Postal Letter

Why don't people understand basic economics?

The latest example being their assertion that census workers shouldn't be counted in employment statistics because they're temporary and work for the government! Total employment statistics always count temporary workers, because a certain percentage of the jobs market is always temporary or seasonal -- store help at Christmas, harvest help, tax preparers at tax time, people to clean up oil spills, etc. From an economic perspective, what matter is how many people are employed. An employment figure that didn't count seasonal and temporary workers would indicate that a lot of people are out of work who aren't. And government jobs are employment, just like any other. The notion that they are somehow a drain while private sector jobs aren't is naive in the extreme. What difference does it make whether a postal service worker delivers a package, or an employee of UPS? They're both performing a service and receiving wages for it. Once again, if you want to count total employment, you can't just ignore government workers, that would imply that a lot of people are sitting at home collecting unemployment who are going to work every day and taking a paycheck home for what they do. Pretty basic stuff, really, not even something you'd have to learn in an economics class, just common sense. But I'm thinking that talk radio spin fools people into ignoring their common sense?

Public Comments

1. The issue is actually that a person is hired as a census worker, then trained for 35 or 40 hours, works for 6 hours, is laid off, and then rehired for the same position. Thereby, the same person gets counted multiple times for the same job, for the same employer, in order to inflate the numbers and make it appear that the economy is a lot better than it really is. It's not about ignoring government workers at all.
2. Go ahead and count them, they are jobs that were created. Just keep in mind that those people will soon be unemployed. Why don't you understand basic Austrian Economics?
3. Like it or not, temporary census workers are not creating wealth. They are pure overhead. Yes, they should be counted in the unemployment numbers, but let's not kid ourselves as to the meaning of those numbers. They create nothing of value, and must be paid for by taxing production or borrowing money.
4. Who is saying all this? Obama? Hillary Clinton? Bush? Palin?
5. People hate deceit, temporary jobs are deceitful. Mask true unemployment figures.
6. Government jobs are a drain to the government because the government has to pay their salaries, ie, use tax money. That's why the government can't just hire everyone who is unemployed, although I'm sure it is the Socialist's dream. They can be taxed more to pay their salaries! That's one of the reasons the Health Service in England is in such a state. They've hired so many people (that they have to pay with taxes) that it is becoming the thing the spend they most money on!
7. here's something more basic for you, what date is the next census? What are the odds of those jobs returning next spring? Are they seasonal, are you just dense? Wow you are dumb. Wanna place a wager on what will happen the month that the census jobs end?
8. Government workers aren't the same thing as private industry employees. The UPS worker is contributing to creating wealth, while the USPS employee is mostly creating churn. The money to pay the USPS employee has mostly come from taxation, and is not a source of wealth, but merely moving numbers around. Meanwhile the UPS employee is contributing to commerce, which is the creation of wealth, and is the source from which the government taxes, to support the USPS employee. One is the engine of the economy, and the other is the source of drag which tears that economy down, and slows it's growth. The idea that government taxation isn't a drain on the economy is naive in the extreme, and comes from listening to Liberal spin which fools people into ignoring their common sense.
9. Perhaps we need to get more 18 year old in the military and send them overseas in a danger zone then all that extra government pay will help the economy like it did with Bush and that will count...
10. Knowledgenessless!
11. Most people don't understand basic anything ... why should economics be any different?
12. Keynsian economics is not economics at all. It is crack pottery.
13. Interesting side note - any argument against the validity of census workers is also an detriment to military personnel. They are also government employees who don't actually produce anything.
14. Many people have no idea how unemployment statistics are calculated and they have no interest in learning. Their only objective is to bash and make a lot of noise. You aren't going to get through to the deliberately ignorant and the propagandists will just ignore reality.