You shouldn’t need 37 signs that we are in a Recovery in Name Only. If you do, Michael Snyder has all of them, including …

On Friday, it was announced that the unemployment rate had fallen to “7 percent”, and the mainstream media responded with a mix of euphoria and jubilation.  For example, one USA Today article declared that “with today’s jobs report, one really can say that our long national post-financial crisis nightmare is over.”  But is that actually the truth?  As you will see below, if you assume that the labor force participation rate in the U.S. is at the long-term average, the unemployment rate in the United States would actually be 11.5 percent instead of 7 percent.  There has been absolutely no employment recovery.  The percentage of Americans that are actually working has stayed between 58 and 59 percent for 51 months in a row.  But most Americans don’t understand these things and they just take whatever the mainstream media tells them as the truth. …

The percentage of Americans that have a job has stayed remarkably flat since the end of 2009, median household income has fallen for five years in a row, and the rate of homeownership in the United States has fallen for eight years in a row.  Anyone that claims that the U.S. economy is experiencing a “recovery” is simply not telling the truth.  The following are 37 reasons why “the economic recovery of 2013” is a giant lie…

#1 The only reason that the official unemployment rate has been declining over the past couple of years is that the federal government has been pretending that millions upon millions of unemployed Americans no longer want a job and have “left the labor force”.  As Zero Hedge recently demonstrated, if the labor force participation rate returned to the long-term average of 65.8 percent, the official unemployment rate in the United States would actually be 11.5 percent instead of 7 percent.

#2 The percentage of Americans that are actually working is much lower than it used to be.  In November 2000, 64.3 percent of all working age Americans had a job.  When Barack Obama first entered the White House, 60.6 percent of all working age Americans had a job.  Today, only 58.6 percent of all working age Americans have a job.  In fact, as you can see from the chart posted below, there has been absolutely no “employment recovery” since the depths of the last recession…

#3 The employment-population ratio has now been under 59 percent for 51 months in a row.

#4 There are 1,148,000 fewer Americans working today than there was in November 2006.  Meanwhile, our population has grown by more than 16 million people during that time frame.

#5 The “inactivity rate” for men in their prime working years (25 to 54) has just hit a brand new all-time record high.  Does this look like an “economic recovery” to you?…

…

#8 Middle-wage jobs accounted for 60 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession, but they have accounted for only 22 percent of the jobs created since then.

#9 Only about 47 percent of all adults in America have a full-time job at this point. …

#15 When Barack Obama took office, the average duration of unemployment in this country was 19.8 weeks.  Today, it is 37.2 weeks.

#16 According to the New York Times, long-term unemployment in America is up by 213 percent since 2007.

#17 Thanks to Obama administration policies which are systematically killing off small businesses in the United States, the percentage of self-employed Americans is at an all-time low today.

#18 According to economist Tim Kane, the following is how the number of startup jobs per 1000 Americans breaks down by presidential administration…

Bush Sr.: 11.3

Clinton: 11.2

Bush Jr.: 10.8

Obama: 7.8

#19 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, median household income in the United States has fallen for five years in a row. …

#22 As 2003 began, the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline was about $1.30.  When Barack Obama took office, the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline was $1.85.  Today, it is $3.26. …

#29 When Barack Obama first entered the White House, there were about 32 million Americans on food stamps.  Today, there are more than 47 million Americans on food stamps.

#30 Right now, approximately one out of every five households in the United States is on food stamps.

#31 According to the Survey of Income and Program Participation conducted by the U.S. Census, well over 100 million Americans are enrolled in at least one welfare program run by the federal government. …

#36 When Barack Obama was first elected, the U.S. debt to GDP ratio was under 70 percent.  Today, it is up to 101 percent.

#37 The U.S. national debt is on pace to more than double during the eight years of the Obama administration.  In other words, under Barack Obama the U.S. government will accumulate more debt than it did under all of the other presidents in U.S. history combined.

Apparently a number of workers greater than zero held strikes at fast food restaurants Thursday demanding to be paid $15 per hour for their minimum-wage-skill work.

There’s a term for them. The Skeptical Libertarian reports:

McDonald’s just added 7,000 touch-screen kiosks to handle ordering and cashier duties in its European stores.

The move is designed to boost efficiency and make ordering more convenient for customers. In an interview with the Financial Times, McDonald’s Europe President Steve Easterbrook notes that the new system will also open up a goldmine of data.

As technology advances, more and more tasks can be mechanized and automated. Think of ATMs, automated gas pumps, and kiosks at airports and movie theaters. Is it inevitable that machines will replaced human labor, simply because it is possible? Not necessarily. The switch only happens when businesses decide that machines are a more cost-effective way to do a specific job than labor. (Think of using a food-processor instead of chopping vegetables by hand.)

When the cost of labor goes up, the tradeoff between labor and capital changes. This can happen for a number of reasons, but one way to make machines more attractive is to raise the minimum wage. When you raise the price of something, people buy less of it–this is as true for labor as it is for hamburgers. When you force up the cost of low-skilled labor, employers will use less of it, either by hiring more experienced workers or by investing more in machines. …

The case of McDonald’s kiosks (and all the other common tasks that are now automated) merely shows that such jobs don’t have to be done by people. Businesses are not sitting targets, and they will respond to incentives.

Worst of all, the people most hurt by policies like the minimum wage the very people they are designed to help: the less educated, the less skilled, and the less experienced. By removing a rung on the job ladder, minimum wage laws take away job opportunities from the young, poor, and uneducated. They reward those who already have jobs and protect experienced workers from competition. This is something to keep in mind as President Obama continues his grandstanding about hiking the minimum wage from $7.25 to $9 an hour. There is no such thing as a free lunch, and the people who will pay for this one are the most vulnerable and disadvantaged in our society.

Just like the old Automat days:

Consumers are not going to buy value meals that are double in price. Restaurant owners know that.