{"id":41709,"date":"2014-02-10T12:57:01","date_gmt":"2014-02-10T18:57:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=41709"},"modified":"2014-02-10T12:57:01","modified_gmt":"2014-02-10T18:57:01","slug":"chanting-points-memo-its-the-retirees-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=41709","title":{"rendered":"Chanting Points Memo:  &#8220;It&#8217;s The Retirees, Stupid!&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Every month for the past couple of years, I&#8217;ve been pointing out the nearly constant decline in the Labor Force participation numbers.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?attachment_id=21243\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-21243\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-21243\" title=\"chanting_points_200px\" src=\"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/chanting_points_200px.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"152\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>With unemployment taken out of the participation numbers, the actual share of people actually working in the economy today is as low as it&#8217;s been since they&#8217;ve been tracking the numbers.<\/p>\n<p>The left has a brisk retort; &#8220;People are retiring!&#8221; \u00a0 Supposedly, enough baby boomers are leaving the workforce to cause the participation rate to drop.<\/p>\n<p>As if that&#8217;s good news. \u00a0<em>Someone <\/em>has to be working to pay into Social Security to <em>pay\u00a0<\/em>for all those aging ex-hippies, after all! \u00a0Having historically low labor force participation rates means more debt incurred to pay for statutory entitlements that we just can&#8217;t control.<\/p>\n<p>So even if that were true &#8211; the slide in labor force participation is entirely due to baby boomer retirements &#8211; then that&#8217;s still bad news.<\/p>\n<p>But it&#8217;s not true.<\/p>\n<p>According to Mercatus, oldsters are faring much better in the workforce than younger workers.<\/p>\n<p>No &#8211;\u00a0<em>much\u00a0<\/em>better:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?attachment_id=41710\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-41710\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-41710\" title=\"UE By Age Bracket\" src=\"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/UE-By-Age-Bracket.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"645\" height=\"645\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/UE-By-Age-Bracket.jpg 645w, http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/UE-By-Age-Bracket-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/UE-By-Age-Bracket-300x300.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 645px) 100vw, 645px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Retirees aren&#8217;t retiring &#8211; and youngsters aren&#8217;t working.<\/p>\n<p>At this rate, we&#8217;re going to have a nation of 50+ workers paying both for their parents and their kids.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every month for the past couple of years, I&#8217;ve been pointing out the nearly constant decline in the Labor Force participation numbers. With unemployment taken out of the participation numbers, the actual share of people actually working in the economy today is as low as it&#8217;s been since they&#8217;ve been tracking the numbers. The left [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy-and-the-market","category-the-great-recession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41709"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41711,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41709\/revisions\/41711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}