Honey, I Shrunk the Labor Force. Again

Today the labor the labor force participation rate plunged from an already abysmal 63.5% to 63.3% - the lowest since 1979.



The number of people not in the labor force increased in March by a massive 663,000 to a record 90 million Americans who are no longer working.




Some of these people are retiring. Some are simply giving up looking for work. Some are collecting "disability".  What all of them are not doing is producing. Worse, most of them are being paid for not working (via social security, unemployment, disability, food stamps, rent subsides, etc. etc.) by the shrinking number of people who are working.

This is not a growth scenario.

Disabled Thinking

The number of people claiming to be disabled has increased astronomically in the US.

                     Number on Disability      % Population

1960                       455,000                    0.65%
2011                    8,600,000                    5.60%

The UK had a similar problem. But it asked people on their disability dole to submit to a medical test to confirm they were too disabled to work. A third of recipients didn't even bother to show up and dropped out of the program. Of those tested, more than half (55%) were found fit for work.

Elementary economics tells you that when you tax something you will get less of it. When you subsidize it you will get more of it. In this country we tax people who work. We tax them a lot if they work successfully. We pay people quite handsomely not to work. Should we be surprised that we have increasing number of people not working?
How many more people are we prepared to have not working? How much more money are we willing to borrow so that they don't have to?