cold to come out of the igloo to do any research anyway.
Your abuse is uncalled for. You have two threads to discuss the same thing. In both the threads sufficient evidence has been given to show the intellectual dishonesty of the author. It is your prerogative to chase or fascinated by what you want to but there is no good reason to force other people to feel the level of importance you ascribe to something that others do not feel deserves their attention.
It is exhausting to see forum members continually unable to show empathy, love and respect to fellow forum members but spend so much time talking about country and the world. I may have to take the route of many esteemed members of this forum and post less.
I stopped my "full time career employment" at age 51. I spent the next 7 years caring for my elderly mom. I went from a well paying 8 hour job to a non-paying 24 hour job. Since this new job paid nothing and provided no resources it required many long nights of research to identify resources and funds for my mom's care. Over these eight years, I managed both my mom's diminishing health and her dwindling net worth.
Most of my other seven siblings were too busy with their employed lives to help much when it came to this non-paying family care position. As alone as I was, I am not the only one who has taken on this type of non-paying work.
From young Moms and Dads who stay at home to care for their children to middle aged adults taking care of their elderly parents, many working age Americans choose to work outside of the workforce, often for their entire working life.
My mom raised 8 Kids; never took a day off in her life, but also never had an "employment record". When my dad passed, at age 54, she received nothing more than a survivor's benefit. At age 88, adjusted for inflation, her survivor benefit was a meager $800/month.
For me, working until 65 would have made a huge difference in my retirement savings, but I am not sure I could have lived with that decision. I chose to care for my mom because she chose to care for the eight of us.
These articles focus on workplace employment statistics, yet ignore the very important non-paying and non-workplace work many of us chose to do for our loved ones and how these hard choices impact the workplace.
Maybe your post touched that nerve?Or, maybe I should say, it rhymes?IMHO he overstated the adjustments necessary to come up with values that represent what people think they represent. That's a second level exaggeration. It still gets closer to the truth.
His points and thinking merit consideration. It's his presentation, what seems to be a similar reliance on popular (mis)interpretation of numbers, that I question.
I think this is a valuable insight. I imagine the financial pressure (not to mention the emotional/psychological impact) would be experienced very differently.