To the editor:
While the press typically focuses on the unemployment rate, which remains at an abysmal 8 percent, the more accurate gauge of an economy’s health is underemployment and labor force participation. So where do we stand after four years of Hope and Change? Underemployment has been stagnant at 15 percent, while an additional 4 percent have dropped out of the workforce. Taken together, that means nearly one in five Americans (1) are out of work and looking for a job, (2) have taken a lower paying job to try and make ends meet, or (3) have given up looking for a job altogether.
That number should serve as a staggering wake up call. Hope is not a policy. Change is not a strategy. And as for good intentions? I seem to recall an old proverb that the road to ‘someplace hot and unpleasant’ was paved with them.
The last four years have proven that merely wanting something doesn’t make it so. Our aspirations as a nation should not be built upon hollow rhetoric and wishful thinking, but rather a solid foundation of real world experience and rational policy.
Mitt Romney for President.
Matt Troy
Member of the Darien Republican Town Committee
