Michael Matthews: A number, not a fact

In your Sept. 19 Community Conversations, one contributor stated that there are 94 million Americans out of work. That number is so detached from reality that I have to wonder how they arrived at that number. This number is greater than the 25 percent unemployed rate during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Nationally, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we have an unemployment rate of just 4.9 percent. These days, people don’t let facts get in the way of what they want people to believe. The more disturbing something sounds oddly leads to something being more credible. I saw it in the N&O, therefore it must be true.

And while I am attacking the ridiculous, I want to point out a problem with a campaign promise of Donald Trump. Trump promises, if elected, to create 25 million jobs. That’s 9 million jobs more than needed. Who will fill those extra jobs? Why do we let candidates get away with claims that are divorced from reality? A large part of the American electorate has chosen to follow the rabbit down the hole. There will be a day of reckoning for this madness.

This story was originally published September 25, 2016 at 6:00 PM with the headline "Michael Matthews: A number, not a fact."