Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TideGlider who wrote (730292)	8/1/2013 3:22:27 PM
From: puborectalis	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 1576180

New poll numbers released on Thursday hold troubling signs for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). According to the survey -- conducted by the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling on behalf of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Democracy For America -- Alison Lundergan Grimes, Kentucky's Democratic secretary of state who officially entered the race on Tuesday, leads the longtime senator by one point, with 45 percent to McConnell's 44 percent. While her lead is within the margin of error, the poll also underscored some broader issues that McConnell is likely to face as he campaigns for a sixth term. At 51 percent, a majority of Kentuckians say they disapprove of McConnell's job performance, while 40 percent approve and 9 percent are undecided. Those numbers are an improvement over an April PPP poll that showed him to be one of the least popular senators in the country, with a 36 percent job approval rating. His lagging numbers reinforce a longstanding problem that McConnell has had wrangling support for his reelection bid. PPP surveyed 1,210 Kentucky voters for the first two questions, with a margin of error of 2.8 percent. PCCC reportedly plans to release additional findings from the survey at a press conference later on Thursday. “It’s no surprise that Kentucky voters have had enough of Mitch McConnell’s partisan gridlock,” said Jonathan Hurst, senior adviser to Lundergan Grimes. “For thirty years, McConnell has been the embodiment of all that is wrong with Washington and has no problem turning his back on Kentucky’s middle class.”

To: TideGlider who wrote (730292)	8/1/2013 3:38:30 PM
From: FJB	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576180

The Saddest Chart: Young Americans Are Simply Dropping Out (Joe Malchow) How might we describe, in general terms, American young adulthood? For anyone inclined to despair of humanity’s future in the postwar period, Americans 25 to 35 have proved the great savior. In Greece, they’re eating mother’s moussaka. In France, they are in les rues wearing tight t-shirts and protesting unfair tuition prices. In Russia, they are drunk. In America, they’re working incredibly hard to get ahead. As though ahead were somewhere desirable! When I travel overseas and meet folks my age (27) the same telling confusion pops up, every time: they make reference to their house–inviting us over for drinks, or something–which prompts me, impressed, to say “Congratulations–so what do you do?” And they reply, “I mean my parents’ house.” “Ah.” Work. You could say that that’s because we have a peculiar obsession with homeownership in the U.S., but it’s really because young Americans are obsessed with independently achieved success. The entire world of twenty-somethings considers “my mom’s place” and “my place” to be one and the same. Except here. Which brings me to the saddest chart. We all know that the headline unemployment rate is high–7.6%. We also all know that that figure is secularly skewed downward (by rights, the real rate is well above 10%). And we also all know that all of the organs of the federal government are implicitly or explicitly (in the case of the Fed, which now targets an actual percentage headline unemployment figure in its open market and interest rate decisions) focused on moving that one badly-hewn figure. All of that is more or less absurd, but it misses a big truth about unemployment: what’s going on with the youngest, more vital, more energetic American works. I used BLS datasets to extract age-partitioned labor force participation rates. The labor force participation rate is the ratio between the labor force and the overall size of their cohort (national population of the same age range). This is usually reported without respect to age. The headline number is for ages 16+. The June 2013 figure is 63.5%. Hey: not bad, right? In the effervescent January 2007 it was only 66.4%. Recovery summer! Actually, here is the real story: Labor Force Participation by Age. January 2007 = 100. Via BLS. <span style="font-size:1.2em;"> This shows labor force participation by age cohort, indexed to January 2007. Young people–most strikingly 18 to 19, but also 20 to 24, and 25 to 35–are simply dropping out of the work force. These young Americans are not in the denominator of the headline unemployment figure. They’re the most energetic, strongest, most inventive Americans. They’re sitting on couches in the Obama economy. Su casa es la casa de su madre. It’s not because “the economy sucks,” which is the strange existential answer that even Ivy-educated twenty-somethings will give you. It is because the Obama presidency actively harms young people, and seeks to do so more every day. </span> On the reasons why and the methods how, more anon. Meanwhile, N.B., the 55+ cohort has actually become more active and more involved in the labor force since January 2007.