"I advocate imposition of mandatory retirement age, 65 tops, for FED Reserve folks"
Although I have many criticisms of the FED staff, board, and Mr. Greenspan, I disagree that an arbitrary age limit is any solution. Ossified, regressive thinking is not confined to only one age group. Moreover, I suspect FED staff is on average a good deal younger than Mr. G, which does not guarantee by any means that they are more progressive in their thinking.
My question about the matrix for unemployment raw data is a serious one, by the way. More questions occur. For example, employed illegal aliens constitute an appreciable part of the economy in some -- perhaps many -- sections of the country. Similarly, I've read assessments that the number of employed drug dealers, prostitutes, thieves, cash-only repairmen, and other legitimate and illegitimate "hidden economy" workers has grown substantially in recent years.
On the opposite side, some number of potential workers have outlasted unemployment benefits and are now chronically unemployed yet do not readily show up in anyone's survey. They've dropped off the charts, so to speak. Is this number, as I suspect, a lot larger than historic norms? Likewise, retired workers who might desire (or need) to work are discouraged from doing so by a variety of irrational policies (only one of which may be fixed over time by the recent excess earnings tax amendments to the SSA.)
How do you suppose all of these are accounted for in the unemployment statistics?
Another, larger issue is often overlooked: in a "global economy" where capital travels across the world's national boundaries with ease, but immigrant/emigree workers are prevented from following it by artificial immigration barriers, have the traditional measures of domestic productivity, employment, capital purchases, inventory, etc. lost much of their relevance?
Beyond all this, of course, is the fundamental issue whether the primary mission of the FED should be to encourage full employment or discourage inflation. Both are statutory mandates. Historically, the FED has served only one of them. With a board dominated by country club bankers instead of labor leaders, which do you suppose that is? |
