Exit Miracle Workers?
By Mitch Berg
The Congressional Budget Office notes that while Obama may be a “lightworker”, the miracle seems to be slow coming to the economy. The unemployment rate is suppposed . to keep on climbing through…well, the 2010 mid-terms:
The growth in output later this year and next year is likely to be sufficiently weak that the unemployment rate will probably continue to rise into the second half of next year and peak above 10 percent,” CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf said in prepared testimony to the U.S. House Budget Committee.It will likely take several years for the unemployment rate to fall back to levels seen before the recession hit, in the neighborhood of 5 percent, he said in the prepared remarks.
Whew. Good thing the Dems are jacking up taxes, or goodness knows how long a recovery might take.
(Via Gary)
May 22nd, 2009 at 8:07 am
13.7 million unemployed.
The government says that there are a little less than 12 million illegal aliens in country.
These two numbers point to a possible solution to our unemployment problem.
May 22nd, 2009 at 8:16 am
Remember the term “Job less recovery”?
When does Obama’s “recovery” start to be termed the “Jobs lost recovery”?
May 22nd, 2009 at 9:20 am
Terry Says:
May 22nd, 2009 at 8:07 am
13.7 million unemployed.
The government says that there are a little less than 12 million illegal aliens in country.
These two numbers point to a possible solution to our unemployment problem.
”
If you assume that all of those 12 million illegal aliens are actually employed, and not just seasonally, and of employable age.
I had heard at one point that Obama was looking at using the problem of illegal aliens to solve a different difficulty. Allowing those who were of the right age, etc., to enlist to expand our sadly depleted and overstressed military in exchange for eventual citizenship, or at least legal residency. Putting your life on the line for this country seems a pretty decent way to earn a place here. As fine a demonstration of patriotism as one could ask.
May 22nd, 2009 at 9:46 am
I don’t think that’s a new, original, or even revolutionary idea from The One.
May 22nd, 2009 at 9:53 am
See your point, but do you think the laid off UAW employee is going to mow your lawn? Or work in the canning factory? Or clean the rooms in the local Super 8?
May 22nd, 2009 at 10:23 am
Am I missing something, or did Dog Gone basically just describe The Draft?
May 22nd, 2009 at 10:26 am
No, he described something already in place. I’ve seen many stories of people getting their citizenship after serving time in our military.
Don’t forget, Obama has no new ideas, just new packaging.
May 22nd, 2009 at 10:30 am
Non-citizens have been able to join our military for a very long time I do not have all of the limitations but I believe they do not need anything more than a desire to join and to pass the standard admissions testing. So basically anyone can join, no green card or other documentation that most foriegn citizens need to reside here. Those that do serve are given special consideration when applying for citizenship (rightly so in my opinion).
Done Gone I take except to your view that our military is depleted. Other than a few occasions the military has meet its recruitment goals consistently for the entire time we have been engaging in hostilities. The number of re-enlistments has been way above historical norms, especially in those jobs that have been deployed. Also keep in mind that both the Army and Marines have been increase the number of personnel during this time and both branches have met the increased force strength sooner than expected (3 yrs v. 5 yrs). Air force personnel has been intentionally reduced by 40,000 over this same period.
May 22nd, 2009 at 10:39 am
DaveH is right – many foreigners serve in our military. Canada estimates 40,000 of its citizens served in Vietnam over the years. Quite a number of the books about the Iraq and Afghan wars remark on foreign nationals in the US military; David Bellavia’s “House to House” describes at length one of his squadmates, a Polish immigrant who hated George W. Bush, and in “The March Up” Bing West talked about his conversation with a Russian-born Marine who’d served in the Russian Spetznaz before immigrating and joining the USMC.
I don’t know the entire story, but Philipinos have an extra leg up; I’m not sure if it’s just a tradition (many, many Filipinos serve in the US Navy, and have for the past century), or an active recruiting program (a la the British with their Gurkha and Irish regiments).
May 22nd, 2009 at 10:40 am
Gotcha, Kerm and dave. Thanks for the clarification.
May 22nd, 2009 at 10:52 am
I wasn’t being entirely serious. Maybe I should use more of them smiley things.
I wanted to point out that with record-breaking unemployment we apparently still have millions of illegals in the country. Back when unemployment was 4.5% we heard — from democrats and republicans — that without them the economy would be crippled by a labor shortage.
Well? What are they doing here now?
May 22nd, 2009 at 11:13 am
When does Obama’s “recovery” start to be termed the “Jobs lost recovery”?
My answer is simple: First, we have to assume that the Obama recovery will actually happen. Until that happens, all other speculation is premature.
May 22nd, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Yossarian Says:
May 22nd, 2009 at 10:23 am
Am I missing something, or did Dog Gone basically just describe The Draft? ”
How is accepting illegal aliens to serve voluntarily in the armed forces the draft?????????
dave_h says:
“Done Gone I take except to your view that our military is depleted. Other than a few occasions the military has meet its recruitment goals consistently for the entire time we have been engaging in hostilities.”
We have diminished our military not only by the losses to combat, and by the escalating number of suicides, but also by the just plain wear and tear of redeploying our service personnel over and over and over again to exhaustion. Numbers are kept up by not allowing people to leave when their time is up. Recruitment numbers over the post 9/11 era were initially higher, but as the numbers declined over time, instead of meeting the recruitment numbers, those numbers were lowered to avoid the embarrassment of our government having to admit that the willing… weren’t so eager anymore. We have stretched our National Guard units particularly thin, by deploying them to serve on foreign soil, making fewer them unavailable for service in their states during natural disasters.
I heard a news byte last night that Joanna Lumley, the British actress, was celebrating that the UK had finally permitted a number of Gurkha veterans and their families finally to come to live in the UK in respect for their service to that country. (I hadn’t known before that she was born in Kashmir, or that a Gurkha had saved her father’s life when he was in the service. The reason she involved herself in their cause.)
So obviously, the notion of non-citizens gaining either residence or citizenship through this route is neither new nor unique to the US. Apparently there are a number of Gurkhas currently serving in NATO forces under the auspices of the UK currently. Reputed to be a pretty tough bunch of fighters.
May 22nd, 2009 at 12:36 pm
Dog Gone wondered How is accepting illegal aliens to serve voluntarily in the armed forces the draft?????????
To which I must reflect, if they are serving in the military they are by definition NOT illegal aliens. The armed forces frowns on criminal activity. I thinks it has something to do with the automatic weapons, grenades, tanks, missle launchers, etc.
May 22nd, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Dog Gone also needs thread reading training. Apparently, he missed out on when I thanked Kerm and Dave for their explanations.
Do try to keep up.
May 22nd, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Dog Gone It sez:
“but as the numbers declined over time, instead of meeting the recruitment numbers, those numbers were lowered to avoid the embarrassment of our government having to admit that the willing… weren’t so eager anymore.”
Not even close….
“But since fiscal year 2006, the DOD has consistently met or exceeded its recruitment goals. This occurred even as the Navy, Marines and Air Force raised the bar on their goals.”
http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/10/news/economy/military_recruiting/index.htm
May 22nd, 2009 at 4:13 pm
MoN says:
“This occurred even as the Navy, Marines and Air Force raised the bar on their goals.”
Really? So…. how do you explain the pattern of ‘stop loss’ redeployment of the same forces over and over and over again, including reservists? Have I been misinformed that this is a problem that the various branches of the armed forces themselves acknowlege is presenting problems?
I’ll have to do a little more checking to get you links, but I clearly recall in 2007 that the military was reducing their recruiting goals because they were unable to meet the original ones; that to get any recruits they had to substantially increase recruitment bonuses; and that the military became a great deal more lax about allowing convicted felons into the service.
Further, the military has been improperly targeting children who are supposed to be too young to be recruited. My own stepchild was one of those who was actively being recruited at the age of 13 – 14 years old, as were friends, so I can speak to this from personal experience. Armed forces recruiters in MIDDLE SCHOOLS? Because they have just tooooo many young people of the appropriate age they can’t sign up fast enough?
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11210
May 22nd, 2009 at 4:20 pm
From the web site on recruitment statistics:
usmilitary.about.com/od/2008recruitingstatistics/a/september.htm
“However, 20 percent of recruits joining the Army in fiscal 2008 required a waiver for medical or conduct reasons. The Army granted 372 waivers to allow recruits with felony convictions to enlist, although this number is down from 511 in fiscal 2007. “
May 22nd, 2009 at 5:07 pm
I believe this illustrates my point about the effects that having the same people forced to undergo repeated deployments:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/03/18/military.suicides/
It was nice to see this other article, linked from the one above:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/05/22/woman.pilots/
May 22nd, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Dog Gone, there is no doubt that stop-loss and repeated deployments are affecting retention in the armed forces.
Surely you don’t mean that your stepchild was being ‘actively recruited’ at age 13-14? Kids that young can’t sign contracts.
May 22nd, 2009 at 7:12 pm
“how do you explain the pattern of ’stop loss’ redeployment of the same forces over and over and over again, including reservists?”
Because a new recruit can’t replace an experienced well trained Sergeant. Plus both the Army and Marines have been increased in total size, so not only are replacements needed because of war attritiion, new recruits are need to fill the expanded requirements.
There’s a strange statistic in your link about military suicides.
“The suicides were about evenly divided among those who had returned from deployment, those who were still deployed — some on a third or fourth tour — and those who had never been deployed, Chiarelli said.”
It’s difficult for you to blame repeated deployments for the increase in suicide rates, when the data just doesn’t support it.
May 22nd, 2009 at 10:04 pm
Master of None says:
“There’s a strange statistic in your link about military suicides.
“The suicides were about evenly divided among those who had returned from deployment, those who were still deployed — some on a third or fourth tour — and those who had never been deployed, Chiarelli said.”
It’s difficult for you to blame repeated deployments for the increase in suicide rates, when the data just doesn’t support it. ”
I could list dozens of links that indicate that both longer tours and repeated tours of combat are all major contributing factors to suicides. Links that compare the suicide rate to a similar rate at the height of the Viet Nam war. Links showing the statistics that suicide is now exceeding combat as a cause of death. There is an indication that the military is seriously stressed, both those that are deployed overseas, but to a lesser extent those that are in supportive roles or not yet deployed.
The distribution in the quote about returned from deployment, and still deployed, appear to be about two thirds of the suicides. The remainder would be covered pretty fairly by the usual number of suicides in the military under normal conditions. That, and the reports by the experts, by the family and friends of those who are suicides, and from those who are failed suicide attempters, all indicate that the deployments seem to be the big reason for the increase. An incidental figure worth noting, considering what weekend this is, that for every successful suicide there are at LEAST ten attempts that are not successful.
May 23rd, 2009 at 2:31 am
I could list dozens of links that indicate that both longer tours and repeated tours of combat are all major contributing factors to suicides.
And I could show you a few that indicate that the suicide rate in the US military is lower than that in the German military, which but for the odd battalion sent to Afghanistan is on basically a peacetime footing.
May 23rd, 2009 at 7:25 am
You’re not making an argument, Dog Gone, you are reciting anecdotes. You do vets no service by saying that they are more likely to be mental unstable than non-vets.
We’ve been down this road before. Back in the 70’s drug addiction, suicide, and other anti-social behavior among Vietnam vets was blamed on the fact that they had been draftees and were very young when compared to previous ranks of combat vets.
Now we have an all volunteer force with an average age of 27. This time the ‘epidemic’ of vets with mental problems is blamed on repeated stop-loss and extended rotation. Or is it hidden head injuries from IED’s this week?
If you want to stop the war short of victory, Dog Gone, that is your privilege. But please don’t mask your anti-war political beliefs with concern for the troops or the state of the armed forces.
May 23rd, 2009 at 7:57 am
Terry says:
“You’re not making an argument, Dog Gone, you are reciting anecdotes. You do vets no service by saying that they are more likely to be mental unstable than non-vets.”
Statistics showing an unusually high suicide rate, along with the diagnoses of post traumatic stress, are not anecdotes Terry. It was interesting to me when reading about this before commenting here that it is actually unusual despite the stresses associated with it, for there to be significant numbers of suicides during time of war. The rate of suicides has actually typically been lower than the civilian population, not higher, during those conflicts. Another stat – one noted by the military in hearings – was that members of the armed services have access to better health care, including mental health care, than the average population, so they are at a loss in that regard to explain why the rate of death by suicides is HIGHER than the death rate due to combat. Doubly concerning as the usual rate for these kinds of problems in the military over the past 30 years has been LOWER than the civilian population. When you factor in the steep increase in other problems associated with badly managed stress, such as domestic violence, there is a larger picture that needs to be looked at to understand what those who serve us are experiencing.
Unlike you, I do NOT make a negative judgement about our vets and people still in service because of these numbers. I believe these to be sound people experiencing a very understandable reaction to what they are having to go through. I don’t see them as somehow flawed because of it. One of the problems cited among the greatest difficulties in providing preventive care to the military has been the fear of stigmatization just like what you have expressed.
You mention the average age of 27; what you decline to mention is that to meet recruiting needs, the military has been steadily raising the age of the people they recruit. It is now somewhere around 42. The poor economy is providing some increase in recruitments, but bonuses to join up has gone from around $6,000 to aproximately 3 timies that amount, in order to attract people. Specialties, like medical and translation, are now taking people without green cards, including illegal aliens. The increase in numbers of people with criminal pasts (not only felonies) has already been noted. Depending on whose stats one reads, the educational level and test scores are also lower.
Having done my homework in researching this before commenting, don’t presume to criticize me for not genuinely caring about the people serving our country. I have a more compassionate view of these people than to stigmatize them as mentally unstable. No doubt you are one of those people who believe that if the soldiers just ‘man up’ their problems will disappear. Or perhaps you favor the military solution that if our armed forces would just become CHRISTIAN, they wouldn’t suffer from depression. Apparently a number of chaplains who had this promoted to them objected, both those who were Christian, and those who had other beliefs, because they found this to be inappropriate proselytizing, as well as a poor substitute for psychological help. The chaplains promote a strong sense of spiritual life as a positive addition to help those in distress, yes, a substitute, an instead of for other help, NO.
Got anything like proof or evidence that the numbers of suicides and other problems are NOT from stop-loss, btw?
May 23rd, 2009 at 8:16 am
“Got anything like proof or evidence that the numbers of suicides and other problems are NOT from stop-loss, btw? ”
Can I assume that when you did your deep study of this issue you did understand that correlation is not causation?
And that you can’t prove a negative?
May 23rd, 2009 at 9:02 am
I apologize if my last comment was rude, Dog Gone, but blustering about how much you’ve studied a topic and are sure of your conclusions is no better than arguing from anecdote. You’ve never so much as stated what you would consider to be proof that, say, combat vets who spend more time in Iraq are more likely to commit suicide. You just say that it is so.
When you write a sociology paper first you give your thesis, then you explain your method of research, than you state your conclusions. Your thesis is considered proved if your method of research supports your conclusions and your conclusions support your thesis. Obviously you are not writing a sociology paper here, Dog Gone, but nevertheless those three stages are still required to structure a convincing argument. You seem to want to get by with just the conclusions and thesis parts.
May 23rd, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Terry, you are beyond doubt my most favorite person to read of those who comment here. You have questioned “my” conclusions. Two observations – the first, it is not MY conclusion, but rather the conclusions presented by the people who are attempting to addreess the problem of suicides, attempted suicides, domestic violence and related problems that have studies the data on the problem and who assert that the greater length of deployments, and the repetition of deployments is a cruicial factor. These people whose job it is to deal with the problems specifically mention not only the direct stresses of combat, but also the effects of long term disruption and distance from family and other key relationships as critical factors. Don’t take my word for it; you describe your abilities to research online as so good you could find Bin Laden if you were not doing other things. Presumably, by that account, your skills to find these sources are better than mine; I defer to them. I think you will find I presented those conclusions fairly.
Beyond that I was very fortunate to share a period of years in a long term relationship with a man who was finishing up first his master degree and then his doctorate in Psych; he’s now a professor in an east coast college. One of the insights from that relationship was that events in our lives affect us, even when we try to simply tough them out. If they are intense events, we will probably have an intense response to them. If / when those responses are no longer appropriate or proportionate; or when they are very intense in response to extreme events; then it can be helpful to have the external perspective of someone else to resolve them. That made sense, and in that context, given what the men and women in uniform are experiencing – people trying to kill them, disruption – even sometimes destruction – of their most important relationships through separation, for an example — how could these individuals NOT be experiencing enormous emotional distress?
(The other wise observation from my psych-savy now former significant other was that sex is almost never JUST about sex…. but that is wisdom that would better fit some other thread.)
May 23rd, 2009 at 8:52 pm
Dog Gone, the reason I question your conclusion is because you make tendentious claims. For example, in your last comment:
Two observations – the first, it is not MY conclusion, but rather the conclusions presented by the people who are attempting to addreess the problem of suicides, attempted suicides, domestic violence and related problems that have studies the data on the problem and who assert that the greater length of deployments, and the repetition of deployments is a cruicial factor.
In the last clause, you use the phrase ‘a crucial factor’. Not ‘a factor’, or ‘the crucial factor’, but ‘a crucial factor’. This language is imprecise, and I would hope to use more exact language when discussing what are matters of, as you say, ‘suicides, attempted suicides, domestic violence and related problems’. No doubt being the subject of repeated deployments in combat areas is stressful. Stress can lead to depression. Depression can lead to suicide or some other form of “acting out”. Or not. In any event, by using the indefinite article ‘a’ before the noun ‘crucial’ you confess that repeated deployments is not the sole factor in these sorts of breakdowns. Nevertheless you assume that by removing or mitigating this one factor out of many, the result will be fewer ‘suicides, attempted suicides, domestic violence and related problems’.
Dog Gone, people are incredibly complicated, even infinitely complicated. If you know anything about psychiatrists and psychologists, especially behavioral psychologists, you know that they rarely make absolute statements about individuals, and when speaking of groups of individuals, they use statistics with many caveats. Will reducing the frequency of deployment reduce stress in military personal? Sometimes, maybe most of the time. So will not getting into debt. So will not being married to a crazy person, or addicted to drugs.
May 26th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Because of the demands of the long weekend, this is a bit late, and discussion may have moved on, but I will take a wack at responding anyway.
Terry says:
“In any event, by using the indefinite article ‘a’ before the noun ‘crucial’ you confess that repeated deployments is not the sole factor in these sorts of breakdowns. Nevertheless you assume that by removing or mitigating this one factor out of many, the result will be fewer ’suicides, attempted suicides, domestic violence and related problems’.
There are two things which I would emphasize here Terry. 1. the Military is experiencing suicide rates, attempted suicide, homicides, domestic violence and other problems at a rate substantially higher than the civilian population. This strongly suggests that there is something unique to the military that is a major factor to the increase.
When you add in the figures of who within the military is involved, and two thirds of those are either actively deployed or recently returned, AND that a significant number of individuals in the remaining third who are not deployed are either involved in extended training to be deployed, or have deployment pending, it is hard to ignore that as not only an important factor, but probably the single most important factor. Deployment demonstrably changed, where there is no indication that the other factors that can lead to suicide have changed, in either the military or civilian spheres. Civilian suicides have remained fairly stable, in contrast.
Further, if you go back and look at the statistics from the Viet Nam conflict, the last period where there was a similar really big spike in suicides and the other behaviors I mentioned, then too it corresponded to 12 month deployments, AND repeated deployments, over a similar period of time where there was the greatest military involvement.
Lacking the raw data, and only a rather large pile of reports of the data, I won’t presume to do that correlational analysis. Others who DO have access to that data have already done it, and DO cite the deployment frequency / repeats, AND the duration. Further, where there are similarities to the Viet Nam record, the even higher spike in current problems seems to correlate to the 15 month plus greater duration, compared to the 12 month duration of tours in Nam.
And that is just for the statistics on active military personnel. When you factor in those who are in the veterans system, the numbers shoot up MUCH higher, as many as 15 to 20 suicides a DAY.
The military is currently doing it’s own internal house cleaning over what appears to be some under reporting of suicides and mis-reporting of deaths as accidents that should be further investigated. There are some reports that are particularly in dispute, such as the accidental deaths that appear to be electrocutions from substandard wiring done by Haliburton subsidiary employees (for which BONUSES were awarded, despite some 90% of the work being defective), and the deaths of some female soldiers that were listed as suicides that may have actually been rape/murders that were covered up by the military, in Afghanistan.
“Dog Gone, people are incredibly complicated, even infinitely complicated.”
Yes, Terry, they are. But that does not mean those statistics can’t be effectively analyzed to arrive at conclusions. Useful diagnostic devices like the MMPI rely on crunching the largest possible amounts of data to do exactly that.
Given a culture in the military that regarded the problems of these kinds of stress as shameful, and given that admitting that there were problems arising from the two wars would make advancing them more difficult, it is more probable that some segments of the military were being less than intellectually honest about the problems to serve their own purposes.
And for the record, Terry, while I think the Iraq war was an enormous mistake, and dishonestly lobbied, I do think the war in Afghanistan was not only necessary, but should be pursued more effectively. So your assumption that I am simply anti-war is mistaken.
It is easier to see the external signs of the cost of these wars in headstones in grave yards, and in the injuries of veterans. Not so easily seen are the internal sacrifices, of loneliness, time away from loved ones that can not be gotten back, and so on. Even when those internal sacrifices are not debilitating to the degree of suicide or other obvious problems, I hope that this thread brings that sacrifice to the forefront of people’s thoughts. Not only on Memorial Day or Veterans’ Day, but every day, so that we better appreciate the sacrifices of a relative few to keep the rest of us safe — and comfortable. We owe our military that awareness.
May 26th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Yawn.
Nice thread jack.