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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.

Wrong question. The proper question is "how often is it the primary caretaker who gets sole custody?" and the answer, as you'd expect, is probably close to 90% or higher. If a child is raised by a stay-at-home parent, the courts will almost always find that parent to be the best caretaker for the child, absent some unusual circumstances.

[citation needed].

There were three sentences there... Is there a specific one you'd like a citation for? I mean, I'm happy to help answer your question, but you have to be a little more definite with what the question is.

There were three sentences, but only one conclusion. You appeared to hypothesize that the discrepancy in custody awarding was due to the courts awarding custody to stay at home moms over dads who have left the parenting to their wives. Well, only 23% of married mothers of children under 15 were stay-at-home moms (link), but the wife got sole custody ~70% of the time (link and apologies for the slightly less trustworthy source. It was honestly the only thing I found that gave the ratio custodialFathers:custodialMothers:jointCustody.) Two things to note:
1. In my brief research, I encountered some evidence (although not enough to completely convince me) that this discrepancy was due to fathers asking for custody less. It appears both you and the poster you were replying to may be wrong.
2. I admit that the question of who is the primary caretaker is harder to determine. But, since I have shown that the father gets sole custody 10% of the time (30% when combined with joint custody), you must now show that this is reflected in the proportion of parenting duties carried out by mothers and fathers. Please note, I am not claiming I know why custody gets split the way it is, much less that it must be because of discrimination. I am simply saying that I don't accept that that your explanation is correct either.

How often it's the female who pays alimony/child support to the male? Next to never?

Exactly as often as the male is the primary caretaker and the female is the one with the career. Again, rare in the pre-feminism days, increasing now, thanks to feminism.

Well, it turns out that in 2006, 33.4% of wives earned more than their husbands (link. But only 3.6% of alimony recipients were male (link), so it looks like you're wrong in claiming that alimony payments are being distributed fairly.

Did you realize that you were changing the terms mid-question? I'm going to assume good faith on your part and that you just weren't thinking when you wrote the question.

First, this is a question about child support and primary caretakers [of the child] and your statistic is about... alimony. Unrelated. And, contrary to your assertion, I never said anything about "alimony payments being distributed fairly." But we'll come back to that in a second.

The person you were responding to asked about both child support and alimony. I assumed--apparently erroneously, my apologies--that you were trying to answer both questions, which is why I talked about alimony

Second, you mentioned that 33.4% of wives earned more than husbands, but you were responding to a question about primary caretaker vs. non-primary caretaker. Unless you're making the bold (and incorrect) assertion that wives are always the primary caretaker, then your statistic is unrelated to the point you're trying to make. Again, when husbands are primary caretakers,

5) Income disparity. I don't really care if rich people make a lot more money but the average American salary isn't enough to live properly and I'm not talking about unnecessary purchases, I'm talking about making sure you eat healthy food and that your live is good enough to exercise instead of sitting on the couch after a hard day of doing work you hate and having some pizza because you don't care about anything.

Care to cite that? Most people who complain that they don't make enough money to live, really mean that they don't make enough money to buy stupid consumer electronics. What's wrong with our incomes is that we, somewhere along the way, decided that want = need.

Are you daft? I tell you what. Go ahead and create a budget that will allow you and your family to live on (gross pay) $756/week* (median weekly income for Americans in 2011 -- Note that since this is a median, half of Americans make less than this). Let me know how that works out for you.

*Data from http://data.bls.gov./ Note that needs to be adjusted to incorporate Federal and FICA withholding. State/local withholding not included here: $756*0.79 = $579.24. I'd also note that this would cover my rent (no wants like food, electricity, etc.) and leave ~$100/week for *everything* else.

So either inform yourself about reality or stop lying to yourself and others. Or both.

Wrong question. The proper question is "how often is it the primary caretaker who gets sole custody?" and the answer, as you'd expect, is probably close to 90% or higher. If a child is raised by a stay-at-home parent, the courts will almost always find that parent to be the best caretaker for the child, absent some unusual circumstances.

[citation needed].

There were three sentences there... Is there a specific one you'd like a citation for? I mean, I'm happy to help answer your question, but you have to be a little more definite with what the question is.

How often it's the female who pays alimony/child support to the male? Next to never?

Exactly as often as the male is the primary caretaker and the female is the one with the career. Again, rare in the pre-feminism days, increasing now, thanks to feminism.

Well, it turns out that in 2006, 33.4% of wives earned more than their husbands (link. But only 3.6% of alimony recipients were male (link), so it looks like you're wrong in claiming that alimony payments are being distributed fairly.

Did you realize that you were changing the terms mid-question? I'm going to assume good faith on your part and that you just weren't thinking when you wrote the question.
First, this is a question about child support and primary caretakers [of the child] and your statistic is about... alimony. Unrelated. And, contrary to your assertion, I never said anything about "alimony payments being distributed fairly." But we'll come back to that in a second.
Second, you mentioned that 33.4% of wives earned more than husbands, but you were responding to a question about primary caretaker vs. non-primary caretaker. Unless you're making the bold (and incorrect) assertion that wives are always the primary caretaker, then your statistic is unrelated to the point you're trying to make. Again, when husbands are primary caretakers, such as stay-at-home-dads, then working wives will pay child support, because the court considers the primary caretaker to be the best custodian for the kid, generally, and the non-custodial parent pays support.
Third, returning to your attempted goalpost-moving, your statistic has a bunch of false assumptions and hidden numbers, because you're comparing unrelated things... 33% of wives out earn their husbands, but only 3.6% of alimony recipients are male. Gosh, that'd be shocking if 100% of divorcees receive alimony. But wait, that's not true. It's far less, in fact. only 15% of divorces get alimony. Why, if most of those cases of wives out-earning husbands are cases where both parties have good incomes - say one makes $100k and the other makes $120k - then alimony wouldn't be awarded at all. So your numbers about the overall income levels may have no relationship whatsoever to the income levels of people who get or pay alimony.

So, in summary: (i) stay on topic, we're talking about child support; (ii) your numbers are invalid as they relate to alimony, because your primary number has nothing to do with alimony.

I haven't had a chance to read the new versions of the Violence Against Women Act, but I have skimmed it and read summaries. It is my understanding that the gender-neutral terminology was added to protect BGLTQ victims (a noble goal, to be sure), and that their exists no mandate in the law to assign funding to programs for battered men on a fair basis. Also, it is my understanding that said gender-neutral language wasn't in the original law, which was passed with the help of feminists.

I'm not sure what your point here is: that you don't understand the law, or that feminists haven't achieved 100% o

How often it's the male who gets the sole custody? 5% maybe? How many in case of females?

Wrong question. The proper question is "how often is it the primary caretaker who gets sole custody?" and the answer, as you'd expect, is probably close to 90% or higher. If a child is raised by a stay-at-home parent, the courts will almost always find that parent to be the best caretaker for the child, absent some unusual circumstances.

[citation needed].

Then the second question is "how often is the primary caretaker female?" And here, rather than biatching about feminism, you should be praising it. Go back 50 years, and that answer would be nigh-100% of the time. But now, with women able to have careers and advanced education, that rate is declining. Feminism is the answer to this problem, not the cause of it.

And similarly, it's the answer to most of your complaints:

How often it's the female who pays alimony/child support to the male? Next to never?

Exactly as often as the male is the primary caretaker and the female is the one with the career. Again, rare in the pre-feminism days, increasing now, thanks to feminism.

Well, it turns out that in 2006, 33.4% of wives earned more than their husbands (link. But only 3.6% of alimony recipients were male (link), so it looks like you're wrong in claiming that alimony payments are being distributed fairly.

How often it's the male who gets locked up by default in case of domestic violence because of the concept of 'predominant aggressor' enshrined by the DV laws?

And feminism is changing those laws too, to make them gender neutral. There are abused men out there, and by mixing this in with complaints about child custody, you're doing them a disservice.

I haven't had a chance to read the new versions of the Violence Against Women Act, but I have skimmed it and read summaries. It is my understanding that the gender-neutral terminology was added to protect BGLTQ victims (a noble goal, to be sure), and that their exists no mandate in the law to assign funding to programs for battered men on a fair basis. Also, it is my understanding that said gender-neutral language wasn't in the original law, which was passed with the help of feminists.

On a related note, remember when the FBI updated their definition of rape a few years back? That was done thanks to lobbying by feminist groups (good for them). Although the new definition at least acknowledges the concept of a male victim, it doesn't include being made to penetrate, which would likely be a more common crime for women to commit than men. Feminist had a large amount of input here, so why didn't they fix this? Why is it that

Why is that men are only approx 1% of are allowed to the shelters for DV victims?

Because of our historical culture that says that women are weak and fragile and can't have jobs or careers and men are strong and stoic.

This isn't a scientific study, but it does cast doubt on your hypothesis. What Would You Do? did a segment in which a female actor physically abused her "boyfriend" (also an actor). Almost nobody stopped to help in any way, which was not the case when the roles were reversed. They interviewed the people who walked by and did nothing, and almost exclusively their response was not "he can take care of himself" (as you would predict), it was "he must have done something to deserve it."

Again, feminism is the answer to this complaint, not the cause.

Although I can't claim to have seen every piece of feminist thought out there relating to domestic violence, not

Your arguments:

Inflation:

Grocery inflation is running at under 2% a year. Overall inflation is about the same. Credible alternative measures of inflation support the BLS data. You are wrong.

Source: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm

Taxing:

Money was lent, not spent. It has been repaid. The actions happened in a Liquidity Trap, where evidence for crowding out is non-existent. And evidence for even soft Ricardian Equivalence is weak, so your argument doesn't even make sense under your misconstruction. You are wrong for several reasons.

But interesting! Don't fall too far down the Austrian School hole, though. The past 6 years have proven that modern Keynesian economic models are a very good description of how the global economy actually responded to the recent massive financial problems. Saltwater is simply (and rightfully) abusing Freshwater at this point - certain conservative economists and pundits should be embarrassed to continue to flog their dead talking points.

Uh oh, you better check some real sources...like the BLS website. Looks like food is in fact the top item category in the CPI-U calculation. The Federal Reserve uses the all items less food and energy, known as the "Core", CPI-U numbers even though the BLS releases numbers including and excluding food and energy. Even then the Fed uses PCE numbers to make actual policy decisions rather than the CPI. The PCE calculation is close to the Chained CPI-U numbers the BLS now releases which take into account things like item substitution.

Except the big problem in the recession has been too little inflation

Try telling that to anyone who actually gets out of the basement to buy food and fuel. They will laugh at that idea, but inside they will be extremely upset.

The price at the pump is determined by the world price for oil (which is world supply and demand, and the strength of the US dollar). And gas prices have yet to hit pre-meltdown levels, hell, just yesterday I was driving by gas stations surprised at how cheap it was, and I can also remember the prices in '07 and '08 that are higher than anything I've seen since.

As for food it's risen about 1.8% in the past year. Sure you can cherry pick a few items that have gone up more, but there's others that have stayed the same or even gone down. (my grocery bill has definitely gone down, but I've also grown smarter with my shopping habits)

"as U.S. food prices have skyrocketed"
what?

"on bell peppers at $4 each"
holy crap. That must be based on location and not deficit spending and quantitative easing.

My kids love Bell peppers so I buy them regularly. Never seen them higher the 2 dollars, and that's in a bad year off season.
Lets forget personal anecdote and look at the numbers:
http://www.bls.gov/ro3/apmw.htm

Hey, food prices are down in the US.
There was a spike in 08/09. then slight trend down.

But you keep going on about how your preceived food increase is the fault of thank deficit spending and quantitative easing

"Oh, but the cost!" you might say. Well look. We don't need the work of all the people we have. It turns out that something like 1 in 4 Americans is all that's required to maintain our standard of living. According the US Bureau of Labor Statistics we have 11 million underemployed people in the US, or $500B/year worth of people who could do be doing something interesting and useful who aren't. And that's just the US, and I think that number is understated 2x. Besides, we'd like to be rid of that nuclear fuel anyway.

Unfortunately, people are a poor nuclear fuel source, regardless of their qualities as a food source...

"Oh, but the cost!" you might say. Well look. We don't need the work of all the people we have. It turns out that something like 1 in 4 Americans is all that's required to maintain our standard of living. According the US Bureau of Labor Statistics we have 11 million underemployed people in the US, or $500B/year worth of people who could do be doing something interesting and useful who aren't. And that's just the US, and I think that number is understated 2x. Besides, we'd like to be rid of that nuclear fuel anyway.

Are you suggesting that we send our telephone sanitizers, hairdressers, jingle writers, management consultants, insurance salesmen, public relations executives, etc to Tau Ceti? Maybe we could call the ship the "B" Ark....

You make me post this in every extrasolar planetary thread and it's really annoying.

Voyager 1 is nowhere near current technology. We have ion thrusters now. We have supercomputers now. Hell, your cellphone would have been a supercomputer to the guys who designed that thing. We have water on the moon, in near-earth asteroids, and a limitless supply in Ceres, and we didn't know that then. We have new methods of separating that water into hydrogen and oxygen on orbit efficiently, so it doesn't have to be hoisted out of our gravity well. We have far more understanding about long-term space missions and habitation. Plants grow in space! We didn't know that either. We have commercial rockets that can dock with the space station: an absurd sci-fi fantasy back then. We have robots who can do the work of gathering fuel without too much supervision. We have robots that could survive the kind of acceleration provided by a 1000 km railgun that it would take to put the robots there in a reasonable time, and a place in low-g to put that rail gun and robots to build it. And software to put on the robots that apparently can withstand a 24 year ping time.

In fact, recent learnings about the Voyager Anomaly point to an obvious way to propel interstellar spacecraft: Put a couple dozen 200 MW fission reactors behind some heat/radiation shields and point them in the opposite direction from where you want to go, and let them melt down. The heat provides thrust. At 745 W per HP, that's good for a few thousand horsepower of thrust. Since a Newton is a Horsepower-second, near enough, and the reactors run for many years, that's insane number of Newtons. We actually used to have a project that worked on this theory called Project Orion.

So, for example, get the robots to gather up some water and refine it into LH2/LO2. Slide some of that fuel down to LEO and pick up a commercial hydrox booster and lift it into high orbit and fill it. Repeat until you have seven of them. Now arrange them in a filled hexagon at L2 orbit just beyond the moon, and fill with hydrox. Strap your meltdown-driven spacecraft and habitat/humans/robotic exploration package on the nose, and at the most opportune time when your cislunar orbit is headed closest to the desired direction, light that shit off. Boost for 2.5 minutes at 6 g, and discard the 7 Saturn boosters. You're already several times past solar system escape velocity, and your course is assured. Then engage the thermal drive and melt down the reactors and continue to boost at something on the order of 40 billion Newtons per year as you head to the nearest star. Somebody do the math for me. I'm thinking 50 years.

"Oh, but the cost!" you might say. Well look. We don't need the work of all the people we have. It turns out that something like 1 in 4 Americans is all that's required to maintain our standard of living. According the US Bureau of Labor Statistics we have 11 million underemployed people in the US, or $500B/year worth of people who could do be doing something interesting and useful who aren't. And that's just the US, and I think that number is understated 2x. Besides, we'd like to be rid of that nuclear fuel anyway.

I'm not even in the space field and I could figure out how to get people to Tau Ceti in under one human lifespan with resources like that, or robots sooner still. We could do it, right now, with the resources and science that we have. It would be a one-way trip, but we would not lack for volunteers or robots. From one economic point of view it wouldn't cost us one whit more than we're already paying, and instead of being unhappily idle the proletariat would be excitedly engaged in a worthy endeavour. You just have to sell it.

Just because your grandparents couldn't figure out how to do this don't assume that the current generation can't.

Marx was writing in an era when about 90% of the workforce was engaged in farming or manufacture. It was an era when just producing enough stuff was a big problem. For the developed world, making enough stuff became a solved problem in the 1950s and 1960s. Making enough good stuff was solved in the 1980s.

Today, about 3% of the US labor force is involved in farming, and 9% in manufacturing, and 4% in construction. So about 16% of the work force produces all the stuff. Marx's writing assumes that goods production dominates the economy, and it just doesn't any more. We need different analysis now.

It is misleading to graph Real Productivity vs. Real Income.
The BLS uses different notions of inflation for Productivity vs. Household Income.
There is no absolute notion of inflation. Inflation depends on the basket of goods tracked. The basket of goods is very different for the sort of consumer items households purchase vs. the sort of items relevant to business costs.
The Consumer Price Index(CPI) has undergone significantly more inflation than the Implicit Price Deflator for the Nonfarm Business Sector(IPDNBS). A significant portion of the divergence in the graphs in the article is simply a reflection of this difference in inflation.
Here is a nice pdf from the BLS showcasing these issues: http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2011/01/art3full.pdf

Further research indicates that 3 comprehensive studies were made regarding the internet and it's effect on jobs that I can find. The latest of which I believe was in 2007, which used data from 2005 I think (the values they quoted for Amazon, and Google were about 1/3rd of what the are today). In any case, those were based on information gathered from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics which breaks down where all the jobs are. From analyzing that, they determined the 1.2 Million direct jobs were created from the internet and an additional 1.98 million indirect jobs were created (support staff, like construction of datacenters, etc) for a total of over 3 million jobs created.

Other sectors lost ~500k jobs, of which the majority are from the USPS (Currently down ~200k from their peak, and now back to 1968 levels). I didn't look further into the breakdown, but you can query all the data yourself at http://www.bls.gov/

So you upgraded minimum wage to $10/hour, as if you are making a point?

While you are pulling numbers out of your ass, why not at least look at real ones?

The lowest sub-categorized figures here as of Nov 2012 is $13.38/hour, the next lowest is $16.40/hour, and the 3rd from the bottom is $20.85/hour. These are "Leisure and Hospitality", "Retail Trade", and "Other Services" in that order. Above those are all forms of manufacturing, where the lowest average is $21.86.

People who make $10 an hour, just like the people who make minimum wage, are suckers and people that screwed up their lives.

Is it really so hard for you people to not pull demonstrably insane numbers out of your ass while you are trying to justify your preconceived notions?

BLS shows that labor participation rates include everyone over the age of 16, which includes seniors. http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000

The boomers are now retiring, which is why you're seeing a few percentage point drop in participation rates over the last few years.

That's only an hour per day per account. Consider that accounts can be tied to multiple devices, and streamed from those devices simultaneously. That means accounts can be shared between more than one user quite effectively. Every household I know of that uses Netflix has a single account tied to multiple devices, with different people watching shows independently.

Additionally, the average American watches 2.8 hours of TV a day. That means that even if each account represented one average American, if just a third of their TV viewing was via Netflix, the numbers line up.

But, never fear! The SEC will be spending regulatory dollars to discern if these numbers are accurate or not, so we shall soon know for sure!

how business seems to be thriving there, I think there isn't much to worry about.

The unemployment rate in California is 10.2%, third highest in the country. I wouldn't call that "thriving".

Well, the mean hourly wage for employed folks in Virginia (right to work state, 5.9% unemployment) is $23.50 while the mean hourly wage in Michigan (not a right to work state, 9.3% unemployment) is $21.01.

If you feel like putting together a complete table, you can find the data at http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oessrcst.htm. If I had to make a bet, I'd bet on the pool of unemployed workers dragging down the wage of employed workers so that there's a similar correlation between right to work and wages as there is between right to work and unemployment.

Challenge accepted.

Unemployment rates by state:
http://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm

Right to work states:
http://www.nrtw.org/rtws.htm

23 states are right to work. 27 states and DC are not.

The average of the unemployment rates listed at your source for states designated right to work is 7.07%

The average of the unemployment rates listed at your source for states NOT designated right to work is 7.82%

Of the 25 states with the lowest unemployment, 13 are right to work states. Of the 25 states with the highest unemployment, 10 are right to work states.

All five of the states with the lowest unemployment are right to work states and none of them see their primary income from tourism. Only two of the states with the highest unemployment are right to work states and one of them (Nevada) lives and dies on a tourism market that goes very soft in a bad economy.

Correlation is not necessarily causation, but there IS a pretty clear correlation between right to work and lower unemployment.

Got anything else to say clever guy?

In the US, there are more than 500 000 new businesses started every year (sole proprieters, limited partnerships, and such). Want to opt out of all the new businesses? Prepare to wind your way through 1300+ opt out forms and procedures every day of the year for the rest of your life. Then there are the 2/3rds of a million corporations that have been around longer than a year. In your free time you can opt out of those; at 1000/day it should only take 2 years with a few weekends off.

Requiring people to opt out is demonstrably insane.

http://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-moving/airline-and-commercial-pilots.htm#tab-5

Just to bring some numbers into the discussion.

Personally, I'm a private pilot, I would NEVER make this my profession - so much more money to make in IT, and working hours as a pilot are pretty bad mostly.
Don't forget that entry level pay is much less than those stats show - that's the MEDIAN (not even average).

"The median annual wage of commercial pilots was $67,500 in May 2010. Among commercial pilots, the lowest 10 percent earned less than $34,860 and the top 10 percent earned more than $119,650."

For such an important job this pay is RIDICULOUSLY LOW.

And that's exactly what the CPI does. Read the FAQ. It does include food, fuel, and housing, and weights the prices. There are a lot of smart, dedicated researchers working on these data series - there's no conspiracy. Trust me, the left is far too disorganized for there to be one.

The country has more takers than makers

Wrong. Yes, the participation rate is the lowest it has been since WWII, but it is still the majority of adults in the country. 63% still participate. Until that number drops below 50%, you're wrong.

Where do you get your misinformation? Of course food and gas are included in the CPI. From the Bureau of Labor Statistics website:

What goods and services does the CPI cover?

The CPI represents all goods and services purchased for consumption by the reference population (U or W) BLS has classified all expenditure items into more than 200 categories, arranged into eight major groups. Major groups and examples of categories in each are as follows:

        FOOD AND BEVERAGES (breakfast cereal, milk, coffee, chicken, wine, full service meals, snacks)
        HOUSING (rent of primary residence, owners' equivalent rent, fuel oil, bedroom furniture)
        APPAREL (men's shirts and sweaters, women's dresses, jewelry)
        TRANSPORTATION (new vehicles, airline fares, gasoline, motor vehicle insurance)
        MEDICAL CARE (prescription drugs and medical supplies, physicians' services, eyeglasses and eye care, hospital services)
        RECREATION (televisions, toys, pets and pet products, sports equipment, admissions);
        EDUCATION AND COMMUNICATION (college tuition, postage, telephone services, computer software and accessories);
        OTHER GOODS AND SERVICES (tobacco and smoking products, haircuts and other personal services, funeral expenses).

Please educate yourself before making such outlandish claims in the future.

What probably happened is that an expensive vehicle came out with two highly trained professionals

I really wish that were the case, but... Ambulance workers are not paid well. I've known a few, and they weren't exceptionally well trained either. They were doing it while doing other training, etc. (I forget all the details, but it seems a lot of firefighters work as EMTs/ambulance workers early on).

The other part of that is that the health care system in the US is screwed up, and to a large extent has the worst of free enterprise and the worst of government control. Most people who get such health care are largely insulated from the costs, and both the hospital and insurance companies are trying to make money. This really sucks when you're poor, lack health insurance, and need health care. I have great insurance, and was able to look over all the fees without personal shock, but things really did look awfully expensive.

I agree with you entirely. However, I think it's worth noting that "free enterprise" doesn't adapt to ambulances all that well. Prices aren't even discussed or negotiated ahead of time (unless you have insurance, and even then there are often big surprises). Imagine the free market solution: "Your husband is having a heart attack? We have one ambulance 5 minutes away and that will be $1500. There is another ambulance 15 minutes out and we can give you a discount to $750."

That's a very odd thing to say. The rich people are the ones who pay most of the taxes

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/stats/income_tax/table2-4.pdf

The top 25% pay 72.8% of total income tax. The top 10% pay 55.8%. The top 1% pay 24.8. You'd need a serious austerity program to compensate for even the top 1% leaving.

They create most of the jobs too - a rich self employed person is another way of describing a small business. Jobs was a dick but it's not as if Apple would have been anywhere near as profitable or have employed as many people without him. Now you can say that some people are motivated by things other than money. Well no doubt, but what about the ones whose motivation is purely monetary. If they all left or had their property expropriated there's no real sign that the poor would get richer. In fact if you look at the USSR, Belarus, PRC etc the odds are that the poor would get poorer.

Now if you look at Sweden for example - which is really an example of a low inequality society done well - you find that

http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/03/income-distribution-in-us-and-sweden.html

Up until around the 45th percentile, Sweden does better than the U.S. After this the U.S opens up a substantial advantage. It is clearly better to be poor in Sweden compared to the U.S, and obviously to be rich in America compared to Sweden.

What matters most is that this graph illustrates that it is better to be middle class in America. The 60% in the middle earn 20% more in the U.S than they do in Sweden, even taking government purchases crudely into account. It is a myth that only a few at the top do better in the American system compared to even arguably the most successful of the European welfare states.

I.e. the poorest 45% would be better off in a Swedish style system. Everyone else would be better off in the US. The problem is that the job creators are, by definition, in the top 55%. So you'll find that successful companies - Apple, Google, Microsoft etc - are much more likely to be started in the US than in Sweden. In the long run that means that the number of coins to go round will be more in a laissez faire society than in one where the government seeks to reduce inequality.

If you look here at GDP per capita PPP the US does better than Sweden and has done since the 1960's

http://www.bls.gov/fls/intl_gdp_capita_gdp_hour.pdf

This would explain why the average European unemployment rate is 11.6%, versus 7.9% in the US.

Yep, much better employment situation there. I hope unions bring us the low unemployment of Europe, I can't wait to have an awesome employment situation like my European counterparts.

Obama has pushed it even further in only 4 years than Bush did in 8...

I believe you're mistaken, at least partially. It's a common misconception that Obama contributed more than Bush to the financial collapse but the vast majority of statistics I've seen have suggested otherwise.

If we look at unemployment for instance, there was a sharp rise that began in 2008, which can hardly be blamed on Obama. Obama came into office as things were already going poorly and while he may not have done enough to fix it, the mess was clearly not his doing.

Since he's been in office, we've seen a slow but steady improvement in the economy and a decrease in unemployment rates. Though his handling of fiscal policies has been poor, he's still above Bush in my eyes, who cut taxes and began two unfunded wars.

Sources too, since everyone here loves data: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000

Note that Obama became president in the middle of that big uphill slope.

This is bullshit I am sick of this cops put their life on the line crap, the data does not support it. In 2010 according to the bureau of labor statistics workplace fatalities report there were 545 work related deaths of workers classified as Management occupations, 261 work related deaths of Protective service occupations (inc fire, police, security guards, etc.) One could argue that the rate per 100k is high for Protective service occupations (7.4%) vs management (3.4%) but that ignores the 7% for repair and maintenance occupations, 11% death rate for construction occupations, 14.2% for transportation occupations, and 25.3% for Farming, fishing, and forestry occupations. We can dig deeper and see that all government occupations have workplace fatalities at a rate of 2.2%.

Police and fire jobs are not dangerous, they just pound their chest and proclaim that they are heroes and deserve to be worshiped. If risk of death is what makes you a hero in our society, lets worship the farmers, fishers, and foresters. Without them we really would be dead.

Source: http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/cfoi_revised10.pdf (all rates are per 100k)

That article compares workers to workers, not the countries' populations as a whole. How is the higher productivity of each American worker offset by the huge number of Americans who are, for example, either unemployed (7.8%), on welfare or some other entitlement program (21.8% for federal programs alone), or engage in non-wealth-producing labor such as working for the government (4%)? (Obviously some of those categories overlap so you can't just add them together.)

We may have among the most productive workers, but how much is that being offset by the deadweight we're supporting with it?

What's the price? We have higher state taxes in NY, well worth it in many cases.

And an unemployment rate a full percent higher than in PA.

Right, because 150K people entering the work force monthly is easily handled by 110k - 140k new jobs?

You're demagoguing this issue though. The fact is your job creation graph doesn't give the whole story.

http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000/

Sorry but in the world I live in you cannot create 'new jobs' until you've replaced the ones you've lost already. This logic is based on the fact that our popular continues to grow, and new workers continue to require jobs.

I don't gamble. A COD from my bank right now will yield 1.05% on a 36 month note.

You're gambling that puny 1.05% that you won't need your money before 36 months are up. According to the BLS as of August the CPI-U is up +1.7% from a year ago. Of course half the battle of saving is is simply the self-discipline not to spend it, but you're proposing to tie up your money for three years at an almost certain loss.

Your NAS will cost more than $4 in electricity per month.

Not for a home NAS.

A monthly increment of $4 on a typical US utility bill is equal to about 29½kWh of energy usage (according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average in the US was $0.135/kWh in summer 2012). Consider a Synology DS213 with 8TB in two disks. Even if the disks were perpetually spinning, it would consume 13kWh per month. If the disks were spun down the whole time, usage would be 6kWh per month. In fact, the disks spend the vast majority of the time spun down, so the energy usage is closer to the lower figure. So that $4 per month for electricity is equivalent to having three or four of these NAS units in typical use.

What are you talking about? Who has one always-active CRT, let alone four?

They use only 25% of the consumption of a 4-TON AC unit

A 4 ton A/C unit could cool a 3,300 sq. ft. house What percentage of the population has such a "typical" mega mansion?

the same power monthly as a single 8000 BTU window air conditioner

OK, about 6.6 amps

So, 6.6 amps times 24 hours = 158.4 amp hours, times 120 volts = 19,000 watts. In Chicago, electricity costs 14.8 cents/kwhour. Total cost $2.81 for electricity.

For a 30mpg car, trip uses 2/3 of a gallon. Say gas costs $4/gal. Total spent: $2.67.

OOPS.

Maybe next time you could give us a LoC metric so we could more easily figure out what your point is.

For more than 3.8 million Americans, a wage of $15/hour is more than **double** what they're making right now. http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2011.htm

This is not exactly supply and demand issue, this is a shrinking economy and inflation issue. The shrinking economy causes people to use less gasoline and inflation causes nominal prices to rise (while real prices are actually falling due to the deflation, so if you measure oil in gold, then you'll see that the prices are falling, not rising).

As the productivity in USA and Europe shrinks, more of the product is distributed to the productive nations, which are able to buy more of that product, but this causes supply irregularities in the countries with less supply.

The situation is similar to what happens in the meat market due to inflation and other factors (like drought). As the supply of feed is reduced due to higher input costs because of inflation and as less supply is produced due to other factors like drought, the farmers start getting rid of their animals, they slaughter more and the prices can fall temporarily. However once that glut of meat is consumed, the overall supply of the animals is reduced and the prices for meat products will jump up.

I believe you are observing the same phenomena right now with oil prices and it's due to higher nominal cost of oil drilling and refining due to inflation as well as lower purchasing power by the population due to the inflation and due to the shrinking economy.

As a side note, the funny jobs numbers that came out (unemployment down to 7.8%) are indeed quite educating to the political situation in USA. 10,000 jobs were added in government and 16,000 jobs were lost in manufacturing sector in September (22,000 manufacturing jobs lost in August). However a 'household survey' shows that 873,000 jobs were created in September, this is the highest number of jobs added in one months since 1983. 66% of these jobs are part time, so the U6 number is unchanged (just under 15%) in September (number of underemployed people as well of those who are unemployed). Don't forget that every revision that comes out the next month revises the job growth numbers down and elections are in November. Don't forget that Obama's white house pressured the military (and other) contractors not to send out pink slips to their employees, who will be fired in 2 months and who must be notified 60 days prior, the white house promised all those contractors to take care of the penalties that they will incur due to this malpractice, this is clearly a violation and manipulation aimed at winning the elections, which is likely highly illegal.

A week ago GDP numbers came out, not that anybody should actually take those numbers at face value, they are absolutely misreported, but even as they are, they were revised down for the second quarter from 1.7 to 1.3%, and this is after using a completely fake deflator of 1.6%. How is it possible that the economy that is "growing" (officially) by 1.6% is adding all these jobs to take the unemployment down to 7.8%? The truth of course is that the economy is shrinking and if the real inflation number is used, then it becomes immediately obvious. Even if the inflation number is only 3%, then the economy is shrinking, because the pre-deflator GDP is 2.9%. The inflation is a few times bigger than that though, so adding jobs in a shrinking economy sound very fishy.

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Think about this: the official deflator for the GDP is 1.6%. Here is a chart of CPI. That's the reported number. The revised GDP is 1.3% Which is down from 1.7% earlier, before the revision. The U6 unemployment number is 15%.

Yes, let's keep it real, indeed.

Consider the average benefits that people on food stamps get. For PA, this is about $128 a month, or about $30 per week, or just over $4 per day. That photo ID could then be considered three days worth of food.

According to the labor department, the poorest 20% of American households manage to squeak by making an average of $10k/year (after income tax, before payroll tax). That's just over $800/month. Could you afford your mortgage or rent on $800/month? There are over 24 million Americans in the lowest quintile who manage to eke out a living with that much income, and for them $13.50 really could be three days worth of food.

This doesn't even get into the part about how the IDs were supposed to be free, but the free ID didn't exist until a couple weeks ago. Or that there are multiple counties in PA with no PennDOT facilities to get these IDs, and that even more counties have one PennDOT facility open one day per week. Do you think these people can just hop on a bus from the middle of nowhere to the neighboring county? Or that they could walk? Certainly they can't drive, since they have no license.

There's no good data on "nature crimes" but as far as accidents and deaths go... http://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/osh_10202011.htm

The mining and petroleum industry in 2010 had an overall OSHA recordable rate of 2.3 (oil alone was a mere 1.2), which is much lower than the private sector average of 3.5. Utilities in general came out at 3.1.

http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/cfch0010.pdf (sorry, fatality data is only in pdf form)

Only 9% of workplace fatalities come from exposure to harmful substances or environments. While the mining fatality rate is high, it is still below agriculture/forestry, and comparable to transportation and warehousing. The occupations with the highest rates of fatalities don't have any related to mining or oil. Electrical line workers is in the top 10, but is true of all energy plants (even wind and solar).

There's no good data on "nature crimes" but as far as accidents and deaths go... http://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/osh_10202011.htm

The mining and petroleum industry in 2010 had an overall OSHA recordable rate of 2.3 (oil alone was a mere 1.2), which is much lower than the private sector average of 3.5. Utilities in general came out at 3.1.

http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/cfch0010.pdf (sorry, fatality data is only in pdf form)

Only 9% of workplace fatalities come from exposure to harmful substances or environments. While the mining fatality rate is high, it is still below agriculture/forestry, and comparable to transportation and warehousing. The occupations with the highest rates of fatalities don't have any related to mining or oil. Electrical line workers is in the top 10, but is true of all energy plants (even wind and solar).

It's always funny when you tell proponents of the death penalty that it costs a huge amount more.

Because most people don't understand the costs, or how they're calculated incorrectly.
Take this one, from Washington State for example, which is pretty typical.
It calculates the average cost of housing the DP inmate at $43,352 per year, and a "non-DP" inmate at $35,897 per year.

My main problem with that calculation: The "non-DP" average cost includes all the low-level, non-violent, low-security inmates... which potential DP candidates are NOT. They would almost definitely get the same cell and the same guards as they do now... with the other LWOP inmates. So the cost of the LWOP should be the same: $43,352. Even if you want to say 20, 50 or 80% of them would be transferred to lower security facilities, the cost per year will be $35,897 + 20, 50, or 80% of the difference.

Second, the average cost of housing an inmate assumes a younger, healthier inmate. DP inmates rarely reach the golden years (55+) of their lives where health care costs increase the cost of housing an inmate substantially.
The CDCR (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, sorry can't find a link for this one) estimate the cost of housing an inmate aged 55+ is double that of younger inmates. Age 80+ means triple the costs. I doubt the DP per year costs figures that in. I don't think the average per year non-DP cost figures it either.

Lastly, none of these figures count for inflation. Killing somebody in 14 years (or 20 for California) stops the inflation game early. If right now it costs $35k/year to house the former DP inmates, 20 years from now it will cost $80k/year. While a DP inmate would be dead then, a LWOP still has another 20 years of $80k/year to go (neverminding that by the end of the 2nd 20 year stint the per year cost is $190k/year)

Inflation is 11-15% in America? This is completely incorrect, inflation has never even gone above 6% in any given month/year since 1990. Inflation is also not "money printing", it is the value you lose in buying power on your currency per year. Inflation rates recently have been very low. Check the inflation calculator for yourself. How did this get modded +5?

He's talking about real world inflation, like how much the cost of living has increased, commodity prices that are relevant to the median person, etc. Price of food, price of gasoline, price of real estate/rent, price of sickcare insurance, etc.

You're talking about the completely imaginary govt figure which is a statement of how much the govt has decided to increase CPI indexed transfer payments, social security, .mil pay and pensions, federal pay, etc.

Completely imaginary? CPI is based on the cost of real goods:

FOOD AND BEVERAGES (breakfast cereal, milk, coffee, chicken, wine, full service meals, snacks)
HOUSING (rent of primary residence, owners' equivalent rent, fuel oil, bedroom furniture)
APPAREL (men's shirts and sweaters, women's dresses, jewelry)
TRANSPORTATION (new vehicles, airline fares, gasoline, motor vehicle insurance)
MEDICAL CARE (prescription drugs and medical supplies, physicians' services, eyeglasses and eye care, hospital services)
RECREATION (televisions, toys, pets and pet products, sports equipment, admissions);
EDUCATION AND COMMUNICATION (college tuition, postage, telephone services, computer software and accessories);
OTHER GOODS AND SERVICES (tobacco and smoking products, haircuts and other personal services, funeral expenses).

Each month, BLS data collectors called economic assistants visit or call thousands of retail stores, service establishments, rental units, and doctors' offices, all over the United States, to obtain information on the prices of the thousands of items used to track and measure price changes in the CPI. These economic assistants record the prices of about 80,000 items each month, representing a scientifically selected sample of the prices paid by consumers for goods and services purchased.

He's absolutely correct that inflation as a measure of cost of living has been around 2.5% the last few years as measured by the CPI. Long-term it's closer to 4%-5%. So the operative question is: are the teachers' salary increases keyed to current inflation, or average inflation? That is, is a 2.5% pay raise adequate now, but a 8% pay raise warranted if the CPI jumps 8% in a year? Or are they going to demand a 4.5% pay raise now when inflation is 2.5%, but not complain about a 4.5% pay raise if the CPI jumps 8%?

Except it isn't a small minority. Its the majority. In 2010, it was estimated that 58 percent of all workers in the US were earning minimum wage. http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2010.htm [bls.gov]

From your own source:

In 2010, 72.9 million American workers age 16 and over were paid at hourly rates, representing 58.8 percent of all wage and salary workers. Among those paid by the hour, 1.8 million earned exactly the prevailing Federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. About 2.5 million had wages below the minimum.2 Together, these 4.4 million workers with wages at or below the Federal minimum made up 6.0 percent of all hourly-paid workers.

3.6% isn't even close to 60%.

Except it isn't a small minority. Its the majority. In 2010, it was estimated that 58 percent of all workers in the US were earning minimum wage. http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2010.htm
Now imagine 60 percent of the population getting a paycut from the current minimum wage ($7.25/hr) to a market regulated minimum wage which would be whatever companies could get away with. And the fact is since so many people are at the minimum, their wages would most likely plummet.
Now consider with all those people stuck at minimum wage, American corporations are reporting record profits and the stock indexes are at near record levels. The companies are making plenty of money, but they sure aren't rewarding the workers with increased compensation for doing such a good job.

Sorry, I forgot to mention Inflation Calculator Bureau of Labor Statistics. But I could also point out that maybe we shouldn't be rounding. Big difference between $851.23 and $851 if we're talking about billions of dollars.

Where do you live that the only things the population does is manufacture, paint, and manage money?

A nice list provided for your reading pleasure.

Note the lack of manufacturing, painting, and money managing on that list.

From the DOL

Unemployment rates:

September 2008, 6.1%
January 2009, 7.8%
October 2009, 10.0%
July 2012, 8.3%

Any questions? No, I didn't think so. Go occupy something.