Practice Good Theory

Last time I looked at unemployment , in Feb 2012, the number of people  employed was flat; but, with people dropping out of the workforce, the unemployment rate had started to fall. The rate has continued to drop (upward in the graph from Calculated Risk , shown below). To the right, I've added a "naive linear projection" which would see pre-recession unemployment rates return by 2015. Instead of the commonly-reported rate, we could simply look at the number of people employed as a percentage of the population . This chart shows the core working-age range (25yrs -54yrs). Notice the slight uptick near the end of the chart. After a flat 2010 and 2011, we've seen a slight rise during 2012. What if we do a naive extrapolation of this chart? When will we reach the pre-recession 80% for this age-range? We get the orange arrow drawn at the end... ... not getting back to pre-recession levels for at least 5 years (that's 2017). Unfortunately, if we look at da

Only once since the 1900's has a U.S. president lost the popular vote, while winning the election: G.W.Bush's first term. Other than that, which president got the lowest margin of victory? The answer -- JFK -- shows how history was kinder to him, compared to contemporary opinion. It is also interesting to look at presidential second terms. After 4 years to check a president out, who enthused voters the most (relative to his second-time opponent)? The winner -- FDR -- is no surprise, but the close second is Richard Nixon. Nixon got a higher margin in his second term than Ronald Reagan! Third party caveat: Some of these years cannot be compared, because a third party took more than a marginally share of the vote. For instance, ironically, the Green party might be the reason Gore lost since they  got about 3% of the vote in the election where Bush lost the popular vote. Perot took 19% in Clinton's first election and over 8% the second time around. Anderson took over