I thought Germany was a great country.

[Kayz]

Those whom live in Germany and other countries like France, Canada, and Sweden love to tell us Americans how their socialistic way of life is much superior to our capitalistic society..........I guess this proves it. Looking at this, I feel much better about the "outsourcing/job crisis here in America". Remember, we have an unemployment rate of about 5.5%.

German unemployment highest since WWII

[Bob Smith]

Europe, in general, has relatively high unemployment. IIRC, for Western Europe the average is about 10% unemployment.

[Bob Smith]

http://www.economy.com/home/login/ds...sp&r=eur_unemp

European unemployment is at 8.9% as of yesterday, roughly 3.5% above the US rate. From what I found, the unemployment rate in the UK has been steady at a very low 2.7% for the past six months.

France, 9.9% as of 1/28/05
Italy 7.4% as of 12/18/04


Excellent site for US and foreign economic information. www.dismal.com

[Kayz]

Yeah, those numbers are pretty normal for a socialistic economy.

Oh Bob...by the way. I started to read "One Up on Wall Street" by Peter Lynch.....it's really good so far. It's well written and is not over my head. I also have "Beat the Street", but I haven't read that yet.

[Bob Smith]

Beating the Street is a good book. Lynch's writing style is quite conversational and not overly technical, so its easy for non-finance people to understand it. He gives great examples of his thought process and manner of choosing companies, I just wish his books were available in a 2002-2004 edition with current companies and business climates. Either way, the principles are very good and timeless.

Overall, I think you can sum up his philosophy (and Buffett's, as well as Benjamin Graham's) as "buy the best company in the current least favorite industry." Im not sure about One Up On Wall Street, but in Beating the Street he was gung-ho about S&Ls when everyone else was against them.

[sc redneck]

Originally Posted by Kayz

Those whom live in Germany and other countries like France, Canada, and Sweden love to tell us Americans how their socialistic way of life is much superior to our capitalistic society..........I guess this proves it. Looking at this, I feel much better about the "outsourcing/job crisis here in America". Remember, we have an unemployment rate of about 5.5%.

German unemployment highest since WWII

YOU THOUGHT RIGHT!!!! GERMAMY IS A GREAT COUNTRY!!!

[Bob Smith]

Originally Posted by sc redneck

YOU THOUGHT RIGHT!!!! GERMAMY IS A GREAT COUNTRY!!!

And you think we should go back to 1940s Germany, right? That would make the world a better place, right?

[Kayz]

Originally Posted by sc redneck

YOU THOUGHT RIGHT!!!! GERMAMY IS A GREAT COUNTRY!!!

What the fuck is GermaMy??? They must not have taught you how to read and write at the Klan meeting last night, huh???

[Grizzly]

Germamy is the lady who raised you.

[PDP]

It depends how you measure.... for example a country could have a very low unemployment rate if most of their population worked at burger joints... of course that doesn't mean shit does it?

Here is another way to measure:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_D...irty_countries

[Bob Smith]

Originally Posted by PDP

It depends how you measure.... for example a country could have a very low unemployment rate if most of their population worked at burger joints... of course that doesn't mean shit does it?

Here is another way to measure:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_D...irty_countries

What does that link have to do with the topic at hand?

[PDP]

Originally Posted by Bob Smith

What does that link have to do with the topic at hand?

Huh?

Original Topic:

"Those whom live in Germany and other countries like France, Canada, and Sweden love to tell us Americans how their socialistic way of life is much superior to our capitalistic society..........I guess this proves it" [read: sarcasm]

That link shows, depending on how ones measures, perhaps it is superior. The U.S. isn't, and never has been #1...........

[Kayz]

Originally Posted by PDP

Huh?

Original Topic:

"Those whom live in Germany and other countries like France, Canada, and Sweden love to tell us Americans how their socialistic way of life is much superior to our capitalistic society..........I guess this proves it" [read: sarcasm]

That link shows, depending on how ones measures, perhaps it is superior. The U.S. isn't, and never has been #1...........

I was speaking in terms of employment...not child welfare and life expectancy at birth!!!!

[PDP]

Originally Posted by Kayz

I was speaking in terms of employment...not child welfare and life expectancy at birth!!!!

That index measures more than that. Not that I put much stock in it.

You were making a broad based fallacious statement, which read: "Those whom live in Germany and other countries like France, Canada, and Sweden love to tell us Americans how their socialistic way of life is much superior to our capitalistic society" Then you supported it with some unemployment figures from an internet article.

My response is to your "thesis statement", if you will..... and BTW, when have those countries you mentioned not been capitalist?

[PDP]

Since you claim to be discussing unemployment measures, I have excerpted a portion of a paper I personally authored (footnotes omitted). This excerpt may aid you in understanding that it is not really accurate to compare unemployment rates from two different countries.

************************************************** ***
....Clemens et al. direct our attention to the fact that a “a certain portion of the differences between the Canadian provinces and the
US states are due to the differences in the two countries’ employment insurance programs.” Further as Riddell notes:
“…large unemployment differential is often pointed to as indicating the failure of Canadian economic policy and the adverse side effects of Canada’s more generous social programs and related institutions.”

Certainly employment insurance programs may play a role in the differing unemployment rates noted between countries. However this difference does not account for the entire disparity. As mentioned above when discussing the LFS, there exist several measurement differences between the LFS and CPS even though there is some adherence to ILO standards. As such there are several factors used to adjust Canadian rates to U.S. concepts. For example, during the period of the study, chiefly the late 1990’s, the adjustments were as noted below:
Fraction of a percentage point:
Passive jobseekers ................................. +0.146
15-year-olds .......................................... +0.080
Waiting to start new job ........................ +0.055
Availability criterion .............................. +0.050
Students ................................................. –0.100
Net adjustment ...................................... +0.2

The net difference of 0.2% is generally considered an insufficient adjustment. Riddell cites Zagorsky in stating that as much as 20% of the gap or 0.8% can be explained by the active/passive job search dichotomy. Further Sorrentino notes that there exist limitations on conceptual adjustments noting that adjusting factors change over time, there exist innate data limitations and that some adjustments may not even be necessary.
Riddell suggests further explanations for the unemployment rate gap. He cites
Katz and Krueger noting that a rise in US incarceration rates resulted in a decline of 0.15% to 0.2% in the unemployment rate. Riddell suggests that as Canadian incarceration rates are more stable and represent only a fifth of the US rate that this discrepancy may account for a commensurate amount of the unemployment rate gap between the two countries. In addition to these explanations Riddell suggests a broader question:
“To what extent are measured differences in unemployment across time periods or countries a consequence of true behavioral differences or a consequence of similar behavior being “labeled” differently? For the purposes of monitoring and analyzing economic behavior it is conventional to make a sharp distinction between unemployment and non-participation.”

Riddell believes that a segment of the unemployment rate may actually not be represented as such but rather classified as non-participation. This fact may explain a greater segment of the unemployment rate gap as the United States jurisdictions require a greater degree of active search to be counted in this measure. Subsequently there may be more structural unemployment not counted in the US jurisdiction’s rates. Structural unemployment results where there are available workers in one jurisdiction or profession yet vacant jobs in another jurisdiction or profession. The argument is that given the fact that many of these “discouraged workers” may be aware or informed of the state of the job market, because of this they may not be actively seeking work, because they are cognizant that the jobs are not in their area or skill set. Thus these people would not be classified as “unemployed” under the traditional US concept of that measure.
To partially overcome this, Riddell suggests the use of a different equation to distinguish separate aspects of the traditional “unemployment” concept.
P(U|LF) = P(U|N) * P(N) / P(LF)
Where:
P = probability;
P(U|LF) = the conventional unemployment rate or the fraction of the labour force unemployed;
P(N) is the non-employment rate or the fraction of the working age population that is not employed;
P(LF) is the labour force participation rate or the fraction of the working age population that is either employed or unemployed;
P(U|N) is the fraction of the non-employed who are classified as unemployed.
The logarithm of the unemployment rate is:
ln P(U|LF) = ln P(U|N) + ln P(N) - ln P(LF) (2)

Riddell suggest that the above expression can separate changes in the unemployment into three measurable components: (1) changes in labour force participation, (2) changes in non-employment, and (3) changes in the percent of the non-employed who are classified as unemployed or the “labour force attachment of the non-employed.” In two papers published in 1998, Riddell and Jones explore the effects of the decomposition of the traditional unemployment concept to statistical data. Through a rather technical analysis they arrive at a conclusion regarding the U.S./Canadian unemployment gap. They suggest that the emergence of the growing unemployment gap that first appeared in the 1980’s was due to the fact that Canadians where relatively more likely to actively search for work than their American counterparts. This resulted in more Canadians being classified as “unemployed” and more Americans merely being classified as “non-participants” and thus not degrading their unemployment rate. This fact has been shown to account for up to 90% of the early gap and 75% of the gap in the late 1990’s.
Further, under the Jones and Riddell studies, it was also noted that there exists a significant category of what the authors refer to as “marginally attached” workers. The segment of the labour force in this category represent those workers who expressed a desire to work but had not actively sought work in order to be counted as part of the traditional labour force and thus unemployed. In Canada, if these marginally attached workers were caught within the definition of “unemployed” the unemployment rate would be 25-35% higher. However if this group were caught within the US definition, the US unemployment rate would be 66-75% higher than it currently is. This difference may thus also account for a substantial portion of the gap between Canadian and American jurisdictions on the unemployment rate criteria in the Clemens et al. model.