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The Bureau of Labor Statistics is keeping track and can report to congress about the damage they are doing. Oh.. Wait... http://www.bls.gov/

And yet, somehow, that doesn't seem to be happening.

Yes it is. Unemployment numbers are only part of the story. You also need to consider the participation rate, which is has been falling steadily. It peaked in the late '90s and has been plummeting since then. We're currently at a participation rate equal to the late '70s, and there's no reason to believe the current trend will reverse. See the BLS for details. (Change the start date to 1948 for a useful graph.)

For those of you wondering...US CPI weighting.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/cpi_09142012.pdf

For an interesting comparison, take a look at India's weighting, which includes a rural and urban differentiation.

http://mospi.nic.in/Mospi_New/upload/brochure_n_cpi18_feb11.pdf

Except that in the United States, core CPI specifically excludes food and energy costs. Calculations of core inflation also specifically exclude food and energy costs. Of course, "core" CPI isn't really used for anything important, allegedly. "The Man" doesn't hesitate to tell us that Social Security, federal retirement benefits, etc., are all calculated based on the CPI figure that does include food and energy costs. Of course, "The Man" doesn't go as far as to tell us what the "core" CPI is used for within government.

The US depends on it's software industry; we shipped all our labor jobs overseas to trade them for office work (programming).

Really? Then how do you explain the fact that the US has a multi-Trillion manufacturing sector which employs around 12 million people?

Bear in mind that the size of the global market for software is around $300 Billion and the number of US software developers is around 900,000.

The US depends on it's software industry; we shipped all our labor jobs overseas to trade them for office work (programming).

Really? Then how do you explain the fact that the US has a multi-Trillion manufacturing sector which employs around 12 million people?

Bear in mind that the size of the global market for software is around $300 Billion and the number of US software developers is around 900,000.

At a state level, Nevada, where I live, is ranked third by the Tax Foundation in "state business tax climate" for 2013, and conversely 47th in tax collected per person. We have no corporate income tax, no personal state income tax. We ranked 46th in federal aid in 2011 (same source), so it's not like Nevada is a "donor" state.

So, free of all of those taxes, Nevada's unemployment rates should be pretty good, because taxes are the worst thing for a regional economy, right? Except, in August, the state had the highest unemployment rate in the nation according to the BLS.

Yes, there are other factors besides taxation. There is regulation, of course, but it doesn't seem that much worse here than in California where I used to live. We have the double whammy of underfunded schools with a very strong teachers union, which pretty makes any improvement in education impossible. Our state legislature meets only every two years, and seems to function about on par with our federal legislature, so getting anything done from a legislative perspective is difficult. It gets really hot here about 1/3 of the year (although not much in the way of earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, etc. - pick your poison I guess)

In my case, I was drawn to Nevada by the low taxation, but businesses are not crashing the boarders. Taxation is not everything. There is a balance to be had between taxes and other quality of life factors, some of which you need government actively involved with. Education, infrastructure, utility price stability also count.

You sure? Unemployment rate seems to be around 7% in the USA and from what I've read around those numbers don't actually count the number of people that aren't employed, just the ones that are registered in welfare (or something like it, I forget). Two, he can't really move from where he is, so he can't move to where jobs may be. And considering the numbers, I doubt anybody outside of his city would be willing to pay him to move.

So, tell me where would he be able to find a job where many others have failed? You probably heard of not being accepted by being overqualifies, or because h1b, or culture, or many other reasons discussed here in slashdot.

National Education Association: http://www.nea.org/home/54597.htm

National Center for Education Statistics: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d10/tables/dt10_083.asp/

Bureau of Labor Statistics: http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oessrcst.htm

The last one is particularly good in that you can pick any state off of the map, and it will give you a chart that includes both the average wage for all jobs, as well as those for public school teachers.

Someone is lying about how much they make. I'm not saying it is your wife, but if she is making less than an average wage in your state, then some of her peers are making a lot more than she is.

Every wonder why there is more and more un/underemployment? It's because we can do more with less.

This claim is not supported by emprical evidence. Before the financial crisis, employment rates in the US were at a record high. Even now, the rate is still higher than it was during most of the 70s. If structural unemployment is rising (even that is hard to say), then it's because of more people entering the workforce (e.g., well-educated women) and not because of advances in technology.

... while sectors like restaurants, tourism and construction have a hard time finding workforce

Not even close to right
Leisure and hospitality: 10% unemployment
Construction: 9.1% unemployment

If they were having a hard time finding people, they'd be looking at the closer to 5% found in finance, resource extraction (oil, natural gas, quarrying, mining), IT, government, or education. Instead, what you have are millions of unemployed fully qualified construction workers and servers and concierges.

should have posted link to that graph, can't find it. A very messy and marked up copy article in the Monthly Labor Review Feb 1992 has graph from 1946 to 1990

http://www.bls.gov/mlr/1992/02/art2full.pdf

• Wrath of Khan (1982-06-04) domestic gross: $78,912,845
• Star Trek Into Darkness (2013-05-16) domestic gross: $227,271,488

According to the CPI Inflation Calculator, Wrath of Khan adjusted is about $191,023,056 (had to fiddle with a decimal point to stay within the odd $10m bounds)

As it turns out, they were pretty close, with the new one edging out the original.

You're adjusting for the type of work being performed. ("$20/hr is good money, for what I'm doing.")

I am not.

If we assume that $50,000/yr in 1986 is good money (as the song says, that will buy a lot of beer), and adjust for inflation, that's $53/hr (I use a 2000 hour work-year, which gives a lousy 2 weeks of vacation, but simplifies the arithmetic).

Who . . . the hell . . . watches ~40 hours a week of TV?

Well - checking the 2011 BLS American Time Use Survey that's wrong; Actually, his number almost exactly match my math for "Leisure and Sports" Daily *30, but the numbers for "watching Television" (a subcategory) come to 2.75 hours/day, or ~82 hours per month on average; even among people that watch some *every* day that only goes up to 105 hours a month on average. Then there's the assumption that that is all 'original programming', as opposed to movies, reruns,catching up on series you missed the first time around.

So the premise is based on flawed data from the getgo, exacerbated by bad logic.
(Chart won't go through here "Filter error: Please use less whitespace", but search for "Watching television" in the report; )

Pug

I've worked in the graphic arts industry, pasting up magazine pages. I worked for several publishers, and we always had an art department next door. Every magazine and commercial web site you read was designed by a graphic designer. I know lots of graphic artists, most of whom were making a good living before the economic bust. Most working artists don't "paint." There's a lot to learn about art in order to do practical stuff.

If you want something more systematic and authoritative than my personal experiences, look it up in the U.S. Occupational Outlook Handbook http://www.bls.gov/ooh/arts-and-design/home.htm which squares with my first-hand knowledge.

JOB SUMMARY
Art directors are responsible for the visual style and images in magazines, newspapers, product packaging, and movie and television productions. They create the overall design and direct others who develop artwork or layouts.

ENTRY-LEVEL EDUCATION
Bachelor’s degree

2010 MEDIAN PAY
$80,630

Oh, yeah, you may have heard that one of the benefits of going to a good college is to make contacts that will be useful in getting a job.

One of the characteristics of the engineering profession is that it's highly specialized. You learn to design widgets, and if the widget industry booms, you can name your price. If widgets go bust, you might not be able to get a job anywhere in engineering. That's what happened to the aerospace engineers. That's what I heard from the director of the MIT employment office, anyway. I met one former aerospace engineer who went into the real estate market. At least he knew how to fix a leaky faucet. Remember that woman who asked Obama to help her husband get a job? He was a manufacturing engineer. Not a great career after the manufacturing industry moved to China.

I'm not putting down engineering but it's no longer a secure employment.

And I don't like this idea, "It's your own fault you can't pay off your college loans, you chose the wrong major." That's just an excuse for a failed economic system.

You obviously don't know anything about liberal arts. The first think you learn in a liberal arts education is not to go shooting off your mouth when you don't know the facts.

The opposite is literally true

Sorry, bloggers and authors peddling their own books? Sorry, not convinced. And how convenient, that the most recent disaster is blamed on Bush, when, in fact, the Democrats of the late 1990ies are to blame...

What deterioration?

The number of people not working is the number one sign. Not "unemployed" (who stubbornly remain a very large number in its own right), but the non-working, which includes those, who stopped actively looking for work and thus aren't counted in the unemployment figures. Yes, I'm talking about the workforce participation. Americans aren't working much — eating through the earlier-accumulated wealth and arguing on how to better "spread it around"...

For instance, a person making a wage of 20k in 1980 now makes 60-70k

So they have barely kept pace with and surpassed inflation slightly. (20k in 1980 has the same buying power as $56,675.73 in 2013 according to the US government inflation calculator). I would hope that after 30 years, their salary would have increased a bit more then that.

As a middle class person, you cannot convince me I do not live better now. I've also been poor.

I'm not even sure why you are bringing this up. The comment about imbecile and brillient was completely about spying and skirting around the US constitution. Not whether or not you live better today or not.

Minimum wage in 1980 was about $3 ($6240/ year), now $7.25 (15080/y)

And I see the the minimum wage has failed to keep pace with inflation. $6240 in 1980 is equal to $17,682.83 in 2013. Your estimate is off a couple grand if you were to say you live the same on minimum wage.

However, when I visit my jobless friend's trailer and enjoy his cheap but passable big screen TV and his 'blu-discs' and his equally high-speed data connection, I have to think "Damn, he lives way better than I did back when I experienced poverty in the 1980s"

Well, that is a function of technological improvements not brilliant or imbecilic people in government. My first color TV cost me $450 for a 19 inch screen, what will that same $450 purchase today, At best buy, I can get a 50 inch flat screen for that much. For a little more, I can buy it from rent-a-center for a small weekly or monthly payment and own it after 2 years. I can also buy it before I lose my job and can't find another.

BTW, the inflation calc is located at
http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=6240&year1=1980&year2=2013

I hope you understand that this might be one of those occasions you were talking about.

Unions: The largest obstacle to autonomous trains. Esp in Spain. It the reason that will have autonomous cars before we have autonomous trucks. Imagine a world where the Teamsters no longer exist. Do you really think they're going to let that happen without hard a fight? Lord only knows what we're going to do with 3.5 million laid off workers, when there are already 11.5 million unemployed. It also looks like there are so few train operators in the us, that it may not be worth the money to do it automatically. In 2010 there were only 67,100 with little or no expected change in their numbers, so unless the safety issue comes to a head it probably won't change.

In the US.....think about what kind of people make minimum wage (mainly teenagers) and it makes sense.

FYI: here is the 2012 breakdown "at or below" minimum wage: http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2012.pdf

You may think what you want, you still don't show your source nor area where this happens and how you get $57k/yr out of a minimum wage earner.

How oh how do we counter these academic papers that show us individualism is the path to failure?

Hey, I know, with empirical evidence!

Stalin
Mao
Pol Pot

and last but not least, a couple of hundred million dead in the name of social justice, equality, and cooperation.

That's not cooperation. That's exploiting useful idiots who go weak-kneed because tjpse sociopaths talked about cooperating. Hell, some of them even openly admitted they were exploiting useful idiots, and the idiots still allowed themselves to get exploited.

Similar to "hope and change". Yeah the US just added a weak 162K jobs last month, but 130K of them were part-time. The labor force participation rate actually fell - again. Some "recovery"

Yay. Hopey-changey dopey-wopey.

I worked in a warehouse in the summers when I was in college - grocery warehouse. That was... cripes, about twenty years ago. I made $9/hr, which was pretty good for the time. I wasn't trying to raise a family or anything on that, though; just help pay some tuition and books and stuff. Tuition was (much) lower then, the student loan rates were lower, etc.

Now, if the wages had kept pace with inflation, they'd be making over $14.50/hr. So they're actually making less in real terms than I did.

Along those lines, here's some food - so to speak - for thought: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/29/mcdonalds-salaries_n_3672006.html

the Foxconn suicide rate from those figures is lower than the suicide rate for not only CHina as a whole, but also it's lower than the US suicide rate

I'm so sick of this "gotcha" point. Guess what: Foxconn isn't a country, it's a workplace. Suicide rates at the workplace are not the same as overall suicide rates.

You can't compare to US suicide rates. You can, however, compare to US workforce suicide rates:

U.S. workplace suicides (source: http://www.bls.gov/opub/cwc/sh20040126ar01p1.htm - best source I could find):
2170 over 9 years, averaging 241 per year.

U.S. labor force during same period (I picked the lowest, so it doesn't seem like I'm cheating - http://www.dlt.ri.gov/lmi/laus/us/usadj.htm):
127 million.

Extrapolated U.S. workplace suicide rate:
0.19 per 100,000 (rounded up)

Foxconn's suicide rate:
1.5 per 100,000, or 7.8 times that of the U.S. workplace rate.

The U.S. general population rate (same period - source: http://weber.ucsd.edu/~dphillip/suicide_in_the_united_states_cdc_report.pdf):
11.1 per 100,000, or 58 times workplace suicide rates.

China's general population rate (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides):
14 per 100,000, only 9.33 times Foxconn's rate.

I can't find data on China's general workforce suicide rate, and the US numbers are really out of date. But it's a much closer comparison than comparing a factory in China to the overall U.S. population. And the delta is astonishing.

I don't have a problem with him. Obama has done nothing worse than that done by every single administration since FDR. The only difference is the public immediately found out instead of discovering the truth 30 years later. The internet was always a surveillance state. "Everything you do online is forever" has been a warning we've been telling kids since the 90's. Civil rights abuses are nothing new, nor is solitary confinement of traitors, nor is prosecution of whistle blowers, nor are broken campaign promises.

I voted Obama in 08 and in 12 and I'd do it in 16 if I could. Obama has been an outstanding president in 98% of the job. The economy is booming, the DOW is at record highs, and unemployment has been steadily dropping for the past 4 years.

The answer to why police have become more militaristic is because criminals have become more murderous against cops.

Sorry, officer, but you're full of shit. 160 police officers died in 2010, a 37% increase from 2009. Ten years earlier 150 died. That's out of 794,300 cops. And remember, those are all deaths including squad car wrecks.

To put that in better prospective, 774 construction workers died in the US in 2010.

Being a cop is a hell of a lot safer than being a construction worker.

Here's a little hint, Officer Moore: you might want to google before making a fool of yourself.

Start with the BLS.

Programming jobs are expected to increase at the same rate as jobs on the whole: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/computer-programmers.htm#tab-6

EE jobs at only about half the average rate: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/electrical-and-electronics-engineers.htm#tab-6

Do those sound like fast growing fields to you? That's why there is no shortage.

Start with the BLS.

Programming jobs are expected to increase at the same rate as jobs on the whole: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/computer-programmers.htm#tab-6

EE jobs at only about half the average rate: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/electrical-and-electronics-engineers.htm#tab-6

Do those sound like fast growing fields to you? That's why there is no shortage.

But that example pales in comparison to the true conflicts of interest

I see that you don't actually give a reason it "pales". 7% of the total population is still rather large even when compared to 15%.

So sorry, the hypothetical "government workers" case doesn't cut it against the real-life cases that are actually true and are actually costing us tons of money as taxpayers.

Medicare beneficiaries cost the US an average of $9,500 per. In comparison, I see that public employees at the state and local level apparently receive around $42 per hour in total compensation (of which only two thirds was wages). At full time (2000 hours a year) that would be around $80k of compensation a year, which is around a factor of 8 higher than the average medicare recipient.

Where does it end?

I'm not seeing the problem with denying a vote to people who take in more from government than they pay out.

In fact, nearly one-fifth of all jobs gained since the recession ended have been temporary.'

What in the what? I'd REALLY like to see a source on that, given that it's directly contradicted by the BLS.
http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpsatab9.htm
Since the job market bottomed, we've created 5.4 million full-time jobs and 600,000 part-time jobs. How is that "nearly one-fifth"?

Watching TV does not require focus. It is the opposite. Folks who watch TV call it, "zoning out". You cannot zone out while reading a book. And, if you zoned out, staring at a picture of a sunset for 3-5 hours a day, nobody would consider that healthy and normal-- you might even be compelled to seek professional help.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.nr0.htm
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/americans-spend-34-hours-week-watching-tv-nielsen-numbers-article-1.1162285

sucking money out of the economy, then letting it sit, thereby starving the economy of capital, thereby adding to high unemployment, lower wages, less benefits, less job security, less public services, etc

the issue is that big corporations are making large profits and are doing nothing with it. No reinvestment, no dividends, no capital investment – it just sitting in a bank account

Though I detect a subtle distinction between GP and your post, you are both describing cash hoarding. But where I really differ with you is here:

America has rock bottom interest rates and companies find it easy to hawk bonds to raise money – even junk bonds. So don’t worry about the Fed.

I worry a lot about the Fed. Just because rates are low doesn't mean that monetary policy is loose enough. Let's check inflation:

"Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 1.1 percent before seasonal adjustment."

1.1% inflation does not sound like the result of loose monetary policy. But macroeconomic data has all sorts of issues with it, so for some theory, let's go to the greatest monetary economist ever, Milton Freidman:

Low interest rates are generally a sign that money has been tight, as in Japan; high interest rates, that money has been easy. source

So the rock bottom interest rates that you refer to are indicative that money has been tight, when it should have been loose. Therefore I hold the Fed responsible and Apple (mostly) blameless.

The average worker in the USA in 1970 earned $19.20
In 2010 the average worker earned $19.70

If you look at only take home pay you are correct that wages have not gone up when adjusted for inflation. But wages are not the only factor in employee compensation.

First off, Social Security and Medicare taxes paid by employers have gone up since 1970. All employees have gotten an inflation adjusted 2.7% raise since 1970 based purely on this.

Second, health care premiums paid by employers have been going up significantly in the past 40 years. Currently the average employer pays $2.12 per hour for employee health benefits (source), which is about 10% of their earnings. I couldn't find exact statistics on 1970, but based on trends for the past 10 years and total health expenditure increases over the past 40 years, it was probably closer to 3-4% of earnings in 1970. So just health benefits have given average workers an estimated 6.3% inflation adjusted raise since 1970.

So if wages have stayed constant over the past 40 years, total compensation for the median worker has actually risen by about 9%. This is pretty impressive since it is very hard for median wages to ever outpace inflation (since when everyone makes more money, prices of most things go up to match). That makes your numbers more like this:

The average worker in the USA in 1970 earned $19.20
In 2010 the average worker earned $21.43

I would agree that we have a problem with what people spend their money on in 2013 compared to what it was spent on in 1970. And those decisions are making us struggle more than the last couple generations. But that is a different discussion.

I'm sorry, but while reading you post, I read the following things:

Put this into perspective. In 1970 a man earning $35,000 a year could afford to own a home, a car, and afford to have his wife stay at home to raise the kids. If the wife worked too then they probably had a second summer cabin somewhere.

in 2010 a man earning $35,000 is barely living above the poverty line.(depending on location) you can't support a wife to raise the kids, let alone anything else.

"I don't understand simple things like inflation!"
A nickel used to buy my grandmother a gallon of milk AND a loaf of bread. Please see http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl. $35K in 2013 dollars is the equivalent of $5,840.08 in 1970 dollars. Also note that an individual making $35K in 1970 is the equivalent of $210K in 2013. Your entire point is invalid, as it is based in a world without inflation.

The average worker in the USA in 1970 earned $19.20
In 2010 the average worker earned $19.70

In 1970 the average CEO earned $500,000
in 2010 the average CEO earned $5,000,000

"I don't understand how to compare salaries against wages, or how to back up my data".
I am not able to find a source for these figures. If the average worker made $19.20/hour in 1970, this is worth $115.07/hour in 2013 dollar. You contend that, in todays' terms, the average person made $239,350/year worth of buying power in 1970. This claim is... dubious. Your point does not have validity because you did not back up your figures, and the reader is not able to reproduce your data. Your point also does not have validity because you did not express why this is bad, wrong, or detrimental.

Now tell me what is wrong with that picture? Circuit city is my favorite example. in 2008 after a year of bad sales the CEO of circuit city came up with a plan to save $10 million over 3 years. He fired the top 3,000 highest paid non mangers and rehired new people in their place earning minimum wage. Wall street was happy, and he and the board paid themselves $5 million in bonuses immediately.

With in a year Circuit city was gone completely. why? because he fired the top 3000 sales people. He could have saved $10 million dollars immediately that year by cutting his and the rest of the executive boards salaries. They weren't doing anything anyways.

"I don't understand how businesses work!"
Please note that the CEO of Circuit City (or any corporation, typically) has vested interest. This is so that they don't get rewarded for destroying the company. You point out a person who ran a business, made mistakes running this business, and destroyed it. Please note that Circuit City went out of business, and no longer has a CEO position (he's fired!). Please note that the CEO in question is James Marcum, who now makes $50K/year, according to Forbes (http://www.forbes.com/profile/james-marcum/). Your point of a single technology company which bankrupted itself is not supportive evidence of the point that "CEOs make too much money!". It is especially invalid when your example CEO now makes 10% higher than the national average salary (http://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/AWI.html).

Executive and upper level bonuses have gone out of control.

"I make arguments without justification or evidence!"

Goldman Sachs had to borrow money from he US Government so it could pay bonuses. I always thought that if the company did poorly bonuses were to be cut first not last, but for the rich they payout bonuses and then close the company down.

"I don't understand how loans work!"
The way that "borrowing money so that they can pay bonuses" works is that they have to pay it back. Please note that they did!.

Dude, all you've done is pulled a bunch of numbers out of your ass, and then constructed an argument on it. Now I appreciate that maybe Fox News has had a bad impact on your ability to construct a proper argument, but rather than address the specific points, I'll just throw out a couple key principles that are well-established and then hit the conclusion.

First, if you increase labor, and demand remains constant, the price will drop. This is the law of supply and demand. All of your quoting of numbers and beating of chest tries to cover up the fact that more workers means lower wages, all other things being equal. It's an escapable economic truth.

As to the rest of your rant, it's all weasel words, ad homid attacks, and a lot of screaming "It can't be true because it can't be true because..." circular logic.

Here's some global data regarding wages. I'm not going to make it too easy for you by linking in the exact table you need to look at... but if you want to educate yourself instead of screaming profanities... I'd start there.

the 1964 minimum wage was just under an ounce of silver per hour (~$1.25) and that today's value would be around $25 per hour

Sure, if you just ignore the fact that US currency hasn't been backed by precious metals since ~1970.

I checked two separate inflation calculators, and they both agree that $1.25 in 1964 would be somewhere around $9.13 - $9.26 in 2012 dollars, depending on which data sources you use. That's still higher than current minimum wage, but not by all that much.

The problem with using cost as a major argument against renewable energy sources is that the price of gas has skyrocketed in the last decade. The price this year is close to three times what it was when I started driving (about 12 years ago, bigger difference for older folks I'm sure)

It hasn't "skyrocketed". You need to take into account inflation. My family moved to the U.S. in early 1973 (prior to the Arab oil embargo). Gas then was $0.35 per gallon.

Put $0.35 and 1973 into this handy-dandy inflation calculator and you get $1.83. So after you subtract out inflation, the price of gas has increased by about 2x in 40 years. That's hardly "skyrocketing."

This is in contrast to renewable energy which, while still far more expensive than fossil fuels, are decreasing in price.

While I generally agree, you have to be careful to take into account current interest rates. Renewables are notorious for front-loading their costs. Solar isn't the most expensive form of electricity generation because it costs a lot to maintain and operate PV panels. It's the most expensive because PV panels cost a lot to manufacture and buy, and you have to amortize that up-front cost over the lifetime of the panels.

Right now, interest rates have been at a historical low for over 5 years. This means that amortizing up-front costs is really cheap. If you pay $100 up-front and amortize it over 10 years at 4%, you're paying a total of $148. OTOH if we take interest rates from the early 1980s when it peaked at just over 20%, the same $100 over 10 years would cost you $619. So the current fiscal environment has been very friendly to renewables (and nuclear for that matter). But once we get out of the current economic downturn and interest rates start to creep up again, I expect renewables to become more expensive.

(Then you have to subtract out the effect of inflation from the compounded interest. But in general interest rates are slightly higher than inflation, so the above still holds true. It's just not quite as extreme as the raw numbers might suggest.)

I don't believe we can magically switch tomorrow, I do believe we need to start taking a switch seriously now though and begin what will be a long, slow transition period. It's going to cost more in the short term, but it'll be cheaper long term.

I don't have a problem with funding research and development into improving renewables technology. As you say, it's a prudent investment in the future, and will let us switch energy sourcees quickly when the time arrives.

I do have a problem with offering cash incentives for consumers to adopt technologies which are currently not cost-effective. That's a net drain on our economy, and hampers our ability to divert additional money to research overall. It'd be like if the government of Japan had offered its citizens big incentives to buy analog HDTVs in the 1980s. That could have cost their economy tens of billions of dollars for technology which became obsolete when digital HDTV became feasible in the 1990s. Since Japan wisely limited their investment to funding for HDTV research, all they lost in that transition was the few billion they'd invested in analog HDTV R&D.

(I'll add a caveat that there is justification for cash incentives with technologies which actually are cost-effective long-term, but whose high up-front costs discourage adoption. In general, people are notoriously bad at saving money for a down payment. So if a technology with a high up-front cost reduces lifetime costs overall, then a purchase incentive program is warranted. Buyback programs to dispose of old, inefficient refrigerators and get people to replace them with new efficient ones are a good example.)

I'm sorry, but you;'re incorrect about the wage gap being debunked "time and time again." While the wage gap is not 70cents on the dollar anymore, there is a significant difference in women's pay. In Ontario, according to Stats Canada, the gap is currently 25%. It's also the same in the US according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is worse than it has been since 2005.

I'm very sorry you feel discriminated against, but this supposed attack on male rights is horse shit made up by bitter people who cannot tolerate the fact that 1000 years of cultural manipulation by us white men is being undone.

The numbers of male nurses has increased incredibly in the last 30 years, and male nurses are currently making significantly more money than women, and are in higher positions.

There are massive campaigns to get more men involved teaching, and early child development. There's also employment campaigns to get more women involved in trades, including the more dangerous ones, those campaigns are primarily ones which you complain about in your first paragraph (scholarships directed at women).

From 2009-2013, these charts show unemployment rates (as measured by US standards) dropped in the US, Australia, Canada, Germany, and Japan.

Unemployment statistics are particularly misleading, especially in the US, where all of the various measures are flawed in major ways. For example, the numbers you cited are calculated using the US standards. Under this standard, unemployment is measured from the total number of claims for unemployment benefits. This fails to take a large number of scenarios into account, and is not a good measure of true unemployment. It also completely fails to account for underemployment (i.e. someone who gets a part time job, but is not making their full expected wages). In all, a much better indicator (but one which is not tracked), is the total employed hours vs the available man hours available in the market. By this measure, the best guess approximation has the United States running Close to 20% This is a massive labor oversupply. In that same time frame, we barely see an interruption in GDP growth. This means that all of that reduction in employment did not affect GDP significantly, and therefore is unlikely to ever recover. The point of the matter is that the growth in GDP is due to increases in efficiency from the very causes I cited, and as the theory predicts, this is causing an oversupply of labor that cannot be corrected for in the long term.

The number of poor people (living on under $1.25 per day 2005 price level) declined pretty much everywhere [economist.com] from 2005 to 2008. China has taken 660 million people out of poverty since 1981. Even in Africa, from 2005 to 2008, poverty fell by 12 million to 47% - the first time less than half of Africans have been below the poverty line.

Large parts of the world are still either pre-industrial, or very early in the industrialization process. That means that they will not see the effects of this process for another couple of generations. They will see it earlier when/if the cost point of complete automation decreases significantly below the cost of the cheapest manual labor in the world. When that happens, then all of the delaying factors that have been sustaining our market economy will collapse in a depression to end all depressions. 5% of the worlds population will be employed, and the rest will starve to death. The necessary result will be revolution and civil war. This can still be fixed now, if we recognize the problem for what it is and work towards a solution. Marx caught a glimpse of the problem, but failed to see the whole problem, and tried a solution that was premature, and hopelessly naive. Since that time, I have heard of nothing better.

-=Geoskd

What happens is exactly what we are starting to see worldwide: Rising unemployment, with jobs liquidating but never returning, and accelerating polarization into the rich and the poor.

From 2009-2013, these charts show unemployment rates (as measured by US standards) dropped in the US, Australia, Canada, Germany, and Japan.

I won't dispute that global income inequality is increasing, but it is increasing because more people are getting rich, not that poor people are becoming poorer.

The number of poor people (living on under $1.25 per day 2005 price level) declined pretty much everywhere from 2005 to 2008. China has taken 660 million people out of poverty since 1981. Even in Africa, from 2005 to 2008, poverty fell by 12 million to 47% - the first time less than half of Africans have been below the poverty line.

The first Apple cost $666.66. Inflation adjusted, that's $2717.44 according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics.

The Commodore 64 cost $595 in 1982. Inflation adjusted, that's $1431.49.

Today's cost for a Lenovo M92 "Tiny" desktop is $749, which in 1980 dollars is $266.00.

Still think a computer can't be had for the same price scale?

Here's the CPI data: ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cpi/cpiai.txt Even if you accept that it's representative data, there has still been persistent inflation. Even if it's only 2-3 percent/year, it adds up. One dollar today is worth 79 cents in 2003.

Still, though, why do we have these restrictions? Why is an 11-inch barrel legal in one instance and illegal in another?

You should stop looking for a legitimate rationale or intellectual honesty within the NFA: it's almost entirely arbitrary and enforcement is capricious. Essentially, the only valid functional classification within the NFA is that of a machine gun (ie. a firearm that fires two or more shots with a single pull of a trigger); however, even that led to the ATF issuing a machine gun classification to a shoelace.

Furthermore, do you know that suppressors (aka "silencers") are classified as Title II firearms according to the NFA? Suppressors aren't "Hollywood quiet" in real life. As a matter of fact, I believe we should propose gun safety legislation to allow "firearm mufflers" ownership to be unrestricted, just like in Finland, Norway, Poland, Italy, etc. Gun safety for hearing protection, of course.

Essentially, the NFA was the 1930's equivalent of the "assault weapons" ban: a ban on "scary looking things" and machine guns. However, at that time the intellectual dishonesty of the Wickard v. Filburn decision had yet to come to pass. Therefore, the gun control proponents felt constrained by the Constitution: they had no power to ban these weapons but they had the power to tax. Therefore, they set a fixed $200 tax on these "evil weapons" that was many times the value of the regulated items.

Now they don't bother with workarounds that. According to the Supreme Court in Gonzales v. Raich, even producing something and giving it away for free within a single state qualifies as "interstate commerce", which implies that Congress can regulate, restrict, or ban it.

So, you asked the correct question, but ultimately there is no valid rationale for the law for you to find. Your question also applies to the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban (and Feinstein's current proposed law): what valid reason exists to ban things simply due to cosmetics? Why are pistol grips on rifles "evil", but are okay on pistols? Why are adjustable rifle stocks evil?

It's farcical.

What possible public interest is served by making rifles legal, pistols legal, "short-barreled rifles" legal, but a Frankengun that's a rifle with a barrel less than 16 inches illegal?

Actually, all of those are legal provided you comply with the NFA.

Title I firearms (eg. rifes, pistols, shotguns) are the "regular" kind of firearms found in everyday stores and require no NFA tax stamps. Title II firearms are things like short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, suppressors, machine guns, and "Any Other Weapons" (AOW); these require the tax stamp, approval from the federal government to own, etc.

The "Frankengun" you describe would be classified as an NFA short-barreled rifle (cf. this rifle) needing a stamp + federal approval, unless it lacked a stock, whereupon it would be classified as a regular handgun (cf. this pistol) with no restrictions, unless it had a vertical forward grip, whereupon it would be an AOW and need a stamp + federal approval.

BTW, you have to choose the firearm's classification *before* you make/obtain the firearm (see first link in my post).

It's much more than inflation:

1) The first edition of the book came out in 1993 or 1994. The cost was around 20 dollars.

2) Fast forward to today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics Inflation Calculator says 20 dollars in 1993 should be 32 dollars today.

So the 110 dollar current cost is significantly more than can be explained by inflation. IMO it's part of road-to-hell-paved-with-good-intentions government intervention plus the worldwide debt bubble.

4 hours is too high for the average, though we can easily imagine some people watch more than that.

The Bureau for Labor Statistics says the average in the USA is 2.8 hours per day.

Watching TV was the leisure activity that occupied the most time (2.8 hours per day), accounting for about half of leisure time, on average, for those age 15 and over. Socializing, such as visiting with friends or attending or hosting social events, was the next most common leisure activity, accounting for nearly three-quarters of an hour per day.

That said, individuals aged 15 to 19 also used a computer for leisure for 1.2 hours a day, so that adds up to 4 hours, we've just shifted our attention away from TV to other video-based entertainments.

Just a few years ago, the budget was 2/3 of what it is now, so how were food inspections paid for then?

Most people don't realize that this big deficit spending problem started when the $787B "one time stimulus" became part of the baseline budget and was re-spent (and then some) year after year after year on the biggest government expansion ever seen on this Earth. That $787B is STILL being spent over and over again.

Bond Bubble Ben is still printing Bernanke Bucks at a rate of about $1T/year as well, because the FED is the only entity willing to buy new US debt anymore.

When are Americans going to wake up and realize that you can't spend money you don't have on things you neither want nor need and expect to come out ahead at the end of the day?

I guess "as long as I'm getting mine" is the new American Dream.

Here are some gross, as in disgusting, numbers for US Government Spending:

2006: 2655.1B
2007: 2728.7B
2008: 2982.5B
2009: 3517.7B
2010: 3456.2B
2011: 3598.1B

2001: 1862.8B

If you take the 2001 spending figure and adjust it for inflation, it is 2411B, so in 2011 dollars we're spending 1186B more than we were in 2001.

1.2T in government growth, people. That's 49%. And that's just government growth at the federal level. Government is taking fully 50% more money from us (and our kids, and their kids, and probably also their kids after that) than they were 10 years ago.

Sources:

http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/HistoricalBudgetData.xls

ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cpi/cpiai.txt

I don't know, that only points out that their does seem to be other factors involved in the crime rate. I would there for be curious to know what the rate between two cities with similar social economic standards and similar differences between abortion rates would like. You can't really take two cases and directly compare them without excluding subject with other major factors.

Phoenix residents can carry concealed weapons without a permit. Chicago currently doesn't(though the law was tossed and Illinois has 6 months to re-write the law and they will. Does that affect the numbers?

Phoenix has an unemployment rate of 6.7
Chicago has an unemployment rate of 8.6
source: http://www.bls.gov/web/metro/laulrgma.htm
would this affect the numbers?

I don't know if abortions affect crime levels I can see the point in the assumption but taking only two cities in one country that have very different demographics and comparing them is seriously flawed. You have to exclude all the other variables in the sample and have a larger sample size or your statistics are going to get hammered.

Dear OP: The issue I think a lot of people have with college is that they think they are primarily there to learn something, and when they don't seem to be learning something new and exciting every day they feel it's a waste of time. The reason a lot of college students believe that is because they've never had a real job and they've heard from their friends and high school teachers and parents that they won't be able to get a job without college. Thus, they put two and two together in their minds and make 3: college somehow teaches me to do a job, so an employer wants a college degree because I'll already know how to do the job. This could not be more false.

What a college degree signals to an employer is not that you know anything (because you could have forgotten it all, or learned stuff 20 years ago). It is that you are a productive individual. Individual degrees sub-signal various levels of productivity and other skills. In CS, they are basically giving grades away if you just go to class. A LOT of programmer and nerd types just cannot make it to class, so the degree is a signal that you can get up and make it to class for 4 years so you might be an OK employee. They don't give a shit if you know C++, the tech changes literally YEARLY. Your boss likely also will have a CS major from 10 years ago and none of that education will be relevant. But, he is a productive individual, productive enough to have completed a four year education program.

Certainly you're going to get a lot of comments that say that the fundamental building blocks of CS change your way of thinking about certain problems and thus may help you solve problems better when you get to the real world. You're almost definitely going to need more training when you get to an employer and that's why they have entry level and Jr. programmer positions so you can get up to speed on the tech once you complete your degree. Get it out of your head that you're going to exit out of school and somehow fall into a job making more than your friends with 4 years of experience who skipped the school thing. You won't. Where the degree pays off is in the long run, when you'll be picked for jobs the people with degrees are passed up for (no guarantee of productivity for them), get the salaried management positions that are illegal to give to people without a degree, etc. Plus, if you feel like you're still out-classed, you can go back and get your master's and show prospective employers that you're willing to work 80 hours a week.

So, sure, it may not be the best system, but this is how the system is used in the real world. If you go into an employer and start working alongside experienced people and start talking about some shit you learned in college, you are not going to make many friends. Your degree doesn't make you into anything. But it does signal that you are productive enough to get a degree. And that's good enough to have you making twice as much when you're 50.

Here it is in graphical form http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm, finish your degree and join the club where we make twice (on average) what non-degree holders make because we get more opportunities in this biased, discriminatory world.

I was going to say the same thing, because there is a meme out there that the CPI leaves out some key things. Then I did some research, and it appears that the meme is actually a lie.

http://www.bls.gov/dolfaq/bls_ques3.htm

I suggest you do some research on your own. There are some issues with the CPI. Namely, the exact goods in each category can change. For example, for "meat" they might use "filet migon" one time and then "t-bone steak" the next. They claim that they do that because the CPI reflects consumer purchasing habits, and as costs go up, consumers purchase less expensive alternatives.

I'll look into it. The main issues as I recall are that they tend to leave out energy and food, though perhaps not as extensively as believed, when they didn't used to.

I was going to say the same thing, because there is a meme out there that the CPI leaves out some key things. Then I did some research, and it appears that the meme is actually a lie.

http://www.bls.gov/dolfaq/bls_ques3.htm

I suggest you do some research on your own. There are some issues with the CPI. Namely, the exact goods in each category can change. For example, for "meat" they might use "filet migon" one time and then "t-bone steak" the next. They claim that they do that because the CPI reflects consumer purchasing habits, and as costs go up, consumers purchase less expensive alternatives.

Well, I'm pretty sure the statistics are in the "white lie, black lie, statistics" category. Compare these:

Unemployment rate and Employment-population rate

Of course a little bit of that can be demographic changes but for the most part it's "hidden" unemployment in people studying, giving up, getting on some kind of benefits - no more of the population is actually employed today than back in late 2009. In the EU they've already started to run out of smoke and mirrors to cover up their unemployment and debt problems. The world economy is already down but right now I think it's more likely to get a kick in the groin than to get up on its feet.