How the Right lies about unemployment
[Promoted by susanhu. Colman is one of the best writers at EuroTrib.com]
Crossposted from EuroTrib : One of our aims is to stand against the cascade of corporate capitalist propaganda that constantly floods over Europe. This article is part of that effort, and might be useful to American progressives when this nonsense comes up.
One of the key complaints levelled against the European social and economic model by corporate capitalists is that it causes high unemployment. The examples chosen are generally France and Germany who are compared against the US.
Before we concede that EU unemployment is substantially higher than in the US we need to examine the numbers cited. Often the official national numbers are used despite the fact that they differ fundamentally on what they measure and how they measure it. Reporting the German rate as 12% and the US rate as 5.1% is either lazy, clueless or dishonest. The official German rate includes people working less than 15 hours a week but who want a full-time job as unemployed while the headline US figures count anyone who works for even one hour a week as employed.
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