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What does a union even have to do with innovation? They are involved in production.

So where would an innovation problem come from? Why don't we look at what has changed. Once upon a time, there were companies that kept an R&D staff pretty busy. But now, the stockholders need serviced, and they need serviced now. A company needs to focus on the short term, and adiscovery that takes twenty years to realize production is worthless. Not to mention that some nifty short term profits can be had by simply getting rid of those "eggheads". Now that's what makes a stockholder as happy as those women in the shampoo ads!

But back to the evil unions - in 2010, the labor force in unions was 11.9 percent.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm

Explain how this 11.9 percent is destroying the country for the other 89 percent. You are entitled to your opinion, but not your facts.

Unemployment rates widely differ between those with college degrees and those with only high school degrees. See here, for example Oct 2010 9.2% vs 4.5%. Of course, a discrepancy has always existed, even back in the boom times. Its even a bigger discrepancy with tech and non-tech. Many technical and scientific fields have unemployment rates lower than the national average, due to difficulty and education requirements. Some political types like Mitt Romney see this as a problem and want unemployment in the tech fields to climb.

More stuff gets automated, more jobs lost, cost of living goes down because of automation, more jobs created.

I've used the same argument in the past, however, I've been somewhat swayed. Keep in mind, I'm not completely convinced that 99% of people will be out of work and robots will be doing everything. But, I do think there could be a fundamental difference between the oncoming wave of automation and the preceding ones.

The difference is in specialization. Before when new technologies replaced workers they replaced single jobs, and those people could create new jobs for themselves eventually. However, we are close (few decades) to creating humanoid robots that will be capable of doing just about any task a human does that doesn't require great intelligence. Just about every job not requiring a collage degree, from janitor, to factory work, to many service and retail will be automated. That is a huge chunk of jobs, probably over half. Go here and look at the 2008 job percentages. Many of the big categories can be outright replaced by robots. Just about all of them can be somewhat reduced.

Marshall Brain has a few interesting articles about this. He is much more dramatic about it than I am, but still interesting to consider. http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm

If you don't have anything that someone will pay for you are pretty much screwed. Throughout human history, people were born with the ability to do work that others would pay for. If humanoid robots become common that could cease to be true for the first time. Combined with possible human level AI and only people who own things that are valuable (resources) will have anything that can be sold. Hopefully our society can adjust to this and spread the benefit around. But it will certainly be interesting.

Isn't the purpose though, to help Americans? It's great to help the world, but not when you've got 9+ percent U3 unemployment (16-some percent U6).

I'd much prefer a 'boondoggle' like retooling a broken down Chrysler factory, as it puts US citizens to work. And while injecting money in the US economy is like injecting water in a bucket of holes - it goes to other countries - it does increase the water level a little bit.

Want me to dissect your whine?

I wasn't looking for pity, I was just trying to provide a dose of perspective. Supporting or taking part of the OWS protests does not automatically make you a whining leftist, nor even significantly increase the probability that you ARE a whining leftist. There are plenty of productive, hard-working people that are pissed off too.

1) Considering you say you "spent 2 years serving my country, 6 of them getting shot in Kandahar" I'm going to guess your math skills might be why had trouble finding a job.

Sorry, that was a typo. It should read "6 months of them"

2) You relocated to DC Metro...for why? Lowest unemployment not quite - US average 9.1%, Washington DC is 10.9%. Assuming you meant Arlington, etc sure, the unemployment rates are low, but there are a lot of reasons for that that have nothing to do with availability of jobs - could be that it's so damn expensive, the unemployed are forced out quickly. Personally, considering how easy the internet has made wide-ranging search and communication, the idea of moving to a place and THEN expecting to find a job there is fairly retarded.

I relocated when I received a job offer, which happened to be only a few hours away. My job search was nationwide, and relocation was pretty much inevitable as I attended a rural and remote campus.
And I used the term "DC Metro area" which would imply, yes, I did mean "Arlington, etc." The DC-MD-VA Metropolitan Statistical Area has an unemployment rate of 6.1, well below the national average.

Those are pretty damn good salaries. I don't give a flying shit what your peers were offered 5 years and a different economy ago, and honestly, it shouldn't matter to you unless your main goal is self-pity.

My whole point was the fact that the economy is totally different, I'm not interested in pity. I'm thankful to have a job that affords me a comfortable standard of living. But that doesn't diminish the fact that over the last 5 years, wages have shrunk while inflation has barely slowed. Look back further, and real wages have been dropping for decades.

4) I don't disagree with you about the bullshit bailouts. So why are you protesting Wall Street? We have elected representatives and big fat books of laws that were supposed to be regulating this. You're protesting wolves being wolves, when the guys we elected to watch the wolves are either entirely asleep (or worse, mating with them). Point your anger at the problem.

It's not about "protesting Wall Street." Protesting on Wall Street is a symbolic gesture, but the anger is directed at politicians more concerned about campaign donations and lobbyist bribes from the financial sector than the interest of the American middle class. The wolves were able to eat the sheep because the shepherd was more interested in the stripper that the wolves hired than watching his flock.

I worked at Blockbuster and Subway for 6 months while looking for work. I did what I had to do.

And now Blockbuster is gone and Subway isn't hiring. There were just over 3 million open jobs in July, there are "officially" 13 million people unemployed. What do you think the other 10 million people "have to do"? Start their own company? With what money? And what chances? 80% of new companies fail in 5 years. What waits for them after they try and fail? More scorn? People unwilling to give them a second chance?

It's not society's job to guarantee anyone a particular outcome. It's society's job to provide the opportunity.

Numerically speaking, the opportunity simply doesn't exist. It's all well and good for sjames to argue over whether those 3 million jobs are just crumbs or not, but the simple fact of the matter is that for the foreseeable future, the economy will not be able to absorb the other ten million people.

After I posted I realized that I should have chosen a different "dissenting" post. There are a few on there, and they all have led to similar angry and insulting comments. I guess my point is that I do feel bad for these people in dire straits. I really do, especially those who are in a tight spot by no fault of their own.

The thing that bugs me is that they are claiming to speak for the entire 99% (implying it, at the very least). If you have a college degree and no job, yes, you are part of the 99%, but your sad story is more about the 5.4 percent than the 99. It drops to being 4 percent for all those on there who claim a master's degree (chart). So stop saying that you were lied to about education; those claims are demonstrably false. And stop saying you have no future. For the vast majority of those posting their stories, this is a rough spot, longer than most, but we'll get through. It is those sorts of claims on that blog annoy me greatly. As does the opposition to the people (like me) who are part of the 99% and are okay with life, for the most part.

Now, I recognize that there are many, many parts of our system that are beyond screwed up. Reforms are needed. But the people who are posting pictures of their stories do not represent me. I am the 99%, and I'm doing fine.

The US average is about 30% for benefits, 70% for wages. Many workers place a premium on employer-provided benefits because they are unable to buy them at any price on the open market.

First off, get your numbers straight. There aren't millions of programmers in the world- the US numbers for employment isn't expected to top 1.6M until way past 2018 (source: http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos303.htm), and it's the largest employed base. Maybe triple that worldwide, most of whom have never and will never touch python. On a daily basis I doubt the number of people writing python tops 10K.

Can it be used? Sure. So can brainfuck. Is it a good choice? Maybe now that 3.0 requires one or the other (if an above poster is correct), it's acceptable. Before that, in a collaborative environment it's a bad choice and will cause problems that just shouldn't exist. In the 3 jobs now that used python for some shared script, all with fairly decent programmers, all 3 have hit that issue. It was a mistake, period.

You're quite right, of course: manufacturing employment peaked around 1979, tanked from '80 - '83, then held more or less steady until 2000, when it started a substantial decline which didn't let up until 2010 (see here for that citation I asked you for but which I should have just dug up myself: http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet). At the same time, however, manufacturing output per worker increased by over 200% between 1970 to 2010, so it's no surprise that when one worker is able to produce the same number of widgets that used to require three people to make, two of those three people may not be long for their jobs. To those two people, I'm sure efficiency does seem to be the enemy.

Then again, it's transitional: the US economy is clearly changing, and the quicker people adapt/retrain/etc, the better off they'll be in the long run (as opposed to implementing protectionist policies such that those workers in a doomed sector delay their adaptation until it's too late). Much, much easier said than done, no doubt about that. But the sooner peopole wrap their mind around the notion that the subsidized wage levels that permitted dramatic wage growth are unsustainable and over for good, and that constantly rising wages are an anomoly, the better off the whole country will be. It's a horribly rude awakening, to be sure, but necessary.

At the end of the day, labor prices are like water: they find their own level. Various policies like immigration restrictions, price fixing (ie minimum wage; unions), trade restrictions, etc. may have tilted the bucket so most of the water flowed to US workers for a while (at the expense, notably, of workers elsewhere), but there is some equilibrium price for labor globally, and that price is substantially lower than Americans have grown accustomed to while simultaneously significantly higher than an order of magnitude of people elsewhere have been toiling under. Philosophically, I'm all in favor of that, because a hell of a lot more people around the world will be able to feed their families, and the trade off is a relatively fewer number of Americans will have to wait a few years before buying that new 3D TV or getting the third car. But it sure sucks if you're one of those American workers.

In all cases, your point was correct and mine was ill-considered - thanks for setting me straight.

Bzzzzzzzzzzt. Wrong, try again. I live in the world where I don't need to extort salary and benefits from an employer by threat of strikes/intimidation/sabotage. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics "In 2010, the union membership rate--the percent of wage and salary workers who were members of a union--was 11.9 percent". The other 88% of the workforce is the "real" world. I'm not jealous in the least. Health care costs are rising faster than inflation. Big surprise that employers are trying to shift that cost. That said, I wish the Verizon employees well; this isn't a company that's struggling. They're doing quit well. They want to share the wealth with the holders of stock options instead of the workers.

http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs014.htm

Interesting post - thanks for your reply.

What I don't understand is your failure to see the contradiction in your point about companies having the ability to push wages lower and lower, and yet this demonstrably not happening. That's easy to see:

- 75% of employed teenagers make more than the minimum wage;

- in 1979, 13.4% of hourly-paid workers made minimum wage. By 2009 that fell to 4.9% (tho it rose to 6.0% with the econominc downturn);

- 96.2% of workers aged 25 or older make more than the minimum wage.

So where is this power that companies supposedly have to push wages down at will? (source for all of the above is US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, which you can find here http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2010tbls.htm).

I guess on reading your post again that the key point is where you say companies could push down wages if they could find people willing to accept lower wages, which is of course true, but also points out why, in practice, they can't: there aren't people willing to accept lower wages, due to the supply and demand for labor. Would every company pay minimum wage or less if they could? Certainly! But of course they can't: they are constrained by the laws of supply and demand. You can see this play out in real time in China, where rising demand for labor is leading to increased wages, in some areas significantly so. What do companies do? Start looking for cheaper labor in places like Vietnam. And what's the net result? All wages rise.

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with truck systems (ie company stores, whereby workers are paid in currency able to be used only to buy the employer's goods) - it's a voluntary arrangement between consenting adults, after all. The problem with running every single economic system through the lens of the Industrial Revolution is to miss the point that the entire Industrial Revolution was a period of massive but temporary change, which ultimately benefited far, far more people than it harmed. Were some people unable to adapt quickly enough, or at all? Yes. But by much of the logic I've seen applied, the anti-change faction (and the government of the US, as it currently stands) would have the taxpayer massively fund the horse and buggy industry in order to protect its workers from being "disrupted" by the introduction of the automobile. All that does is delay the inevitable pain for the workers, and makes their day of reckoning that much worse.The Industrial Revolution, and the horrible conditions many workers found themselves in, was an example of the market finding its new equilibrium, and should not be taken as evidence of what would perpetually happen to a market left alone. Deep, fundamental transitions like this happen, and it takes time for market forces to adapt. That, however, does not mean that an absence of deep regulation (like the deep regulation found in the current state of the economy) results in perpetual and infinite power on the part of employers, to the detriment of the employees. It just cannot sustainably happen in a free market.

Nobody "puts you in a position" whereby you have a mortgage to pay! Surely you voluntarily accepted the mortgage and its terms!

Your point about minimum wage employers not providing health care may be entirely relevant to that small portion of the population which makes minimum wage, but the vast, vast majority of employers pay more than minimum wage (see above), and also provide health care. Hell, 87% of employees without even a high school diploma make more than minimum wage (same source as above)!

What you seem to be suggesting is that the government should somehow engage in price controls to force prices up such that wages should increase. That's been tried before, in all cases with disastrous results for the people, disproportionately so to the poorest people. Any attempt at price controls (including minimum wage) has negative o

The reason GDP has plummeted is that high tax rates,labor rates, and costs of massive regulation have encouraged business and manufacturing to leave the country in droves for decades for friendlier business pastures.

Labor rates in the US relative to corporate profits are very low today:

Corporate earnings are the highest they've been relative to worker wages (including benefits) since just before the Great Depression...If earnings were to suddenly revert to their historic average relative to wages...stocks would have to fall about 40% to return to their average level relative to earnings.

Have some companies moved production abroad? Yeah. But there are still 150 million people at work in this country full time. That's a freaking lot of people at work.

USA Today reported on a trend way back in 2010 of companies moving manufacturing work back to the US, despite what you characterize as high labor costs and massive regulation:

Chinese wages and shipping costs have risen sharply in the past few years while U.S. salaries have stayed flat, or in some cases, fallen in the recession. Meanwhile, U.S. manufacturers have been frustrated by the sometimes poor quality of goods made by foreign contractors, theft of their intellectual property and long product-delivery cycles that make them less responsive to customer demand.

With the cost gap between the U.S. and other countries narrowing for other expenses, such as class-action lawsuits, making products in the USA is now about 22% higher than the average of nine of its largest trading partners, down from 32% in 2006.

Reagan's policies are widely recognized as bringing about the second longest peacetime economic expansion in U.S. history, surpassed in duration only by the 1990s expansion that began under George H. W. Bush in 1991. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaganomics

Only based on an arbitrary measurement designed to support a priori assumptions. Of course Reagan presided over growth, the country was recovering from a recession. But it didn't make up for it: growth in the 1970s and 80s is dwarfed by economic growth under the high-tax postwar regime before Reagan's time. It's also much lower than in the 1990s and even the current recession. http://www.bls.gov/mfp/prodybar.htm

I am the OP. As several people have posted, this approach is exactly equivalent to printing money. The reason it needs to be platinum coins rather than paper bills is that there is a law that limits the total value of paper bills that can be printed, but there appears to be no limit on the value of platinum coins that can be minted.

Of course, if you were to print a large enough amount of money, it would lead to inflation (or asset price bubbles, which actually seem to occur first in the current economy). The mechanism by which excess money supply causes inflation is by increasing demand to the point where bottlenecks appear in the economy. For example, people want cars, have money to buy them, but there aren't enough factories right now to supply demand - so the price of the limited pool of available cars is bid up. If labor markets are tight, employers looking for people to work to fill the demand created by the extra money will need to bid up wages to attract workers.

The key point is that all those mechanisms only work if an economy, or significant parts of it, are operating near peak capacity. This is the complete opposite of the situation we are in right now. Industrial capacity utilization was at 76.7% in June, several percentage points below the 1972-2010 average (80.4%) an well below the 85.1% peak in the 1990's. Unemployment is also high compared to historical averages.

In the current environment, it is vastly more likely that increasing the money supply will improve economic conditions without triggering inflation. Even at its pre-financial crisis recent peak (when unemployment was much lower than it is now), annual inflation (CPI-U, Dec 2006 to Dec 2007) was only 4.1%. Also keep in mind that the entire amount created ($5 trillion in my example in the OP) will not hit the economy at once. Initially it will be in an account at the Federal Reserve, and only as the government spends the money would it reach the economy.

Ummm... no...
This simple chart pretty much answers the question. There are related links on the site to get more specifics.

Exactly, although it is a bit cute how the author tries to use the word "Nebraska" in a sentence. Maybe he will update it with North Dakota or Wyoming next?

Wait.

That won't work either.

Maybe Jon should do 5 minutes of research before he posts another smug fluff piece? http://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm

Except for the adding hundreds of thousands of jobs every month has only happened twice, two blocks of three month growth in the spring of '10 and then '11.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf

"Nonfarm payroll employment changed little (+54,000) in May, and the unemployment rate was essentially unchanged at 9.1 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today."

If the economy is so bad, why are stock indexes back to prerecession levels?

I can guess three reasons:

First, companies traded on U.S. exchanges are making profits on offshore work. Offshoring doesn't show up in gross domestic product work performed outside the United States, and employment on foreign soil produce earnings for a company but not individual income tax revenue.

Second, companies traded on U.S. exchanges are making profits on efficiency. In a lot of cases, automation has allowed one worker to do the job that five would have done before. The workers made redundant by more efficient methods of production produce earnings for a company but not individual income tax revenue.

Third, U.S. stock indexes are in units of U.S. dollars. If the Consumer Price Index now (for example) is greater than the prerecession Consumer Price Index, then the dollar has become less valuable, and operagost has a point. In fact, according to BLS tables, the amount of money needed to buy one CPI basket has risen 8.7% over the past four years (2.1% APR of inflation), from $207.949 in May 2007 to $225.964 in May 2011.

food prices are way way up if that's what you're wondering.

But as for my data, the cumulative inflation from 1975 to 2010 is about 310%. the following sites all come up with roughly the same number:

http://www.inflationdata.com/
http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/
http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

(if you do it for 2011 it works out to about $4.20)

"the US government makes up less than .5% of the population."

It's not particularly meaningful to compare it to the general population, because somewhat less than half the population is employed (plus you're counting children). More meaningful is comparing government employees to all employees.

There are around 2 million people directly employed by the federal government, not including postal workers or military personnel. There are roughly 600,000 postal workers and about 1.4 million uniformed military personnel. There are about 146 million people in the workforce of the US. So that makes for 1.37% of all workers are directly employed by the federal government. That rises to 2.74% if you include postal workers and the military (source: Bureau of Labor Statistics: http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs041.htm).

Employment by government at all levels is about 14% in the US (comparison: Russia: 0.59%; France: 3.5%), but varies substantially by state (top states are Alaska and Wyoming at over 20% of all workers). So about 1 in 7 workers in the US works for government (and have their salaries paid by the other 6 in 7). As of 2002, more people work for the government than manufacturing and construction combined (https://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2009/01/20/milestone/).

I'm afraid that doesn't tell me much. What was $35 worth in 1968, and what was $850 worth in 1980?

Using the Consumer Price Index, $850 in 1980 would be worth $359 in 1968.

minmized the recession (GAO andother non partisan economic bodies have said as much)

Sure, some economic bodies might have said so, but the people don't feel it. The problem is that Obama has extended the perceived recession by threatening tax increases on the so called wealthy (which include small businesses at >$250k). Therefore, all businesses are hedging against this and not investing and hiring. They're sitting on their money and this leaves Obama and Democrats confused and angry.

made the call on the Bin Laden raid. Killed a couple more high end AQ since then.

Whoever was the sitting president would have made that call. I don't see how crediting Obama for more than that is helpful.

Has improved foreign relations with our allies and our adversaries.

While utterly destroying our relations with our friends. European nations (especially Eastern Bloc countries), Egypt and other North African countries (besides the ones we are actively attacking), and Israel all eye us suspiciously. All the while our enemies laugh at us. I've yet to see any real evidence of your statement here. The worldwide apology tour was a dismal embarrassment.

Tried (and failed) to get the Bush era tax cuts eliminated.

This is actually a good thing. Had he let the tax cuts expire, we would have had an actual tax increase. Then the businesses who are now just sitting on their cash, waiting for the tax increase, would actually have no cash and no way to hire or invest in the economy.

I will agree that his extension of the Bush Era security and privacy policies have upset me. I had hoped those would go away. But in reality those were going to stay regardless of the president. Government doesnt give up power easily.

You can't have it both ways - either Bush Era security is upsetting and UBL is caught, or Bush Era security is abandoned and UBL continues to live his demented life in Pakistan. I do agree with the privacy issue - that is upsetting. What happened to this mythical transparent government? (It was a little white lie - a deception - like "hope and change".)

The healthcare thing was a bad idea.

You are absolutely right about this one. The only way Obama/Pelosi/Reid-Care would have worked is if the economy is healthy, businesses pay for their employees health insurance, and taxes are raised. The economy is sick, it is reported that 3 out of 10 companies will drop employee health benefits and pay the fine (not to mention all of the waivers that will be or have been issued), and taxes won't be raised any time soon.

As for the economy being worse than 2.5 years ago...are you nuts?!?

Nope not nuts. 2.5 years ago, unemployment was at 8.0% when Obama took office. Obama signed the stimulus bill which he promised would keep unemployment under 8.5%. It has not been below 9% since April 2009. (The BLS will state that we dropped below 9% in March of 2011, but that hasn't been seasonally adjusted - which means they include phantom employees in seasonal positions which may or may not be there. Which is also why the 54k jobs created last month when it should have been over 200k is even worse news than that.)

I'm really confused by the assertion that college is an economic waste of time. Sure, we can all point to cases where an individual went to college and now works at Home Depot. And there are plenty of smarties who figured out how to turn ability with computers into a lucrative career without any help from a university. But if you look at the big picture - [http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm] - a college degree generally leads to lower likelihood of unemployment and higher wages.

What a crock of shit. Occam's razor suggests your just a brain dead ideological twit.

Labor unions in the United States have been decimated over the past 30 to 40 years and on top of record low participation in unions the unionization of the information technology field is virtually non-existent.*

With almost non-existent union participation in the IT field the problems with incompetence obviously has no relation to unionization. On top of the reality that I suspect points out a completely fictitious anecdote in your post is the irony that the competent workers in the field are screwed over by the companies they work for and unionization would provide them with the bargaining power to end some of the exploitation.

I have seen how capable system administrators are burned out with over burdening and are lured into carrying a fancy geek gadget cell phone as some type of a bonus when in fact it is a trick to get more work out of the capable admins for no increase in pay when in fact these corporations just need to break down and hire more people to cover the work load AND pay the capable employees what they are worth.

* Computer and mathematical occupations 2010 union membership = 4%
    Professional and technical services 2010 union membership = 1.4%

Also, contrast the life of the average Frenchman to ours. They live longer, have more free time, have medical and JOBS.

Not so sure about jobs, French unemploment rate is at 9.7% which is about average for the Euro zone with 9.4% (pdf). Europe as a whole is just as screwed as the US, some countries like Germany are doing okay (6.1%) while others like Spain (20.7%) are completely screwed.

Anyway, I've found unemployment rates to lie quite a lot. Look at the US data, sure, compared to last year the unemployment rate is down from 9.6% to 9.1% but the participation rate is also down from 64.9% to 64.2%. So in reality less people work today (58.4%) compared to a year ago (58.7%), even though unemployment has "dropped". Of course there can be slight demographic changes too but the majority of those are people that have completely dropped out of the job market. The real number of people who'd like to work is probably a lot higher.

Violent crime rates in Michigan went up or remained stable with the rates of 1980 till 1996 http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/micrime.htm They began to drop after the economy began do pick up and were at a low around the period of time the jobless rate was at a historical low http://www.bls.gov/web/laus/lauhsthl.htm they begin to get worse again during the economic troubles of the 2004-2006 and drop off again due to a population exodus from the state (fewer people competing for jobs).

While I'm all for Correlation != Causation there is an undeniable correlation between jobless rates/economy of a region and crime rates. It's been documented worldwide.

According to: http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2005/05/ressum.pdf

The data show that, across sectors, 66 percent of new establishments were still in existence 2 years after their birth, and 44 percent were still in existence 4 years after.

According to: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t04.htm

It looks like the unemployment rate for college graduates hovers around 4.2%, even in this economy. And it is more than twice that without a college degree.

I'm not sure how to directly compare those numbers though. Maybe you'd have to look at how long entrepreneurs spend between new businesses... or making money from new businesses? Anyway, the point is that starting a successful business is HARD. Unless you have a clear business plan for new business, it doesn't really make much sense ot drop out of college. SUre, if you have some vision and real skills, by all means, drop out and follow your dream. But to just drop out because that's what Gates and Zuckerberg did is just stupid. Just because you CAN be successful without college doesn't mean that's how you become successful (something you might learn in a logic class in college, BTW ;-)

According to: http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2005/05/ressum.pdf

The data show that, across sectors, 66 percent of new establishments were still in existence 2 years after their birth, and 44 percent were still in existence 4 years after.

According to: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t04.htm

It looks like the unemployment rate for college graduates hovers around 4.2%, even in this economy. And it is more than twice that without a college degree.

I'm not sure how to directly compare those numbers though. Maybe you'd have to look at how long entrepreneurs spend between new businesses... or making money from new businesses? Anyway, the point is that starting a successful business is HARD. Unless you have a clear business plan for new business, it doesn't really make much sense ot drop out of college. SUre, if you have some vision and real skills, by all means, drop out and follow your dream. But to just drop out because that's what Gates and Zuckerberg did is just stupid. Just because you CAN be successful without college doesn't mean that's how you become successful (something you might learn in a logic class in college, BTW ;-)

First, a link to a congressional committee is hardly a partisan statement. The Joint Economic Committee is a Congressional Committee that is representative of the government at the time and the report had inputs from all members.

Second, the parts of the report I quoted were illustrative of the fact that tax decreases from 70% to 50% would increase, rather than decrease revenue. The amount of tax burden paid by higher income earners was also part of higher revenues. If you doubt that, here are the numbers in 2010 constant dollars using CPI data (sources http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals/,ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cpi/cpiai.txt). For the rest of this post, everything will be in 2010 constant dollars. The numbers are:

Year Revenue

1981 $1428.54M

1982 $1387.16M *first year ERTA was in effect

1983 $1306.56M

1984 $1389.87M

1985 $1478.21M

1986 $1520.67M

1987 $1629.52M

1988 $1665.43M

1989 $1731.93M

1990 $1710.90M

You could argue that the increased revenues were due to improved GDP, but that argument would be wrong. Assuming revenue would grow at the same rate as GDP, and using GDP numbers from http://www.bea.gov/national/nipaweb/TableView.asp?SelectedTable=5&ViewSeries=NO&Java=no&Request3Place=N&3Place=N&FromView=YES&Freq=Year&FirstYear=2010&LastYear=2011&3Place=N&AllYearsChk=YES&Update=Update&JavaBox=no#Mid we have the following table

Year GDP($M) %Change Expected_Revenue($M) Actual_Revenue($M) Difference($M)

1981 $7,500.74 0.82%

1982 $7,351.09 -1.01% $1,414.15 $1,387.17 -$26.98

1983 $7,738.36 2.57% $1,422.77 $1,306.57 -$116.21

1984 $8,249.82 3.20% $1,348.36 $1,389.88 $41.52

1985 $8,546.94 1.77% $1,414.47 $1,478.22 $63.75

1986 $8,873.65 1.88% $1,505.94 $1,520.67 $14.73

1987 $9,091.55 1.21% $1,539.12 $1,629.52 $90.40

1988 $9,401.29 1.67% $1,656.81 $1,665.43 $8.62

1989 $9,640.36 1.26% $1,686.34 $1,731.93 $45.60

1990 $9,677.38 0.19% $1,735.25 $1,710.90 -$24.35

The total revenue collected over this period was $13820.29M, but GDP growth only accounts for $13723.20M. In other words, the government collected $97.08M more than if ERTA was not enacted, all other considerations held constant.

Third, you're correct in saying that tax reductions didn't necessarily lead to increased tax revenues, but GDP growth doesn't account for that either. The fact that upper income brackets increased their wealth has a lot do with with the reduction of capital gains tax from 28% to 20% which led to many top earners realizing their capital gains, thus increasing their net income. That behavior is documented (but I didn't keep track of that url, sorry) and would explain both phenomenon. GDP growth alone does not.

Again, this is all in reaction to the assertion that we need to go back to 75% tax rates, not an argument for or against much smaller tax cuts or raises in the present per se. You can do the same analysis with the Clinton's 1993 tax increase and you'll find that the tax revenues grow at a lower rate than the overall GDP, indicating that people who can shelter their money, are doing just that, once more highlighting the argument that increasing taxes reduces revenues in the long run.

"Perhaps they can move to a desperate state like mississippi and perhaps enough employee will follow."
Ummm... Looks like California is the more desperate one right now.
http://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm

This is very worrisome, glad to see it being discussed. According to the USA Bureau of Labor Statistics, health care employment accounts for (by far) most of the growth in jobs in the USA http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs035.htm. What happens when a new sport surgeon opens an office in your county? What happens when a urologist opens an office in a town of 10,000 residents? The free market says that when people take employment providing a "service" which they themselves are empowered to prescribe, that prescription rates increase proportionately to the wages.

I realized this when I broke my arm in almost precisely the same place, in almost exactly the same way. The first time it was a reset, an X-ray, and a cast. The second time, a new Osteopath building had been opened in town, with two new very smart and very nice doctors. Good people. Outcome was surgery, metal plates, screws, therapy, etc. My insurance paid for both treatments, but I got to see the bills. The second broken arm was over $10,000 more expensive than the first time. And when I read about the dangers of putting people under anesthesia, I really wonder how the risk was weighed against the benefit of making payments on the new doctor's office. I'm not grossly cynical about the health industry, but whenever a field of the economy becomes too respected (think Catholic Church), people begin to assume the best, and that's a recipe for problems.

By the way, there is a new Urologist in my town of 10,000, with a lovely office. He just told my wife that both our sons need teen circumcision, under anethesia. What is really worrisome is that the USA's aging population makes for an almost infinite number of diagnostic tests, etc., for these people to fill. If the government paid for car repairs, we'd have lots of mechanics and lots of repairs.

"Viewers watched an average of three hours and 45 minutes of television a day in 2009, 3% more than in 2004, according to research published today by the media regulator Ofcom"

If there was some generational effect going on (the article does note that the elderly watch more than the average) it would be somewhat mitigated by the Economist's finding that

"In December 2009, Nielsen estimated that 34% of internet users had the television on while surfing the net. But when tuning in for a programme, television-watchers used the internet only about 3% of the time"

US numbers show a similar trend -

"the average American watches approximately 153 hours of TV every month at home, a 1.2% increase from last year"

Those who are interested should check out the American Time Use Survey - it has some rather interesting content (for instance: 15 to 19 read for an average of 5 minutes per weekend day while spending 1.0 hour playing games or using a computer for leisure. )
Taking the two pieces together it would seem we're watching more TV in general, and when we're online we have the TV on anyway. Hardly seems worth pounding the drums of the apocalypse over.

"An engineering student likely will make significantly more money after college than an English major."

TFA needs more numbers: Engineering growth. ChemEng -2%, Electronics +1%. The 7th fastest decline is in Semiconductor processors.

"An engineering student likely will make significantly more money after college than an English major."

TFA needs more numbers: Engineering growth. ChemEng -2%, Electronics +1%. The 7th fastest decline is in Semiconductor processors.

Here's the real kicker: When someone falls off the end of their UI benefits (the so-called "99-ers"), they are no longer counted in the statistics of "unemployed".

That is not even remotely true. Why do people believe this lie?

Educate your dumb ass here.

But due to inflation, that $0.99 was only worth $0.17 back in 1970. So prices have actually dropped by about 83% by your calculations. Of course there's more people buying music, and there's more music being made, so the pie is getting bigger.

Oh, yeah, look at this chart: http://data.bls.gov/generated_files/graphics/LNS14000000_864063_1302240019685.gif

If the link doesn't work properly, you can generate the same graph for 2000-2010 here: http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet

A decade of Republican policies brought us an economic disaster

Notice that during the Bush years, unemployment stayed around 5-6%, and never broke above 8%.

Barack Obama brought us back to growth and put us on the path for prosparity.

Also notice that during most of Obama's time in office, unemployment has been 9-10%, and never broke below 8%.

Oh, woe is us. Which chart to believe...

Oh, yeah, look at this chart: http://data.bls.gov/generated_files/graphics/LNS14000000_864063_1302240019685.gif

If the link doesn't work properly, you can generate the same graph for 2000-2010 here: http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet

A decade of Republican policies brought us an economic disaster

Notice that during the Bush years, unemployment stayed around 5-6%, and never broke above 8%.

Barack Obama brought us back to growth and put us on the path for prosparity.

Also notice that during most of Obama's time in office, unemployment has been 9-10%, and never broke below 8%.

Oh, woe is us. Which chart to believe...

And he did clean up that mess.

No, he wasted time passing health care reform, which nobody cared about or thought was a priority. While he was dicking around with what he thought was important, the unemployment rate continued to climb.

Yes, that's right, things have been worse since he came into office. Under Bush, the unemployment rate never broke above 8% (it was around 5-6% through nearly his entire eight years in office). Under Obama, it has been at least 8% (with it staying between 9-10% most of his first year). http://data.bls.gov/generated_files/graphics/LNS14000000_864063_1302240019685.gif

(Not sure if the image link will work properly. You can generate your own 2000-2010 graph of unemployment here: http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet)

See? I have a graph also, and it shows that not only has Obama not 'cleaned up the mess', but he has made it far worse. I won't even bother to show you the scary graph of budget deficits for the next decade. It's too gruesome to look at.

Now, in reality, I don't put much blame on a president for how well or poorly the economy does. But I just wanted to point out how easily data and stats can be used to show whatever a person wants to.

And he did clean up that mess.

No, he wasted time passing health care reform, which nobody cared about or thought was a priority. While he was dicking around with what he thought was important, the unemployment rate continued to climb.

Yes, that's right, things have been worse since he came into office. Under Bush, the unemployment rate never broke above 8% (it was around 5-6% through nearly his entire eight years in office). Under Obama, it has been at least 8% (with it staying between 9-10% most of his first year). http://data.bls.gov/generated_files/graphics/LNS14000000_864063_1302240019685.gif

(Not sure if the image link will work properly. You can generate your own 2000-2010 graph of unemployment here: http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet)

See? I have a graph also, and it shows that not only has Obama not 'cleaned up the mess', but he has made it far worse. I won't even bother to show you the scary graph of budget deficits for the next decade. It's too gruesome to look at.

Now, in reality, I don't put much blame on a president for how well or poorly the economy does. But I just wanted to point out how easily data and stats can be used to show whatever a person wants to.

Hogwash, see link below. I also find it amusing that most people bleating about how BLS numbers are 'rigged' didn't start talking about changes in BLS methods until January 2009, and then they only talk about the changes that occurred under Democratic administrations... http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpiqa.htm#Question_5

The public doesn't want to pay taxes to fund 6-figure public sector salaries and pensions, and the people making that pay decide to cut libraries and schools instead of their own pay

That maybe true, but the public is grossly misinformed if they think there are many public sector workers making those kinds of salaries. The average salary of a local public library librarian was $47,940 in 2008, for example. http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos068.htm

Lgw's point that "the people making that pay" (i.e. - 6-figure salaries) in California are the ones making decisions to cut libraries is only somewhat correct. Those decisions about library funding are typically made at the City Council and County Supervisor level. In a handful of big cities, councilors can make 6 figures, but the vast majority of City Council members make far less than that. Members of the Board of Supervisors of populous counties do make 6 figures, but there are counties (Mariposa, where I used to live, springs to mind) where the position of Supervisor is a part-time one, and it pays quite modestly.

Employee salaries and benefits only make up about 10% of the state budget ($7B salaries + $3.4B benefits) (p.177). This can hardly be blamed for the budget woes of California. Much more serious are Prop 13 and 2/3 majority needed for the state senate to pass any tax increases.

And even Prop 13 and the supermajority required under California's constitution aren't the worst contributors to the state's current financial quagmire. The worst and most intractable malefactor is California's staggering bonded indebtedness. Decade after decade, California voters have endorsed one multi-billion-dollar bond issue after another, all payable from general tax receipts. When times were good, the state could more-or-less easily afford these obligations. However, when the economy nosedived, that debt remained - and the vast majority of bond issues are payable over the course of decades, so those payments won't be going away any time soon. And the U.S. Constitution forbids states to go bankrupt, so the money to pay those bond obligations - as well as to pay all the other core costs of running the state HAS to come from somewhere. Public employee pension funds are just a convenient piggy bank for lawmakers to raid for the money. Politics being politics, however, it's necessary for those who are eyeing the pension funds to demonize those whose property they are (i.e. - the public sector employees) in order to build support for raiding their pensions and stiffing them on their retirement income.

Thus Wisconsin, and the infinitely regrettable Scott Walker - and the same war drums are now beating in California: the real enemies of the citizenry are the arrogant, greedy bastards who teach our children, sweep our streets, patrol our neighborhoods, and fight our fires. Them and their high-falutin' middle-class lifestyles ...

You might as well cite prison guard salaries in Indochina, it'd be as relevant.

You might want to cite anything let alone California. In California the average correctional officer's salary is $66,720. This may be more than the national average but hardly the fat cat 6 figure salaries that keep being espoused.

Public sector workers make MORE, on average, in California than Private sector workers when benefits are included on both sides.

And they are also MORE EDUCATED on average.

Pretty sure GGP is NOT talking about librarians in referencing 6 figure salaries, but rather prison guards and other unions who have powerful lobbies, which plainly libraries do not.

Right, we all forgot about those powerful prison guard unions who were able to secure those fabulous $30-60k salaries. Get over it, there are basically no large groups of labor in the public sector that make 6 figures. There may be individuals within these groups making those types of salaries, but they are high level managers and few and far between.

The public doesn't want to pay taxes to fund 6-figure public sector salaries and pensions, and the people making that pay decide to cut libraries and schools instead of their own pay

That maybe true, but the public is grossly misinformed if they think there are many public sector workers making those kinds of salaries. The average salary of a local public library librarian was $47,940 in 2008, for example. http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos068.htm

(shocking, I know - but to give some excuse, at the state level the constitution requires pensions be funded first), and the public is outraged.

And why shouldn't pensions be funded first? They are nothing more than deferred payment of a worker's salary. Not paying a paying the pension is basically saying "We'll give you $100, $80 now and $20 later, to do x amount of work." Then after the work is done only paying them $80. I can't imagine any other scenario where that would be fair or legal.

Cali is doomed anyhow - we may be the pioneer of state bankruptcy before much longer here, and many local governments are in crisis already (as the state's ability to bail out local governments is quite limited), and things like keeping the streeghlights on, the roads patches, and the trees clear of the power lines are fading before the all-consuming pension costs.

Employee salaries and benefits only make up about 10% of the state budget ($7B salaries + $3.4B benefits) (p.177). This can hardly be blamed for the budget woes of California. Much more serious are Prop 13 and 2/3 majority needed for the state senate to pass any tax increases.

You misread what I said. In 1932 the tax rate jumped from roughly 25% to roughly 63% and continued to rise until it hit roughly 90%. This is one of the factors that helped pull the country out of the recession after the Great Depression and prevented it from just collapsing again. After that, with unemployment having been lowered, years it was decided that we were taxing the wealthy too much and that lowering their tax burden would decrease unemployment.This is a new set of numbers now, i'm not saying that the drop in the tax rate in 1964 gives relatable data to unemployment in 1936.

What I am saying, is that lowering the tax burden on the wealthiest individuals corresponded with a rise in unemployment. http://www.bls.gov/cps/prev_yrs.htm

1964 we dropped the tax rate from 91 to 77, and all the way through 1980 it went down and stabilized around 70. Unemployment in 1964, according to the beaureu of labor statistics, was roughly 5.2%. It went down a little bit as the tax rate dropped, and then around 1975 spiked up. So 10 years after lowering the tax rates, and unemployment started to rise quickly (jumping from 5.4 in 1974 to 8.5 in 1975. Obviously other factors are involved).

Notice that after tax rates were at their lowest for "trickle down economics" in 1988, 89, 90. (28%) a decreasing unemployment turned around and started increasing again 1983 = 9.3%, 1985 = 7.2%, 1988 = 5.5% , 1990 = 5.6%, 1991 = 6.8% , 1992 = 7.5%.

Looking at the numbers, there's no historical or economic basis to claim that lowering the taxes on the wealthy will increase jobs. As I said before, increasing the wealthy taxes is the way to go. Either it'll only increase revenue and help the deficit having no effect on jobs, or it will allow the creation of more jobs. Lowering the taxes just has them save and concentrate their wealth.

As for corporate flight, what we need to do is close the loopholes that companies are using to get around paying their taxes. When GE's total tax bill is $0 and ends up with a tax benefit of over $3 billion, we have some serious problems. There's no way to really stop a company from leaving instead of paying taxes except by giving benefits for paying taxes or even just for being in that location. Either that or standardize more things across the country so leaving won't save them anything and they'll just have to pay. Either way, something needs to be done, and the answer is not tax cuts.

Aren't there multiple indexes, some with energy+food and some without?

From what I can tell the 'All Items' includes oil and food, while the 'All items less food and energy' index doesn't.

This seems very comprehensive: http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpid0211.pdf

They aren't excluded to hide cost of living increases, they are excluded because they are relatively volatile.

Gas is pretty expensive these days, but it was only about 15 years ago that it was about as cheap as it had ever been.

That you can research such information on their website sort of deflates the conspiratorial hand-wringing:

http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet?data_tool=latest_numbers&series_id=WPS0571&output_view=pct_1mth