How I feel about Obama’s Afghanistan Policy

Mike Lux over at Open Left nails it.

The REAL rate of unemployment

The recent rise in the “official” unemployment rate to 9.5% has created a lot of concern, especially since it unemployment has grown faster than the Obama administration predicted.  This in turn has led to calls for a second stimulus (unfortunately, most people don’t realize that there were a great many economists calling for the first stimulus to be even larger… why they don’t know this is thanks to our wonderful traditional media, who parrot every right-wing talking point as if it were the sermon on the mount).

However, as Charles Lemos points out at MyDD, the official unemployment statistics bandied about severely undercount the numbers of people out of work.  The actual numbers of people who are unable to work at all, or who are working part-time when they would rather be working full-time, is 16.5%, and there are several states where the numbers are 20% or higher.  Even worse, those numbers are still going to go up.

Thanks, Dubya!

The Importance of Education, and of Supporting Education

Matthew Yglesias has a great post at his blog which describes a McKinsey report that analyzes the economic cost of having a poor education system.  From his blog:

…having a high-performing school system is extremely valuable. This is important to keep in mind when talking about spending money on schools or other social services aimed at children and their parents. There’s much more to improving educational outcomes than spending money at random, but insofar as you identify a use for the money that’s genuinely useful it’s worth spending extremely freely.

Among the statistics he sites:

If the United States had in recent years closed the gap between its educational achievement levels and those of better-performing nations such as Finland and Korea, GDP in 2008 could have been $1.3 trillion to $2.3 trillion higher. This represents 9 to 16 percent of GDP. (emphasis his)

Follow the link to see the rest of the stats.  It truly does make it clear how important education is, and further illustrates the sheer lunacy of wannabe Republican presidential candidates like South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, who are actively reject stimulus money from the federal government.  Money that could be spent on… hmm… education.

On Tax Day, Some things to know about taxes…

For all the teabaggers out there, here are some FACTS about the taxes Americans pay. We should all remember that taxes are the price we pay for the privilege of being part of a society.