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gruez 14 hours ago

>As far as the government is concerned if you have been looking for a job for so long and/or are so discouraged that you stop looking, then you are no longer "unemployed" since you are not looking for a job.

> ...

>When you read headlines of companies laying off thousands of employees, that's real. When the government says they've retroactively adjusted their seasonally adjusted fake news, then not so much.

The BLS keeps track of the discouraged workers as well, and it's not significantly different than previous trends.

https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/alternative-...

>And then you have the current president's habit of just lying about everything, and threatening anyone who doesn't support his lies, and it seems we have truly entered a post-truth world where "alternate facts" rule the day.

You don't see the irony here with what you're doing?

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> You don't see the irony here with what you're doing?

Sorry, is OP the POTUS, speaking with Presidential authority and threatening federal employees with termination of employment for their political beliefs? The fact you think they're wrong is not a reason to equate their comment to Trump's actions.

gwerbin 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

At this point it's fair to doubt just about any claim or number that comes out of the federal government. I'm sure there are still thousands of honest researchers and professionals at all levels of the executive branch, but over the past year so many of them have been pushed out and so many more have been under pressure to produce only politically-approved output, that the federal government is becoming increasingly unreliable as an institution.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 13 hours ago | parent [-]

> over the past year so many [federal employees] have been pushed out and so many more have been under pressure to produce only politically-approved output

This is the most obvious point in favor of this perspective, especially as it being an escalation by the current president and his administration. It hardly even seems to be a cynical take. At least, the cynicism is being used appropriately, as a tool to guide one's thoughts rather than being the entire argument.

One can look at the DOGE cuts, tally up the numbers, and see for themself that the stated reason (desired reduction of spending that is orders of magnitude higher than what they've actually cut) can't be the actual reason for these cuts. Coupled with the... less than candid statements from this administration about anything and everything the past 17 months (hey, has anyone heard about these "Epstein files"?), the most logical conclusion is that they are deceptive whenever it suits them. And yes, even the nominally-objective numbers need to come attached with a reason to be trusted; we already know a litany of ways they can be manipulated (meaning they are indeed "nominally" objective, and have been for a long time); they can't be reasonably taken at face value.