Trump voters incapable of acknowledging a fact even when it is staring them in the face

[Loren Pechtel]

As for those who cannot work, yes, it's logical not to include people who cannot work as part of the labor force. But Trump voters may very well not agree with the government as to which people can work and which cannot. There are a lot more Americans on disability now than there were when Obama took office. Maybe the country has really gotten a lot more crippled in eight years. Maybe there are a lot of people on disability now who the government eight years ago would not have defined as "cannot work". It is not rational to take for granted that the average Trump voter agrees with the government's constantly evolving opinion of who doesn't count as unemployed because he "cannot work".

The Republicans don't believe in disability.

As for the actual numbers:

As medical technology improves you get the ironic result that it increases the number of disabled. In the past many of those would have simply died. Also, look at the baby boomers--we still have a surge moving through the last years of working--the years they are most likely to end up disabled. We also have fewer and fewer jobs for those with very minimal ability--some people have become disabled by the disappearance of any job they can do, not by their condition getting worse.

Finally, we have some where the docs are bending the rules. The health issues are real but not actually completely disabling. The tough job market made it impossible for them to find work, though--companies rightly evaluated them as the riskier hire and with better choices passed them over. Now they have been out of it long enough they won't get hired anyway. They meet the spirit of the law but not the letter of it. (Personally, I think that in such borderline cases the government should be required to job hunt for them--have the government send out resumes for jobs the government considers them capable of doing. If nothing comes of that in say 12 months it is treated as evidence that the government is wrong about them being able to do the jobs in question.)

And in the second place, to call those "facts" is to take for granted that in English "unemployment" and "labor force" mean whatever the hell you decide they mean, rather than what they mean in the minds of the people being accused of being incapable of acknowledging facts staring them in the face. Whether your artificial definitions are right isn't a fact staring anyone in the face; it's a matter of opinion.

Both terms have standard government definitions. Since it's government data those definitions should be used.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

But but but... California and illegals.

Landslide EC win for Trump.

The sun rises in the west, it only appears to rise in the east.

2 + 2 = 0 if you round by 10's.

Or if you're doing 1-digit, 4-bit math.

Since that's about as high as an awful lot of Trumpets can count...

 

[Elixir]

The Republicans don't believe in disability.

As for the actual numbers:

As medical technology improves you get the ironic result that it increases the number of disabled. In the past many of those would have simply died. Also, look at the baby boomers--we still have a surge moving through the last years of working--the years they are most likely to end up disabled. We also have fewer and fewer jobs for those with very minimal ability--some people have become disabled by the disappearance of any job they can do, not by their condition getting worse.

Finally, we have some where the docs are bending the rules. The health issues are real but not actually completely disabling. The tough job market made it impossible for them to find work, though--companies rightly evaluated them as the riskier hire and with better choices passed them over. Now they have been out of it long enough they won't get hired anyway. They meet the spirit of the law but not the letter of it. (Personally, I think that in such borderline cases the government should be required to job hunt for them--have the government send out resumes for jobs the government considers them capable of doing. If nothing comes of that in say 12 months it is treated as evidence that the government is wrong about them being able to do the jobs in question.)

And in the second place, to call those "facts" is to take for granted that in English "unemployment" and "labor force" mean whatever the hell you decide they mean, rather than what they mean in the minds of the people being accused of being incapable of acknowledging facts staring them in the face. Whether your artificial definitions are right isn't a fact staring anyone in the face; it's a matter of opinion.

Both terms have standard government definitions. Since it's government data those definitions should be used.

Well sure, but only up to 2008. Then you have to start throwing all kinds of cripples and thieves into the mix, so it doesn't look like Obama's administration did anything for unemployment.

Oh no - now it looks like Clinton was the Greatest. President. Ever. Can't have THAT.
Back to the drawing board... any ideas, Bomb#20?

 

[ZiprHead]

Finally, we have some where the docs are bending the rules.

I just got my disability granted after going through the system for 14 months. Other than supplying my medical records to SS, my doctors had nothing to do with my claim. All my ailments, even the ones I didn't feel were debilitating, were confirmed by SS approved doctors that SS sent me to. There's no way for a patient's provider to bend the rules since their opinion is no where near a deciding factor.

 

[Elixir]

The Republicans don't believe in disability.

As for the actual numbers:

As medical technology improves you get the ironic result that it increases the number of disabled. In the past many of those would have simply died. Also, look at the baby boomers--we still have a surge moving through the last years of working--the years they are most likely to end up disabled. We also have fewer and fewer jobs for those with very minimal ability--some people have become disabled by the disappearance of any job they can do, not by their condition getting worse.

Finally, we have some where the docs are bending the rules. The health issues are real but not actually completely disabling. The tough job market made it impossible for them to find work, though--companies rightly evaluated them as the riskier hire and with better choices passed them over. Now they have been out of it long enough they won't get hired anyway. They meet the spirit of the law but not the letter of it. (Personally, I think that in such borderline cases the government should be required to job hunt for them--have the government send out resumes for jobs the government considers them capable of doing. If nothing comes of that in say 12 months it is treated as evidence that the government is wrong about them being able to do the jobs in question.)



Both terms have standard government definitions. Since it's government data those definitions should be used.

Well sure, but only up to 2008. Then you have to start throwing all kinds of cripples and thieves into the mix, so it doesn't look like Obama's administration did anything for unemployment.

Oh no - now it looks like Clinton was the Greatest. President. Ever. Can't have THAT.
Back to the drawing board... any ideas, Bomb#20?

Da Bomb seems to have gone silent on this...

 

[Bomb#20]

I criticized Ravensky for making disparaging accusations against her political opponents, offering non-evidence for her charges, and falsely representing it as evidence.

And I criticized Trump supporters. I don't have "political opponents".

You wanted Trump to lose. His supporters stopped you from getting the political outcome you wanted. Of course they're your political opponents.

Moreover, I provided links to the facts. Just because you refuse to acknowledge the facts is not my problem.

You have not exhibited any examples of me refusing to acknowledge facts. Making things up about other people appears to be a way of life for you.

What Bomb #20 is blathering on about (as if it changes anything) is the differences between U3 vs U6 measures of labor.

That is not the case. That, as usual with you, is something you just made up about me -- you did not have any reason to suppose I was talking about U6. I didn't say a bloody word about U6. U6 is a measure of underemployment -- it's a figure computed by adding part-time workers to unemployment figures; and I didn't say anything about part-time workers or underemployment. Stop assuming you're an expert on what people who disagree with you think.

The U3 measure is and always has been the number being referred to when government and news reports talk about "unemployment". "U3 is the official unemployment rate." The *real* rate. Bomb knows or should know this.

"The *real* rate."?!? What the bejesus happened to you to make you think like that? Of course I know it's the official rate; of course I don't know it's the "real" rate; of course that's not the sort of thing that can be known. You should not believe it's the "real" rate. There is nothing the slightest bit more real about "actively looked for work within the past four weeks" than there is about "actively looked for work within the past two weeks", or "actively looked for work within the past four months", or "stopped looking for work three years ago out of frustration", or "is too lazy to get off his ass and support himself". They are all equally real; and you should know they're all equally real. Your willingness to take your government's official proclamations as the decisive criterion for what is and isn't real is something right out of Miracle on 34th Street. When the United States Postal Service delivers children's letters to an old man in a court room it proves he's the real Santa Claus.

Unfortunately, ever since President Obama was elected, Faux News and the right-wing bloviators have hoodwinked their audience into believing that the U6 is the *real* "unemployment" rate. It isn't. But even if Bomb wants to believe that it is...

Your hypothetical is a counterfactual. If you were to read and pay attention to what I wrote, instead of making believe you're having an argument with Faux News or whoever else you're hearing when you cover your ears with your hands and pretend the voices in your head are mine, we could have a productive discussion. But that's another counterfactual hypothetical, isn't it? You're always going to be you.

So no matter which of the "U's" Bomb or the Trump supporters want to look at,

Why on earth would you take for granted that everybody who thinks U3 is misleading is limited to picking from the government's meager menu of alternative "U"s? It's painfully obvious that none of the government's "U" measures include everybody that a Trump supporter could perfectly sensibly regard as unemployed.

And here is a rabidly partisan article shredding the <expletive deleted> right-wing idea Bomb is trying to pass off as intelligent contribution to this discussion: http://www.liberalamerica.org/2015/11/11/raw-data-unemployment/

The idea that link shreds is not the idea I am contributing. You would already know that, if you subjected your own first impressions to five seconds of critical thought. Why do you keep making false, damaging claims about me with reckless disregard for the truth? Is what I actually wrote so indisputable that you find it psychologically necessary to deceive yourself into imagining I wrote something easier to refute, so you can dispute that instead and believe it means you won?

 

[Bomb#20]

How do you figure I'm proving the OP?

I do believe you are being coy here - your other posts belie the notion that you are actually that obtuse.

Oh, I know how you figure it. I was inviting you to make your implicit premises explicit, in the hope that this would help you learn to apply critical thought to your own beliefs, instead of reserving it for other people's. Oh well, apparently you aren't willing to do that. You will have to have your error spelled out for you.

" incapable of acknowledging a fact even when it is staring them in the face" is exactly how you are behaving, pretending that there is no evidence of decreased unemployment under Obama, when every measure - INCLUDING the repugs' favorite metric - shows that it is a fact. A fact that has been put in front of your face and you still deny it. OP validated, thank you!

But even if it were true that that was how I was behaving, that would in no way validate the OP. The OP didn't claim I'm incapable of acknowledging a fact. The OP claimed Trump voters are incapable of acknowledging a fact. I am not a Trump voter. I voted third party. You accused me of proving the OP in post #45, based on the false assumption you were making about me, even though I'd already said I didn't vote for him, back in post #43. And here you are in post #74, still making the same quip about proving the OP, still fancying me a Trump voter. So tell me again which person is "incapable of acknowledging a fact even when it is staring them in the face".

As for how I'm behaving, you say "INCLUDING the repugs' favorite metric" as though that settled the matter. Are you suggesting that in the event of a disagreement between the dems and the repugs, they can't both be wrong? The repugs' favorite metric ignores millions of common-usage unemployed people too.

What I'm asserting is that Ravensky offered non-evidence and fallaciously tried to pass it off as evidence.

Oh really? Please do point out how this is wrong:

The U3 measure is and always has been the number being referred to when government and news reports talk about "unemployment". "U3 is the official unemployment rate." The *real* rate. Bomb knows or should know this.
Unfortunately, ever since President Obama was elected, Faux News and the right-wing bloviators have hoodwinked their audience into believing that the U6 is the *real* "unemployment" rate. It isn't. But even if Bomb wants to believe that it is, so what. The U6 has ALSO decreased during President Obama's terms in office.

Are you contesting both metrics?

Obviously. Why on earth would I contest one and not the other? They both have the same defect.

If so, it's time to pony up with some rationale for doing so.

Been there, done that. The rationale is perfectly plain right there in my first post, post #5. Look at the bloody graph! U3 and U6 are both calculated by ignoring the people who the post #5 graph shows dropping out of the category the government calls "the labor force".

Please do explain why it's "non-evidence" - and be SURE to provide EVIDENCE to back up your claim. (Note: Your barenaked assertion that it's "not evidence" is not evidence.)

Been there, done that. The U3 rate is non-evidence for Ravensky's OP assertions because, as I said in post #12,

The circumstance that the government chooses to use the word "unemployment" to refer to a quantity it calculates by deliberately ignoring some categories of jobless people has no power to magically make others who don't choose to ignore all of those people when they use the word "unemployment" into people who are "incapable of acknowledging facts." Agreeing to speak and to think in terms of some government's Newspeak vocabulary is not one of the requirements for qualifying as a fact-acknowledging person. To imply that it is one of the requirements is illogical.​

When person 1 decides the drop in the U3 rate is staring person 2 in the face, and person 2 does not agree that unemployment has gone down, and person 1 deduces from this that person 2 won't acknowledge facts staring him in the face, person 1 is committing a logical fallacy, the fallacy called "non-sequitur". It would be a valid inference only if person 1 had reason to believe that person 2 means "U3" when he says "unemployment", or if the equivalence of the terms "unemployment" and "U3" were also a fact staring person 2 in the face.

(Note: the addition of LD's data, and its implication that unemployment has probably gone down even going by a reasonable definition, because the drop in the government's number is finally substantial enough to overcome the parallel rise in common-usage unemployment among the people the government chooses not to count, doesn't undo the conclusion that Ravensky offered non-evidence. It's only down a little, how to combine the two employment trends is a complicated calculation, and nobody is putting those numbers on the front page. A drop in reasonable-definition unemployment may be a fact, but it's hardly a fact staring the public in the face.)

Oh no - now it looks like Clinton was the Greatest. President. Ever. Can't have THAT.
Back to the drawing board... any ideas, Bomb#20?

Not as great as Washington or Lincoln. But the greatest in my lifetime, considering the competition, yeah, probably so. I voted for him. Your inability to acknowledge facts is still showing.

Da Bomb seems to have gone silent on this...

Some of us have jobs. Some of you talk too much. Do the math.

 

[Bomb#20]

It's called "sarcasm". Look it up if you aren't familiar with the concept...

Yes Bomb#20, we all know your rude posts are used internally to justify some preachy political end you have.

Hey, I'm rude to people who are rude. And who the heck in the PD forum isn't preachy?

I'll just add that you're going to have to prove Trump supporters are consistently using some other definition over long periods of time in a way that makes them feel objective.

Why the heck would I have to prove that? I'm sure hardly any of them are using any definition consistently. Most of them are average Americans; they aren't Debate Club. They're making this stuff up as they go along, same as 90% of the non-Trump supporters. They have a neural net in their brains that pattern-matches mental images of people with "employed" and "unemployed", not a definition.

When a normal human finds out government statistics are based on a definition that doesn't count a thirty-year-old living in his parents' basement playing video games as "unemployed", it is perfectly reasonable for her to react by discounting government statistics. It's perfectly normal for her then, not having an obviously more reliable source, to resort to the normal human fallback algorithm: to judge the unemployment rate based on her own anecdotal experience with jobless people in her own community.

 

[Bomb#20]

Critics need to tell us why that indicator has been considered fairly accurate all these years...except for during the Obama administration.

Are you seriously suggesting that before 2009, nobody ever pointed out that defining a 30-year-old living in his parents' basement who never makes any attempt to go out and get a job and instead spends his days playing video games and getting high as "not unemployed" is deranged?

No, I'm saying that before these people weren't considered sufficiently numerous to affect how the rate is calculated. Obviously such people are offset by those who are employed but under the table.

Critics need to explain to us why this factor is now considered of extreme importance in the Obama adminstration when it wasn't previously.

You'd have to ask somebody criticizing Obama for it. I never considered it fairly accurate; and its inaccuracy is not of much importance for evaluating the Obama administration. But it is important for evaluating the quality of the logic in the OP, and it wasn't important for that back in 2008, because the OP hadn't been posted yet in 2008. That's why I brought it up now and not in 2008.

 

[Bomb#20]

Hey Bomb#20, did you read the following post by RavenSky? Because it sure as hell looks like you sailed right past it,

How do you figure it looks like that? That's post #60. Which post after that do you imagine I replied to, sailing over post #60? You people are piling on, thirty-odd posts at me for me to wade through, and, ObOnTopic, some of us have to work for a living. So I'm backlogged. Get over it.

and it is the post you need to read, since it shows exactly how irrelevant your participation in this thread has been.

Seriously, read this post:

That post is irrelevant, since it proceeds from the false claim that I'm talking about underemployment.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Yes Bomb#20, we all know your rude posts are used internally to justify some preachy political end you have.

Hey, I'm rude to people who are rude. And who the heck in the PD forum isn't preachy?

I'll just add that you're going to have to prove Trump supporters are consistently using some other definition over long periods of time in a way that makes them feel objective.

Why the heck would I have to prove that? I'm sure hardly any of them are using any definition consistently. Most of them are average Americans; they aren't Debate Club. They're making this stuff up as they go along, same as 90% of the non-Trump supporters. They have a neural net in their brains that pattern-matches mental images of people with "employed" and "unemployed", not a definition.

When a normal human finds out government statistics are based on a definition that doesn't count a thirty-year-old living in his parents' basement playing video games as "unemployed", it is perfectly reasonable for her to react by discounting government statistics. It's perfectly normal for her then, not having an obviously more reliable source, to resort to the normal human fallback algorithm: to judge the unemployment rate based on her own anecdotal experience with jobless people in her own community.

Let's keep the bar that low when we make arguments.

 

[arkirk]

It all depends on what your goals are. If you just want more money in the corporate banks, that can be arranged. If Trump gets the manufacturing to move back to America by strengthening right to work laws and adding tarrifs to stuff, then we can have an environment like the one in this picture. The problem is bigger than merely scurrying after jobs and economic activity. It is one that requires an intelligent and integrated approach to create a Green Economy wherever it operates. That is a lot more than simply ranting and raving and threatening. The orange haired man is incapable of comprehending the needs of our country...just like the Chinese leadership that allowed industry to foul its environment.

 

[RavenSky]

Hey, I'm rude to people who are rude. And who the heck in the PD forum isn't preachy?

I'll just add that you're going to have to prove Trump supporters are consistently using some other definition over long periods of time in a way that makes them feel objective.

Why the heck would I have to prove that? I'm sure hardly any of them are using any definition consistently. Most of them are average Americans; they aren't Debate Club. They're making this stuff up as they go along, same as 90% of the non-Trump supporters. They have a neural net in their brains that pattern-matches mental images of people with "employed" and "unemployed", not a definition.

When a normal human finds out government statistics are based on a definition that doesn't count a thirty-year-old living in his parents' basement playing video games as "unemployed", it is perfectly reasonable for her to react by discounting government statistics. It's perfectly normal for her then, not having an obviously more reliable source, to resort to the normal human fallback algorithm: to judge the unemployment rate based on her own anecdotal experience with jobless people in her own community.

Let's keep the bar that low when we make arguments.

He's not only keeping the bar so low an ant could jump over it, he is moving those support posts all over the place. He now claims that he was never talking about any actual statistics in spite of the fact that he included a graph in his first contrarian post. Instead, he is now claiming that Trump supporters don't go by facts at all; only by their feels... which was exactly the point in the OP.

 

[laughing dog]

He's not only keeping the bar so low an ant could jump over it, he is moving those support posts all over the place. He now claims that he was never talking about any actual statistics in spite of the fact that he included a graph in his first contrarian post. Instead, he is now claiming that Trump supporters don't go by facts at all; only by their feels... which was exactly the point in the OP.

To be fair, Bomb#20 supports his claim by his own feelings - he has no evidence supporting his claim that Trump supporters use a different idea of unemployment.

 

[credoconsolans]

Critics need to tell us why that indicator has been considered fairly accurate all these years...except for during the Obama administration.

Are you seriously suggesting that before 2009, nobody ever pointed out that defining a 30-year-old living in his parents' basement who never makes any attempt to go out and get a job and instead spends his days playing video games and getting high as "not unemployed" is deranged?

No, I'm saying that before these people weren't considered sufficiently numerous to affect how the rate is calculated. Obviously such people are offset by those who are employed but under the table.

Critics need to explain to us why this factor is now considered of extreme importance in the Obama adminstration when it wasn't previously.

You'd have to ask somebody criticizing Obama for it. I never considered it fairly accurate; and its inaccuracy is not of much importance for evaluating the Obama administration. But it is important for evaluating the quality of the logic in the OP, and it wasn't important for that back in 2008, because the OP hadn't been posted yet in 2008. That's why I brought it up now and not in 2008.

You not considering it accurate is irrelevant and a minority position.

The majority of the working government and the public considered it sufficiently accurate to use as a gauge and they have thought it such for many decades now.

 

[fromderinside]

He's not only keeping the bar so low an ant could jump over it, he is moving those support posts all over the place. He now claims that he was never talking about any actual statistics in spite of the fact that he included a graph in his first contrarian post. Instead, he is now claiming that Trump supporters don't go by facts at all; only by their feels... which was exactly the point in the OP.

To be fair, Bomb#20 supports his claim by his own feelings - he has no evidence supporting his claim that Trump supporters use a different idea of unemployment.

To avoid spats like the above its always better to present evidence that can be independently verified. So since we have unemployment and underemployment maybe we can get a couple statements anchored in data about the propositions of the two or three or seventy sides relating to those two items? Someone needs to mop this stench up.

 

[laughing dog]

To be fair, Bomb#20 supports his claim by his own feelings - he has no evidence supporting his claim that Trump supporters use a different idea of unemployment.

To avoid spats like the above its always better to present evidence that can be independently verified. So since we have unemployment and underemployment maybe we can get a couple statements anchored in data about the propositions of the two or three or seventy sides relating to those two items? Someone needs to mop this stench up.

I presented data on underemployment and unemployment. The issue is that Bomb #20 is saying that Trump supporters use a different notion of unemployment than that which is commonly understood without presenting a shred of actual evidence to support his claim.

 

[Bomb#20]

"Yup"? What kind of an answer is that? Yup what?

As in the unemployment rate under W was reported the same way. There was unemployment and underemployment.

What's your point?

If you folks bothered to know anything about this stuff, you wouldn't be so surprised.

If that was your point, what is it that you have evidence for me not knowing about this stuff, and where do you see me expressing surprise?

Why on earth would it be illogical to include people who do not want to work as part of the labor force?

They actually do, in the underemployment number. There are several stats reported by the Government, unemployment and underemployment are both numbers that are both report. Underemployment includes people not seeking jobs but would ultimately like one.

I haven't heard the term "underemployment" used that way. Normally it refers to people who are working part-time jobs because they can't find full-time jobs, and to people with the skills for high-pay jobs who are working low-pay low-skill jobs because they can't find jobs in their field.

The trouble we have here is that there is a partisan attempt to make conditions seem worse by comparing the underemployment rate now with the unemployment rate of the past,

No doubt that's a trouble; but what evidence is there that it's the trouble we have here? Did some Trump voters in the OP links cite some Faux News report that committed that equivocation?

where as the actual task should be looking at the underemployment in at its peak in 2010 (17%) with the underemployment rate today (10%).

No doubt that's a worthy task; but what does it have to do with the controversy in this thread? The dispute here is over unemployment, not underemployment.

 

[Bomb#20]

Are you seriously suggesting that before 2009, nobody ever pointed out that defining a 30-year-old living in his parents' basement who never makes any attempt to go out and get a job and instead spends his days playing video games and getting high as "not unemployed" is deranged?

If he's not going out and looking for work, then for all intents and purposes he might as well be considered 'employed' for all the difference it makes to the labor market.

Why do you believe that? In 2009 there were 4.5 prime-working-age adults working to maintain each one who didn't try to work. Today there are about 4.0. To whatever extent the ones who aren't working aren't paying for that maintenance, the cost of supporting them amounts to a tax. The great bulk of taxes are, one way or another, taxes on work. More people not trying to support themselves therefore amounts to a tax increase on labor. How can that not affect the labor market?

You also might as well include the trust fund kids who spend their whole lives dicking around and spending daddies' money as "Unemployed" if you're going on that logic. Except you wouldn't because everyone would agree that to do so would be deceptive.

What's deceptive about it? Somebody asked Warren Buffett how much money a rich man should give his children; Buffett said a rich man should give his children enough so they could do anything but not so much that they could do nothing. You think if one of Buffett's kids was wasting his life dicking around, Buffett wouldn't consider that kid unemployed? There are undoubtedly thousands of rich men who regard their worthless trust fund kids as unemployed.

The thing is, though, that the concept of "unemployed" and the concept of "burden on others" often get mixed up together in typical people's minds. The reason lots of people who think of a dicking-around welfare recipient as "unemployed" are likely not to think of a dicking-around trust fund kid as "unemployed" is because he's not a burden on them. He's only a burden on the family that provided the trust fund. So his family are the only ones who have a personal reason to categorize the kid by his employment status. Whether some person is unemployed in common-usage may well depend on ones' point of view.

 

[Bomb#20]

yes, it's logical not to include people who cannot work as part of the labor force. But Trump voters may very well not agree with the government as to which people can work and which cannot. There are a lot more Americans on disability now than there were when Obama took office. Maybe the country has really gotten a lot more crippled in eight years. Maybe there are a lot of people on disability now who the government eight years ago would not have defined as "cannot work".

The Republicans don't believe in disability.

Hyperbole much? Broad-brush much? You probably can't produce a single example of a Republican who doesn't believe in disability at all; and some believe in it more than others. Perhaps the idea you were trying to get across was "The average Republican has somewhat more stringent criteria than the average Democrat for considering a person disabled."?

As for the actual numbers:

As medical technology improves you get the ironic result that it increases the number of disabled. In the past many of those would have simply died.

And you think medical technology has improved so much just in the last eight years that this effect can account for more than a little bit of the rise in people on disability?

Also, look at the baby boomers--we still have a surge moving through the last years of working--the years they are most likely to end up disabled.

Okay, that's a valid point. We'd need statistics on the number of people on disability that's broken down by age group in order to determine whether it's the principle cause of the rise.

We also have fewer and fewer jobs for those with very minimal ability--some people have become disabled by the disappearance of any job they can do, not by their condition getting worse.

But that isn't an example of "can't work". That's an example of "nobody will hire them". When somebody doesn't have a job because nobody will hire him, normal people call that "unemployment".

Finally, we have some where the docs are bending the rules. The health issues are real but not actually completely disabling. The tough job market made it impossible for them to find work, though--companies rightly evaluated them as the riskier hire and with better choices passed them over. Now they have been out of it long enough they won't get hired anyway. They meet the spirit of the law but not the letter of it.

But the spirit of the law (and often it's not a doctor but a judge bending the rule) is to be compassionate, help out a guy who needs help, and get him on disability when that's what's financially best for him, never mind whether it's what Congress actually voted to do in a case like his. Which is a fine and kindly act. But the morality of bending the rules on a case-by-case basis doesn't change the fact that the guy can work; and statistics that are based on having statisticians politely go along with the fiction that the guy can't work are going to be incorrect statistics. This isn't about whether people ought to get to go on disability; this is about whether we should deceive ourselves about what's happening in our economy.

If one reason official unemployment statistics look as good as they do is that a lot of people aren't being counted as unemployed because they're on disability because doctors and judges were kind to them even though they wouldn't have been on disability in 2008, that means unemployment hasn't really improved as much as the official statistics claim. This remains the case whether you think those people belong on disability or not. If we assume they really can't work, and it's good and proper for them to be on disability and the 2016 unemployment figures are therefore correct, that implies that in 2008 the unemployment figures were wrong. There were a lot of people in 2008 who couldn't work and should have been counted as disabled, but were instead counted as unemployed.

(Personally, I think that in such borderline cases the government should be required to job hunt for them...

Sounds like a good idea to me.

Whether your artificial definitions are right isn't a fact staring anyone in the face; it's a matter of opinion.

Both terms have standard government definitions. Since it's government data those definitions should be used.

They should be used for figuring out precisely what it is the government is saying, sure. But as for adopting them for general use, why? Why should the people give the government control over how the people categorize the world? That's Newspeak.

Anyway, even if you're some kind of intellectual statist who feels people have a duty to use government definitions and think in terms of whatever concepts their government wants them to think in terms of, that's a moral judgment, not a logical one. It doesn't imply that heretically thinking for oneself qualifies as refusing to acknowledge facts staring one in the face.