> America is, at its core, a nasty, venal, selfish and racist culture.
No bias to see here folks. Move along.
Trump voters and conservatives rarely care about pissing off liberals. Remember the internet is a crazy place where those who shout the loudest get the most attention. The vast majority of people are relatively sane and aren't out to hurt anybody. I'd encourage you to have an honest conversation with a few Trump voters before making blanket accusations.
People seem to think that all Trump voters care about is the economy. In reality, most of the ones I've met care deeply about their families and their country. They tend to see left wing policies as a threat to their future and the future of their children.
Most people would be surprised at who voted for trump. No one openly declares it for the fear of being labeled a racist or whatever. There are many many people who voted trump for different variety of reasons.
Trump is just a first in a long line of populists yet to come from the right and left. I don't think he can fix much but i can see why someone might think he has answers (He knows how to talk). Answers to pressing problems that are more immediate to people such as growing inequality, drug problems in rural areas, loss of American global dominance, the growing feeling that politicians and the "elites" just fool people to line their own pockets etc... Black and white thinking about the "other" side is a seems to be so rampant that even smart people seem to not be able to avoid. Topics such as these are generally plagued with emotional vitriol. Most people don't vote for politicians because of logic (How could a billionaire be anti-establishment?), but don't go believing all of them are somehow your enemies or racists or bad people, most of them are just decent average people that believe something important to them will be solved by a guy like trump (it probably won't).
No, it’s more complicated than that. The BLS does a robust survey. They also track discouraged workers who have left the labor force. https://www.bls.gov/home.htm
I've been thumbing through their survey methodologies, and am actually hard pressed to find anyone in any social circle who has directly or even indirectly to the best of their knowledge participated in these surveys. Specifically the CPS which tracks the unemployment vs. employment rates.
Given that it takes the form of a monthly survey, I'd expect more people to actually remember having done so.
Now I could understand inferring employment via tax documents cross referenced with unemployment papers, but to my understanding that level of information sharing is not generally done.
Where do the statistics come from? Here's the answer from BLS's Current Population Survey FAQ at w.r.t. where the data comes from.
>Because unemployment insurance records relate only to people who have applied for such benefits, and since it is impractical to count every unemployed person each month, the government conducts a monthly survey called the Current Population Survey (CPS) to measure the extent of unemployment in the country. The CPS has been conducted in the United States every month since 1940, when it began as a Work Projects Administration program. In 1942, the U.S. Census Bureau took over responsibility for the CPS. The survey has been expanded and modified several times since then.
So what do the statistics being gathered actually represent and where do they come from? More digging required...
I'm not super Survey methodology savvy, (more familiar with anti-patterns for it honestly, and figuring out when the Map starts diverging from the landscape), but in terms of what it is actually measuring, and how much divergence is introduced between reality and the convenient model inferred from the survey's statistical finger waggling... I leave that to the more Stats inclined among us. It seems an okay methodology, but it doesn't strike me in terms of being the most accurate measurement, merely getting enough data that someone feels that the divergences can be safely tucked under the rug.
I will say, the folks putting this together seem to have done a great job documenting it.
I wish my developers could be relied upon to do as such.
