THANKS OBAMA! Jobless claims hit 15 year LOW, consumer spending RISES! GOOD ECONOMY!

[habsheaven]

It had everything to do with the idiotic idea that the rise in people on welfare had to do with baby boomers reaching retirement age, leaving the job market and going on welfare. That is why you ignored it. You repeated excuses for the rise in welfare recipients and the decline in workers is baseless.

I repeat:

Based on data from the US Census and US Bureau of Labor

Number of people employed in 2008 - 137.9 million
Number of people employed 2015 - 119.9 million
- A net loss of 18 million.

Number of people between 18 and 65 in 2008 - 181.6 million
Number of people between age of 18 and 65 in 2015 - 199.6 million
- A net gain of 18 million.

The link I posted was an article about the reason for the declining "job participation rate". This rate is calculated by using data for people aged 16+. The contention of the article is that the 65+ population has increased faster than the other age groups resulting in the decreased rate. Posting census data about an age group that DOES NOT encompass the age group used to collect the data for the JP rate is useless.

What is the increase in population for the 65+ crowd?

[habsheaven]

Student loan interest rates are the lowest of just about any interest rates (3.86%) and the loans are distributed by banks, so that is where the interest is going. I know the government is getting interest too, but no bank is going to waste their time with the paperwork and hassle of providing interest-free loans.

And the kicker...when you do your taxes you get a deduction equal to your student loan interest paid, so you are out nothing.

The real robbery is colleges charging a $50 fee to distribute your student loan checks to you.

Well, I will have to check the numbers because I heard the issue was the amount of money the government was making off of these loans. I assumed it was interest.

How about this?

How the government profits from student loan debt

Several bills have been proposed to fix the student loan problem. Just last week, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren filed a bill that would have allowed 25 million debtors to refinance their loans at lower interest rates. The bill didn’t even make it to the floor, marking the second time it failed in Congress.
Calling it a political move, Republicans opposed the bill because it included the so-called “Buffett Rule” which would pay for the loss of revenue from the interest the federal government earns by increasing taxes on the wealthy.
Democrats, meanwhile, “want an issue to campaign on to save their own hides this November,” argued Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Regardless of moral imperatives, it will be difficult for the federal government to give up the income provided by student loan interest. Further, the Congressional Budget Office expects the profit to increase, with the government raking in as much as $127 billion over the next 10 years.
“The Department of Education has become dependent on student loan interest,” a Senate staffer who works on education issues told MintPress.
In a press conference last year, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan argued that categorizing student loan interest as a “profit” is a mischaracterization, noting that the funds go toward subsidizing other education programs. Yet little of that revenue benefits the people who spend decades paying off their college tuition.
Students are charged 6.8 percent interest for unsubsidized loans, which constitute most loans. Parents who take out loans to pay for some of their childrens’ education pay 7.2 percent. Last year, the interest rate cap on federally-subsidized student loans was set to expire. Long set at 3.4 percent, the expiration of the law that set the cap meant the interest rate would jump to 6.8 percent — the same as the rate on unsubsidized loans.
However, outcry resulted in Congress settling on a market-based interest rate, which varies year to year with the market but is fixed for the life of the loan. A student matriculating this fall would be taking subsidized loans with interest rates of 4.66 percent and that rate will remain in place through 2015.
“After that, we expect the interest rates to continue to rise,” Wang warned.

[duane1969]

The link I posted was an article about the reason for the declining "job participation rate". This rate is calculated by using data for people aged 16+. The contention of the article is that the 65+ population has increased faster than the other age groups resulting in the decreased rate. Posting census data about an age group that DOES NOT encompass the age group used to collect the data for the JP rate is useless.

What is the increase in population for the 65+ crowd?

I will have to do some digging. I had to do some math to get the numbers because the Census people do projections based on age groups in non-census years. I know the number of people over 65 is increasing, but so is the population in general, so there are working age people to replace retirees.

[habsheaven]

What did your digging bring up?