US Unemployment Rate Passes that of Europe

So much for "Hope & Change". The US unemployment rate is now well beyond that of Europe. Our rate is 10.2%, or, as the NY Times is reporting:

A “broader measure of U.S. unemployment,” including discouraged workers, puts U.S. unemployment at 17.5 percent, reports the New York Times.

Openmarket.org is reporting that the average unemployment rate in Europe is 9.7%. That's 1/2 percentage point BELOW ours!

This is the highest rate in more than 26 years, and marks a huge change from the recent past, in which unemployment was double the American rate in much of Europe, such as in France. Unemployment is at 10 percent in France, which refused to adopt a U.S.-style stimulus package, and only 7.6 percent in Germany, which adopted a stimulus package that was smaller relative to its economy than ours was. (Countries that refused to adopt big stimulus packages have fared better than those that imitated President Obama. And the biggest-spending countries have suffered worst in the recession.)

So much for the much vaunted "stimulus package". It did nothing for our economy except pay off all those long time Democratic backers. It should have been labeled a Porkulus Package, that's all it was, is, or ever will be. At most, it's saved a couple of thousand jobs at a rough cost of $2.5 million dollars per job. For this we added $1,000,000,000,000.00 to our national debt.

Confronted with the specter of new burdens under the health-care bills and global-warming bills backed by the Obama administration, many businesses with the money to do so are afraid to hire people and create jobs lest they be stuck with a large tab for things like health care benefits for newly-hired, less-skilled employees.

And that is all there is to be said.