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This growing economy is presumably why the middle class and working population of America have seen no benefit from improvements in productivity since the early 1970s. http://www.epi.org/productivit... What you are missing about the 1% is that their wealth will logically move where the growth is - and that is not the USA, it is the Far East, Africa, China and other recently third world countries. You are very silly if you think the 1% are interested in investing in the American workforce whilst better returns are available elsewhere. Try looking at what has actually happened rather than some pie in the sky theory.

So the question might be reversed, should everyone with the same job description be paid exactly the same, regardless of work output or experience?

This is a good question. All people inflate their own sense of worth. Workers who claim to work 80 hours a week are often making very different choices about how to manage their time as someone who claims to work 40. It's one half of the Dunning-Kruger effect (the other half being that people of high capability often underestimate the difficulty of what they do).

http://www.apa.org/monitor/feb...

Now I'm not saying that you're exaggerating the amount of work you did in comparison to others (especially those tricksy women, amirite?), but it would be consistent with what we know about human nature and the actual data from the workplace of people who claim to work long hours. Studies have shown that the more hours people claim to work over 55, the more they're exaggerating how many hours they actually work. People who claim to work 75-80 hours a week are usually overestimating by at least 20 hours.

https://www.fastcompany.com/30...

Competence is a complicated thing masquerading as a simple thing. No, people who have the same job title as you shouldn't necessarily make the same amount of money. Your pay is based on performance reviews, training, proven competence and a whole slew of other inputs. The problem is, a lot of those so-called metrics have a built-in bias. And in a salaried workforce, those biases can really run rampant. That's why in countries with healthier, more dynamic economies, you will see pay based on seemingly arbitrary measures like job title and seniority. This was an innovation of the labor movement and led to the most productive workforces in the world.

http://www.epi.org/publication...

I have no doubt that you're a competent, hard-working guy. That's my built-in bias because I like you, Ol Olsoc. A lot of times, we find agreement around here. We have things in common. If I were overseeing a performance review of you, I'd probably be predisposed to rate you highly. I'd certainly be predisposed to rate you more highly than the woman who's been a bitch to me every since I made that joke about the one-eared elephant at Miller's retirement party.

Now, get the picture?

Unions raise wages, period (and also working conditions, benefits, etc.)

"Unions raise wages of unionized workers by roughly 20% and raise compensation, including both wages and benefits, by about 28%."

If you don't want that, okay, but you're being flat-out irrational.

http://www.epi.org/publication/briefingpapers_bp143/

So, let me get this straight AC--

A country that imports more than it exports is "Great!" in your estimation, and pointing out that the actual quote from ricardo concerning his theory is as follows, with a little added emphasis of my own:

[blockquote]
"If a foreign country can supply us with a commodity cheaper than we ourselves can make it, better buy it of them [b]with some part of the produce of our own industry employed in a way in which we have some advantage.[/b] The general industry of the country, being always in proportion to the capital which employs it, will not thereby be diminished ... but only left to find out the way in which it can be employed with the greatest advantage."
[/blockquote]

Note, his thesis does not work at all when the bolded part is not met.

While the US does have the second largest export market, A significant proportion of the US's labor force is not tied to manufacturing or exports, most of it is service industry. Further, the manufacturing capacity of the US is currently struggling.

http://www.reuters.com/article...

Reuters attributes the low manufacturing performance to a high valued dollar, and low oil costs (globally)-- resulting in labor for manufacturing being too expensive in the USA-- THE EXACT THING WE HAVE BEEN TALKING ABOUT, and that tariffs are intended to help avert.

Their opinion is not alone-- The economic policy institute has a rather lengthly report about it.

http://www.epi.org/publication...

To which they credit " nearly two decades of policy failures that have damaged its international competitiveness" as the primary causal factor behind the massive reduction in US manufacturing. What policy decisions have been enacted in the past 20 years? Various free trade agreements that removed trade tariffs.

It further states that manufacturing accounts for only 8.8% of the US's labor force. Meaning that most americans are not employed doing manufacturing, but in some other industry.

Yet somehow, despite the massively disproportionate segment of the US labor force that is allocated to service providing, industries seeking service workers (No, software is NOT a manufacturing job. it is a service job.) "Simply cannot find qualified applicants!" Perhaps we aren't training enough people to meet those needs? No-- the NYT seems to feel otherwise.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04...

The costs of attaining a college degree are spiraling out of control, while the benefits of getting one diminish, due to labor force saturation. This is because there is out of control demand for college education, coupled with lackluster pay once it is attained. Basically, the service industry in the US does not want to pay for the education requirements it is demanding, and is leaving hopeful applicants holding the bag.

Instead, the service industry leadership wants only the cream of the crop, so to speak, of the potential applicant pool. It demands only the very finest caviar, and wants to pay cheesewiz prices. (Why not, it can get caviar for the price of cheezewiz elsewhere!)

This comparative difference in labor rates is ALSO controlled innately by tariffs, and prevents this kind of labor shopping-- at least as far as outsourced labor is concerned.

Now that I have buried you under a pretty substantively sized wall of text with some citations and opinion pieces by bonafide economists, perhaps you can be a little more forthcoming in how my interpretation of your rhetorical question is so clearly "Wrong", yes?

Who is producing that wealth?

Here's the list.

Why don't those who aren't working, work, so that they can get some wealth of their own?

Because people don't get to work just because they want to; they work because a company was willing to hire them. Companies don't hire unless they need to -- and they don't need to, because we still have a shortage of aggregate demand

"But what about entrepreneurs" you're about to ask. That requires having a profitable idea and the capital to implement it, and frankly, most people are too stupid and/or poor for that.

Furthermore, your question is ill-posed: wealth is not produced through work. Wealth is produced through owning productive assets. Even if you're earning a six-figure income, if you are spending it instead of acquiring productive assets (e.g. stock in the companies listed above) you're still a pauper.

Why would those who you claim are hoarding money keep it, instead of investing it in some productive enterprise?

Ask Apple; they're the ones hoarding the biggest chunk of it ($203 billion, according to the most recent source I could find).

Except that hard numbers prove that the free trade/profit-maximizing system that you're desperately trying to defend is actually hurting the American middle class, whose living standards have been stagnant since tariffs started being eliminated, trade globalized, government role downsized, and automation dramatically increased: http://www.epi.org/publication...

That said, being a physicist, I'd like to remember you that the rest of the academic world - the serious part - does not consider your field of study a real science, and rate you economists just like astrologists, except that the latter are funny at least.

Well if this is correct then they're right. Something to keep in mind though, a lot of the min. wage workers who are that old have either useless degrees(gender studies, the comparative philosophy of harry potter., etc) or people who are doing it just for some extra cash on the side. In my neck of the woods in Canada, there are very few teenagers who are working PT. Most of them are all in their 30's, same with the people working in big box stores(usually $1-3 above min wage). Teenagers don't get those jobs these days because the jobs are already taken.

I think the reason that they mention "people of color" separately (I don't know why they didn't just say minorities), is that being a person of color is correlated with having low income.

That's not the reason. People of color are generally shut out of the same banking products that we take for granted.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10...

There's been several studies now that show that with a black family and white family with exactly the same income and credit scores, the black family is less likely to be given loans and more likely to be steered toward "sub-prime" type of banking products, even though they're repayment rates are the same.

http://www.epi.org/publication...

https://www.nerdwallet.com/blo...

Because, you know, without any sort of employment regulation we always get the best of all possible worlds with absolutely the best economy and wages that there is possible to be. Because right wing ideology says so!

Well, no, Microeconomics 101 says so. And Fredrich Hayek. The observation is no one agrees to a deal unless both parties think they benefit and benefit by more than their other available options (would you buy something if it wasn't worth it or you could get it cheaper somewhere else?). Given that, I trust employees and employers to strike the best possible deal between themselves. It's the height of arrogance for me to think I know their situation and can craft a better deal than they do.

Economists "agree" on no such thing.

Fair enough, it's not unanimous. I hope (but can't prove) virtually all of them will concede that theory and practice show if you have a price floor, you get surplus supply and reduced demand. In a labor market, one calls that "unemployment". They should also generally agree employers can adjust in other ways than cutting jobs (e.g. by cutting benefits). Finally, they should agree the effects might be small and difficult to measure. The current natural experiments suddenly raising the minimum by large amounts (e.g. Seattle) ought to be enlightening.

Personally, I suspect the economists who signed that statement want to believe the minimum wage doesn't cost jobs and are suffering confirmation bias. I may be doing the same thing in the reverse direction. I don't think so. Supply and demand analysis is pretty simple, compelling, and matches my own observations of how the world works. That raising the price of labor would not reduce demand seems such an extraordinary claim it demands really clear, extraordinary, and compelling evidence to believe it.

Get ready for things to get more expensive. You didn't actually think companies were going to give that money away freely, did you? People will lose jobs, too, because businesses won't be able to afford this.

Because, you know, without any sort of employment regulation we always get the best of all possible worlds with absolutely the best economy and wages that there is possible to be. Because right wing ideology says so!

It's the same reasons economists agree that minimum wage hurts the economy.

Economists "agree" on no such thing.

Use google you tool instead of arguing against reality:
http://www.epi.org/publication...

It would be better if they guy wasn't 1. paid so much money himself ; and 2) a total dick about paying his employees living wages in general. See: http://www.epi.org/blog/romney...

Yes, you can make the arguments about robots replacing people, and yes, it's going to happen, but this guy is one of the worst salespeople for it and a magnificent representative of the upper management asshole

I see that economists in general as well as you tout free trade as self defeating however I haven't seen anything put forward that would advance prosperity in general. Indeed an economist would suggest that increases in productivity bring wealth to all. I agree that increased productivity brings good things but as has been charted many times wealth to all is not one of them. While productivity has increased wages and life in general for employees has not. We've tried free trade and found that the arguments that it will bring increases to all are unfounded while the arguments that it's a race to the bottom seem quite accurate. When I think about the pace of work today vs the 50's that you cited, I'd take the 50's. Your thoughts? sources: http://www.epi.org/publication... http://www.theatlantic.com/bus... for many more Google "wages vs productivity graph"

People are uniformly better off today than they were 35 years ago...... And if you look at government taxation and spending, you'll find that the only income group that pays substantially more than they receive in government benefits is the top 20%

And neither of those things have anything to do with the fact that the government, in the pockets of the wealthy, has been redistributing wealth from the poor and middle class for the last 35+ years, and certainly neither of them refute what is obvious to pretty much anyone who's been alive since before the 80's (and is actually old enough to remember them). My mea culpa is, i actually voted for Reagan... at least it didn't take me more than a couple years to see how truly fucked up his voodoo economics was, and foresee the devastation it would bring on this country if it wasn't changed.

He says posting a graph that starts in 1984.

This paints the picture much better. Hourly compensation increase 1948 - 1973: ~100%. 1973-present: ~10%.

So you're technically right with the claim wages have risen ~20% since 1967. You're just ignoring how much faster it was the twenty years before that and how slow it is in comparison to productivity increases and the income increases of the top few percent.

Lying with statistics at its finest.

Thank you for your support of teachers. I've already reported and weighed in a few times about this subject, and I'd like to just expand on a few of your points.

Unfortunately, money speaks, and superintendents listen. When someone walks into a sup's office and says, "I'd like to donate $50,000 to the district to buy more technology," who would say no? And, on a national scale, if Zuck & Gates walk into the president's office to say, "We'd like to donate $1,000,000 to get more school districts to code," do you think Obama would be any different?

I do wish that we would just let labor markets let supply and demand naturally encourage or discourage people from entering and leaving the profession, as it happened a decade ago. While Microsoft claims that we aren't supplying enough computer programmers to meet demand, the BLS begs to differ. Salaries have grown at 1.5% annually between 2004-2012, barely keeping up with inflation. All the while, we continue to bring in more H1B visa applicants. If these companies -really- want more programmers, all they need to do is raise salaries. It sounds like they have plenty to spare. Not to mention repatriating all that money would go a long ways in increasing tax revenues to help states pay for their K-12 institutions.

Ah yes, the crony capitalism mantra.
"If you are good enough at your job then you have nothing to worry about"

No it is competition which is the essence of a free market. The crony capitalism mantra is to attempt to eliminate competition so you can be shit at your job and still get paid. Why do you fear competition? Is it that your job is so mind numbing that anybody can step in and do it just as good as you? That would indeed be a reason to act as you are.

You know, it sounds a lot like the police mantra we hear over and over again
"If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear"

That's a nice strawman you're building there.

The cops just want more power to abuse you

And look: there you are tearing down that strawman...what a surprise.

and the companies want more workers who are just good enough to do the job while being willing to accept peanuts to do it.

Actually I think you will find there are already plenty of those workers around. Didnt realize we have an oversupply of tech workers? Maybe you need to get educated on this subject.

These companies are not looking for the best of the best, they are looking for workers who will accept a low wage, work extreme hours, and be too afraid of unemployment to ever complain.

If that were true then they already have exactly that with the amount of tech workers. But what they really want is developers who are exceptional that can produce exceptional results rather than mediocre ones that produce mediocre results.

If you are convinced otherwise you are either ignorant, or just fucking stupid. So, which one are you?

Neither. What we have proven is that you are the one who is ignorant of the amount of graduates relative to jobs. There is already a 3:1 ratio, they have more qualified candidates than they can poke a stick at yet this is not driving salaries down, why is that? Are you actually trying to say there is not an oversupply of tech workers?

http://www.theatlantic.com/bus...

or here:

http://www.epi.org/blog/inequa...

You mean...Disney didn't replace their US tech employees with H-1B Visa holders? So their US employees did not train their H-1B Visa replacements?

You mean...Microsoft didn't lay off 18,000 people and then lobby Congress to increase the number of H-1B Visas?

You mean...there isn't economic research that refutes that article's premise: "As longtime researchers of the STEM workforce and immigration who have separately done in-depth analyses on these issues, and having no self-interest in the outcomes of the legislative debate, we feel compelled to report that none of us has been able to find any credible evidence to support the IT industry’s assertions of labor shortages." http://www.epi.org/publication...

Sounds like a page out of the Philip Morris playbook: "cigarettes don't cause cancer" - "H-1B Visa holders don't displace American workers"

I'm now going to make an educated guess and say that you've never sat in on executive-level financial reviews of an entire business because if you had, we wouldn't be having this particular debate.

Only for non-profits, and while they were even more focused on limiting expenses (I would think), no one ever suggested getting rid of skilled veterans and replacing them with code monkeys. In fact the one outsourcing attempt (to a foreign company) was such a failure it had to be reversed.

And you're always, always right, no matter what. I have never once seen you admit that you are wrong, Curunir_Wolf, and your posts are brazen and detailed enough that any admission would be startling.

I have been wrong (really, really wrong) more than once, and while I have admitted so in some cases, I've found it's best to shut up and let the correction (often, multiple corrections from many folks) stand on their own.

I should also note that I don't have the experience with html tags that you do either

Then you should change your posting settings to "plain text", so that at least you can put in line breaks. The first post was wall-of-words enough but this one is really painful to pick through.

Wages have not technically been flat.

This is what I had to respond to. I thought it was well known and well-established. 1-3% raises, to only a few, is part of what is keeping wages flat. And while some like to point out that "well inflation is very low", they use only the latest modified CPI, which ignores things like food, energy, and housing costs which have all risen even faster than CPI. And even CPI shows price increases between 2 and 4% for the last 20 years. That means a 1-3% raise is actually falling income.

You can Google the results of wages over time on your own to educate yourself, but for your edification, I will also provide some references. The first is from Pew Research, which studied wages from 1964. It clearly demonstrates the issue of stagnant wages throughout that period. The most marked trend, though, has been the stagnation of wages since about 2000. An interesting report on the trend comes from the Economic Policy Institute. Of particular note in that study are several very troubling trends:

• Productivity has actually increased significantly during the period. That is, workers are performing more work, while compensation remains flat.
• During the Great Recession, productivity continued to increase (7.7 percent), while wages were flat (0.0 percent) as measured by the Labor Productivity and Costs (LPC).
• Compensation for the top 5% of earners actually has seen growth. The most growth.

The last point is interesting. What is basically means is that as productivity grows, the company executives compensate themselves, while replacing their workers with cheaper foreign labor. The company declines, goes into bankruptcy, the executives bail out with their golden parachutes, and everything from a small block to an entire town ends up in dire financial straights.

I don't know what the answer is for resolving this spiral into a country in decline, but I do know what happened to the leaders of France when it happened there...

the gist is though that isn't this incredibly risky for Disney? the government could cut down on the numbers of h1b's any year and then they would be boned.

That's not a big problem because:

  (1) the H1B holders are already in country, the government doesn't revoke H1B visas, they just change the amount issued next year.

(2) this is mostly a process for migrating the jobs out of country - they bring people in on H1B to learn the system and then after a year or two they send them back home and they do the work from off-shore.

• Southern California Edison IT workers 'beyond furious' over H-1B replacements
• This IT worker had to train an H-1B replacement
• 10 U.S. senators seek investigation into H-1B-driven layoffs
• New Data Show How Firms Like Infosys and Tata Abuse the H-1B Program

Do any of my fellow IT workers see 200k more IT jobs than domestic workers can fill?

> That's right. Fuck those poor Indians who think they have a shot a decent income by coming over to the US.

The argument for H1B isn't about giving poor indians a chance, it is about filling gaps in the American skills market.

Fuck their employers for buying laws that take away their freedom to compete like everybody else here. Turn H1B into a fast-track immigration visa that requires them to become permanent residents if not outright citizens and does not directly or indirectly restrict them from switching jobs as they see fit. After all, if they are filling an actual skills gap, then we want them here. Even if it means a brain drain for the rest of India.

H1B should not mean second-class citizen, or worse, just the first step to off-shoring.

BTW, I married a poor Indian. Not slum-dog poor, but living in an apartment where monkeys break in and steal stuff poor.

And what would you have him do my friend? With all those would would have the power to act upon all neatly bought and paid for? It has been an open secret for a long time that H1-B not about importing talent but a means to depress the market wages for a long time now. Yet suddenly his coming forward would break the tide? Please, the powers that be have been and will continue to sell the US public down the river just to get another coin in their pocket.

You want change? Don't berate someone working a low level slot when shit started happening way above his pay grade and he had no one to turn to. Start looking at real solutions, like better representation from our elected officials. Course most of those are bought and paid for too so we are all supremely fucked.

It does not work — despite decades of efforts, Blacks and womyn still earn less than others — for whatever reasons.

It causes ugly discrimination of other kinds — with government contracts officially favoring womyn-run businesses and colleges openly penalizing certain races.

It costs businesses billions to avoid such lawsuits, and millions more in damages and fees when the avoidance-efforts fail. And not just businesses — government agencies too pay (with our monies) to avoid being sued. Even worse, the prosecutions by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission are of the "guilty until proven innocent" variety, with most targets agreeing to settle because the Executive can run them out of business before Judiciary gets to even hear the accusations.

And finally, even if it weren't for the failures and abuses, the whole idea is immoral, because it seeks to punish thoughtcrimes — one is guilty, because one had (or is suspected of having had) certain illegal thoughts.

Can we just stop this nonsense? If Tata — or anyone — want to discriminate, let them...

I'll go on my own knowledge and cursory research. In the South East I can get a nice 5BR 3bath house with a 4 car garage (with 8' doors high enough for my Van) on about 10 acres of land for around $800 a month mortgage or $1200 rent (will stick to rent for the calculation) and a 30 Minute light traffic commute. Food costs for two people are about $300 (including weekly dinners out averaging $50/ week). Utilities are average $500 per month (Electric/Cable/Water/Phones). We burn about $200/month on various entertainment. Insurance on 2 Vehicles is $100/month. Changing monthly expenses to yearly: $18,500. Now we add in the yearly expenses. Insurance on my motorcycle is $342 per year, and yearly registration for the 3 vehicles is a total of $60 ( registration only, all taxes and ad-valorem paid at first time registration in-state per sale, no emissions control fee except in greater Atl area). Total Yearly Expenses: ~$18,900 (give or take since I haven't included maintenance or fuel costs) For good measure, round up to an even $20K to account for the missing costs noted. Now, say I have a position paying $150k / year (not going to figure tax into this for simplicity sake) my expenses are only about 13% of my income, with a $130k savings / year against inflation.

Now, I'll perform some cursory research on Bay area expenses. Using estimates from this Bay area rent on a studio apartment averages around $2,000 / month with longer commute times (outside of city center). Also note that in my search of housing listings (not linked), available houses to buy/rent with just the comparable square footage and not even counting lot acreage don't exist out there, and we like our space. Food costs run about $600(not including the weekly dinners out, add $80/week for that for comparable food/service quality). I had my Insurance agent run the numbers not long ago when I was budgeting against a contract offer in the Bay Area that I turned down; my 2 vehicles would run me about $300/month and the bike would be $800/year just on insurance, if I found a place where I could park 'em all. Other necessities are listed as $613/month which I'm assuming would be the utilities. I haven't checked on registration costs for my Van, Car, and Bike, but given that there are taxes and fees assesed above registration, I've figured about $200 per vehicle per year (this could be an overshoot or undershoot by a significant amount, and I admit that). Changing the monthly to yearly, as above: $45,996. Adding the yearly reccuring costs: $47,396. Again, to adjust for additional costs, rounding up to $49k Expenses are now above 30% of my income with only $100k / year for savings and a significant hit to quality of life. For it to be worth the move out there, $300k would be the minimum I would accept on an offer, and that's only if they offered moving assistance where I didn't have to pay a dime in moving costs, otherwise the price would go up. Much more reasonable than FlyHelicopter's 750k, but I've yet to find a company willing to make an offer of even $250k, and that's if they're really desperate. Not willing to add that extra $50k? You don't need me that bad and I'm too comfortable. Enjoy your quakes.

Valid complaints would be that the numbers reported don't include the homeless (although those estimates are gathered elsewhere), you don't understand the report, or that it conflicts with your personal opinion.

Incorrect.

The numbers are specifically the number of people who are unemployed long term.

If you want to include the people who have simply stopped looking entirely, the percentage of working age people who were engaged, but are no longer, in the workforce in the U.S. who are not working is much higher.

Feel free to try and spin-doctor this:

IT’S AN ILLUSION: HERE ARE THE REAL UNEMPLOYMENT NUMBERS
http://www.infowars.com/its-an...

The Real Unemployment Rate: In 20% Of American Families, Everyone Is Unemployed
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/...

Fact Check: No, ‘Actual’ Unemployment Isn’t 37.2 Percent
(it's "only" more than twice the number reported by the government)
http://www.theblaze.com/storie...

Chart: What’s the real unemployment rate?
(This is the "U-6 rate" - "The U-6 rate covers the unemployed, underemployed and those who are not looking but who want a job.")
http://www.cnbc.com/id/1020551...

Real unemployment rate is at least 18 percent
http://thehill.com/blogs/congr...

Missing Workers: The Missing Part of the Unemployment Story
(This is the economic policy institute; they have the lowest "real" estimate, slightly less than 2X what the fed is reporting; they have a somewhat vested interest in casting the numbers lower than the others, as they get more than 1/4 of their funding from labor unions)
http://www.epi.org/publication...

Feel free to disagree with them, or cite numbers from sources that don't have a political master to which their numbers are subservient (i.e. "someone other than the DOL").

> I'm was an H-1B and I came to the US for a salary that put me in the top tax bracket.

Great. But surely you must realize that your experience does not reflect the majority, right?

The top 10 h-1b employers, accounting for 50% of visas, are off-shorers.

In the meantime, we are working longer and longer hours because in order to keep profits up, companies have been laying people off and making their current workforce work harder and longer.

As an I.T. contractor, my contracts over the last six years has explicitly forbidden me from working overtime. I can only work 40 hours per week, Monday through Friday, during normal business hours. Which is fine with me. The contract for my current job included paid holidays and 20 paid time off (PTO) days. The perks are getting better on my end.

A plan that was supposed to help us out and get employment back to 2007 levels has horribly failed.

This isn't a normal economy. If current job growth is maintained, it would still take two years to recover to 2007.

From the 2nd footnote of this post:

There are a handful of consulting firms that rent out big pools of foreign programmers they bring in on H1-B visas.

That is a stunning level of understatement. I'd go so far as to say it is a lie - it is an unimportant technical truth designed to obscure the reality of the situation.

In 2012, all 10 of the top 10 H1B employers were offshore outsourcing companies.
In 2013, 50% of all H1B visas went to offshore outsourcers.

So there may well be only a small number of of these "bad actors" who abuse the H1B system, but they account for the majority of H1B visas.

FWIW -- The way these offshore guys work is that they bring people in to "train up" in preparation for the work moving off-shore, at which point those H1B holders go back home along with the job.

Yes, and Americans have more freedom to make those choices for themselves than Europeans.

No, most of them do not. Social mobility is provably higher in most EU member states with high taxes. It's pretty simple: wealth/income redistribution provides a lot of people in the lower part of society with freedom. Many (less affluent) Americans have little choice but to take on any job they can get and then work as many hours as they can get, crawling for their superiors for fear of getting fired. That's not freedom.

You can choose which company you work for, and you can found your own company. Both of those are a lot easier in the US than in Europe.

Wait a minute. You actually believe that Europeans can't choose at which company they get a job? Really?
Also, wrong: http://www.nationmaster.com/co...
Or perhaps founding a company is easier in the US, just less of an option to most people.

Nothing, except higher taxation, less wealth, and more regulation

Bullshit. Private investments are hardly regulated and not taxed at all.
But don't let reality spoil your preconceived notions. Just keep waving that banner, man.

Yes, I have experienced them first hand, under socialism, under the European welfare state, and finally coming as an immigrant to the US and working my way up.

So you agree, the US has problems. How many of those constraints have you experienced in Australia?

So tell me: what's your experience of "socio-economic constraints" based on?

The ability to read. Your claim that Australia is more socio-economically constrained than the US is plainly false as plenty of OECD reports will show. This says it's nearly twice as constrained. Your claim is bunk.

"According to this cite: http://www.epi.org/publication... [epi.org] The average minimum wage earner *is* the primary wage earner.

No where in your citation does it say that."

yes it does. maybe you don't comprehend English well? If you mean word for word then you would be technically accurate, meaning you are also technically splitting hairs to be correct, which usually means you position is very weak.. oh look it is weak.. well that explains it...

According to this cite: http://www.epi.org/publication... The average minimum wage earner *is* the primary wage earner.

No where in your citation does it say that.

According to this cite: http://www.epi.org/publication...

The average minimum wage earner *is* the primary wage earner. This also implies that for this half they are, at most, just barely hitting lower middle class incomes, and probably most of them are poor.

You do realize that people aren't, you know, actually, like, supposed to be able to support themselves with the lowest-paid jobs in the country? These are the kind of jobs that used to be done by kids still living at home, not those who expected to make a career and raise a family by saying 'Do you want fries with that?' a thousand times a day?

But with today's fucked economy, that's the only type of job many adults with kids, rent and car payments can find.

Our society has deep structural problems relating to automation that have been ignored for forty years and those chickens are coming home to roost. One of those major problems is that we've given preferential tax treatment to capital gains over income (labor).

We can either have egalitarian democratic society, or we can be like Mexico. I hope the walls on your gated community are high enough and you pay your private security contractors enough not to steal from you.

In the cases of Violent Crimes, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia rank 30th, 18th, and 19th, respectively according to census.gov.
http://www.census.gov/statab/r...
These aren't exactly low figures.

Let's look at some other poorer states.

South Carolina is 1st.
Tennessee is 2nd.
Nevada is 3rd.
Florida is 4th.

Looking at the following report on income disparity between states, I am seeing some similar names at the top of that list:
http://www.epi.org/publication...
Florida
Nevada

Interestingly enough, Mississippi actually proves my point in that it's one of the states with the least amount of income inequality and actually further down on that list.

Thank you for that Mr. Anonymous Coward.

Oh, and to further ad to the flames of failure.
Mississippi has the highest percentage of African Americans by state, and ranks 30th in the amount of violent crime there. Even further reinforcing that race is actually not an issue:
http://kff.org/other/state-ind...

I restate my previous suggestion that quenda is a racist idiot.

...That's one thing that people often forget in these minimum wage/living wage debates: the employee still has to be productive enough to earn those wages. ...

No one is forgetting that, Coward, except maybe the corporations writing the paychecks.

Looking at the productivity vs compensation curves for Americans over the last 50 years there has been an enormous increase of average productivity (2.5 times increase) but virtually no corresponding in real average wages, and the real minimum wage has actually declined, and corporations like Walmart are making record profits ($127 billion for Walmart this year) so worker productivity is doing very, very well for the corporations. All of the evidence shows that corporations are squeezing workers compensation to pump money into the pockets of investors (mostly the already rich) and the executive suite, and have been doing so for two generations now. American workers at all levels, from the minimum-wage workers up are easily productive enough to have earned fat raises across the board.

Actually productivity is non-existent. Productivity in USA has plunged since the 1971

You are absolutely wrong. Worker productivity in the US today is more than double what it was in 1970. It has grown dramatically every single decade since at least WWII (years for which we have statistics) and certainly since the 1800s (for which we don't have good statistics).

http://www.epi.org/publication...

Page down for the graph.

Worker productivity is up. Worker compensation is down.

I see unions like judges -- as a foundation of a democratic society.

They can both be corrupted by money, be involved in organized crime, but can also make a tremendous difference in the lives of thousands by Doing Their Job (TM). Removing judges causes anarchy (the problem they were designed to fix) and removing unions concentrates wealth in the hands of a few non-working people (the problem they were designed to fix). If we look around, union membership is at an all-time low and we have wage stagnation. Coincidence? In countries with higher union participation, you also see benefits like mandatory paid vacation, wage growth, and single payer healthcare.

People can argue whether or not union Foo is good or bad (just as we can with a given judge), but unions themselves are a necessary tool in combating the abuse of people by those in corporate governance through elections.

"The vast, vast majority of tech engineers that I talked to who are from the United States are very supportive of bringing in people from other countries because they want to work with the very best."

Let's see, I'll bet it went something like this:
"if it meant you could keep your job, would you want to work with the very best engineers that I'd like to hire from foreign countries?"
"Does that mean I can keep my job if you hire foreign engineers?"
"I'm looking for a yes/no answer here."
" uh...yes"

Refer to http://www.epi.org/publication... for the truth about the "best and brightest" BS.

If those foreign engineers they are going to hire are the best one would reasonably expect them to be paid as if they are the best. Does the data on salaries of current and past H1B visa workers indicate that they are being paid like they are the best?

Productivity in ALL sectors is growing, mainly as a result of IT advances. And it doesn't require much additional training, so wages are NOT growing: http://www.epi.org/blog/worker...

So much for your theory that wages should reflect productivity growth. They don't. And babbling about GDP and inflation and conspiracies is inane - show us a complete model, without magic "here be conspiracies".

Soviet communism, and marxist communism in general, operate (wrongly) under assumptions of the economy being a zero-sum game, so it's not really a surprise it has an effect on the ethics of its 'players'.

Whereas capitalism, in contrast, is a tide that "raises all boats". Oh, wait.

> This solves all real claims of not enough tech workers, it reduces the US budget, and gets rid of the financial incentive to refuse to hire perfectly good American tech workers.

However, it does not address the primary abuse of the H1B visa as the first step of off-shoring. They bring them in on the H1B, train them up and then send them home. In 2012, the top 10 H1B employers were all off-shoring companies. That changed a little bit in 2013, but by total number of visas it got worse.

Plus, your numbers are from 2005.

I remember back in the 1990s (I think) reading news stories about corporations pursuing 'increased productivity' per worker as a strategy for success, particularly in relation to international competition. Is there any other way to translate that language into plain English other than to say that what was desired was less wages for the same amount of work?

Yes. It could be translated as "more output for the same amount of work", if the increased productivity is per-work-hour productivity. Whether that translates into "less pay for the same amount of work" or not depends on whether wages grow with productivity. In the US, they grew with productivity from the late 1940's until the early 1970's, but haven't done so after that.

Here is a less fun, but more informative site that explains why average wages haven't just followed inflation since 1968 (tl;dr: productivity increased).

http://www.epi.org/publication...

Worker-to-beneficiary ratio in the US: 16 workers to 1 beneficiary in 1950 3.3 workers per beneficiary in 2003 2.1 workers per beneficiary in 2033 (projected)

You do understand that this is real, right? This is all based on hard data and real world facts; I'm not making this shit up as I go along.

16 / 3.3 = 4.8 fold decrease in worker:retiree ratio in the US.

And yet, the system hasn't crashed yet.

3.3 / 2.1 is only a further 1.57 fold decrease, much smaller than the last few years

Why hasn't the system collapsed years ago?

1. An increase in general productivity (see http://www.epi.org/publication... for an interesting article in this regard)
2. Don't forget, these people do die and some leave behind considerable inheritances, which are taxed exorbitantly, even in the US.

Of course, some of this is paid for by US borrowing, which will have to taper off.

That makes the silly assumption that capital wouldn't just keep 100% of gains due to automation while leaving labor to starve in the street, and berating them for being lazy and cluttering up the gutters.

This makes about as much sense as when the Clinton administration opened trade with China by personally promising reforms in Chinese government and an increase in Chinese demand for American cars and products, leading to an increase in manufacturing jobs. Yep, makes perfect sense.