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And just two more points:

1) Interest rates have been trending downwards for 40 years. This helps politicians as it boosts financial markets. See Trump, who is louder than his predecessors was publicly bashing Powell, his Federal Reserve chair, for running off the balance sheet (the "50 B's") and raising interest rates. Others have done this exactly same thing behind closed doors.

2) You can also see 30 year mortgage rates have been declining for forty years too.

Without a cashless society, or a "narrow bank", it's hard to push interest rates below zero. But there is always downward political pressure on interest rates.

The point is, going forward, we may be seeing a plateau in interest rates at these low levels, which has implications for financial markets. Namely, that as interest rates go down, institutions and people seeking returns have to move to other investments, pushing their prices up. If interest rates finally plateau, that suggests that some other tactic, perhaps not yet envisioned, may be necessary to continue to support housing and stock markets.

FYI, FWIW, YMMV, standard disclaimers apply, etc.

And just two more points:

1) Interest rates have been trending downwards for 40 years. This helps politicians as it boosts financial markets. See Trump, who is louder than his predecessors was publicly bashing Powell, his Federal Reserve chair, for running off the balance sheet (the "50 B's") and raising interest rates. Others have done this exactly same thing behind closed doors.

2) You can also see 30 year mortgage rates have been declining for forty years too.

Without a cashless society, or a "narrow bank", it's hard to push interest rates below zero. But there is always downward political pressure on interest rates.

The point is, going forward, we may be seeing a plateau in interest rates at these low levels, which has implications for financial markets. Namely, that as interest rates go down, institutions and people seeking returns have to move to other investments, pushing their prices up. If interest rates finally plateau, that suggests that some other tactic, perhaps not yet envisioned, may be necessary to continue to support housing and stock markets.

FYI, FWIW, YMMV, standard disclaimers apply, etc.

The problem is that the value produced by the robots goes to profits earned by the people owning the robots

This is only true if competitors don't also install robots. If everyone automates, the profit margins are competed away, and the added value goes primarily to consumers.

where do the "consumers" get the money to buy that "added value'" if there are no jobs available because the robots do all the jobs?

Of course, this is only true if we have free markets. Removing barriers to competition is the real solution, not slowing the adoption of automation.

The main barrier to competition is the fact that as labor costs drop to zero, and all of the cost of a business is the machinery (which in economic terms is capital), it's expensive to enter a new business. The larger businesses drive out smaller businesses (due to economy of scale) and they price out new competitors (who have to pay the start-up costs).

This should have been covered in your economics 101 class, by the way.

that is, the rich people.

The biggest owners of capital in America are pension funds. So if you have a 401k or an IRA, that means you.

Fine. So, old people with retirement funds are a large portion of the rich people I'm talking about. As a member of the technoclass, you are so insulated in your bubble that you don't even know that not everybody has a retirement fund?.

People not rich enough to own stocks, IRAs, or pension funds are out of luck,.

That changes nothing in any of my statements.

Shortly there will be no entry-level jobs, and after that there will be no jobs, period.

Too late. The McCormick Reaper already destroyed all the jobs.

It pretty much destroyed farming as an occupation that provides jobs for most laborers. Right now, farming is under 1.5% of employment in the US. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/se...

As long as there are other jobs to which the people who were once needed to work on farms can switch to, that's fine.

What happens where there are no other jobs? What happens after that?

There are reasons why people and businesses are fleeing the State in droves. This is but one of countless others.

Those reasons are figments of your imagination, since there's been a monotonic increase in both population and, excepting nationwide recessions, GDP.

Where's the flight, pray tell, you disingenuous hack.

US manufacturing output is rising, and yet our CO2 output is falling. China's output of both is rising.

HSAs are great for rich people. Not so much for college kids or ... well, pretty much anyone else on the wrong side of the 31k median income. People who are so poor (or, TBF, too bad with money) that they have to choose between grocery shopping and the heat bill aren't going to fund their HSAs.

What's your plan for them? Lazy bums and welfare queens need health care, too. Before Obamacare, that was provided by the ER, followed by the hospital jacking up the charges on everyone because so many ER bills went unpaid (can't squeeze blood from a stone).

Other than that, I like the idea of Major Medical plans being available (one of the points where Obamacare went too far) and letting insurance cross state lines.

The current Republican "party", which bears little resemblance to the real Republican party of years gone by, has been lying to their base for years.

I live in central Ohio, grew up in southeastern Ohio, and watched with dismay the destruction of families resulting from the steady decline in coal mining employment in the 1970's.

Coal employment has been dropping steadily and almost linearly for decades as the mine operators have increased mechanization and automation, while coal output was steady or slightly increasing until about recently. In a quick search, I found this graph from the St Louis Federal Reserve, which only dates back to 1985. I remember a graph that showed employment and production back to the first half of the 20th century but lost the link.

https://www.stlouisfed.org/pub...

The executives and other partisans have been lying for decades.

"Anything more complex than oatmeal or beans and rice has skyrocketed in price over the last decade. "

Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: Food at home is only up 15% over the last 10 years. (That is a real price, of course, which tracks very closely with the 17% inflation rate).

"Real wages in the west have stagnated or gone down for two decades now."

Real total compensation per hour in the US is up 20% over the last 20 years.

It should also be noted that 13.7% (44.5 million people) in the US are foreign born, meaning they chose to come to the US for a better life. They are likely doing much better than if they remained where they were, even if they bring down average US compensation data.

"We've doubled productivity in the last 20 years while wages remained the same or went down. "

Average non-farm real output of workers per hour has risen by 50% over the least 20 years.

Average non-farm real total compensation of workers per hour has risen by 20% over the last 20 years.

The question, though, is what is the distribution of those two items. Has the rise in average productivity been driven by the productivity of a few, high-earning non-average workers, or has productivity risen for all workers? Also, what portion of productivity increase has come from capital investment in equipment as opposed to improved labor skills?

These are US numbers as well. It is possible that US productivity increases may be due to improvements in labor and capital in countries like China (where labor has seen tremendous wage increases) which provide inputs into US companies.

"We've doubled productivity in the last 20 years while wages remained the same or went down. "

Average non-farm real output of workers per hour has risen by 50% over the least 20 years.

Average non-farm real total compensation of workers per hour has risen by 20% over the last 20 years.

The question, though, is what is the distribution of those two items. Has the rise in average productivity been driven by the productivity of a few, high-earning non-average workers, or has productivity risen for all workers? Also, what portion of productivity increase has come from capital investment in equipment as opposed to improved labor skills?

These are US numbers as well. It is possible that US productivity increases may be due to improvements in labor and capital in countries like China (where labor has seen tremendous wage increases) which provide inputs into US companies.

Real wages are slowly moving up. And college tuition and fees are up, but not that bad - it's when you factor in room-and-board on-campus that things have really exploded.

okay...
first link:
https://www.infoplease.com/us/...
just look at the bit between 1850 to 1900... the numbers go up.

This is the consumer price index
https://www.minneapolisfed.org...

Here is a book that goes through US wages from colonial times to 1928 or so:
https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/...

Go through it. No offense to you... but the idea you're pushing is wrong and you need to shine the light of objectivity on it. If you double down after it was proven wrong... well, that is on you.

Don't be that guy. Look over the information and then concede.

FactCheck is misleading you. Yes, Obama "added 11 million jobs". Obama also caused millions of Americans to lose their jobs (and for many of them, not regain them). The two statements are not incompatible.

To be precise, what I was referring to was the massive drop in labor force participation rate under Obama. And that's not just due to demographic changes, you also see in in the 25-54 male demographic.

You're looking for the Labor Force Participation Rate. 62% of the people who could work are currently working.

The u3 unemployment number is just rigged nonsense, so the headline of this story is also nonsense.

Or give people an incentive to have kids instead of importing more people and driving down wages so couples can't afford to have kids.

The data says otherwise. There is an inverse correlation between wealth and fertility rates. It's well documented, and worldwide.

There are a number of hypothesis on why this is the case. However, its basically a big sociological mystery.

Are you using PPP numbers because in PPP terms China is growing even faster.

Please say you're not, because in nominal terms China's currency has increased over 10% since Trump. So that's already catching up another 10% in $US terms in just 1 year.

The American economy actually went backwards in 2017 in constant dollars when you factor in the 7% depreciation of the $US.

The real median personal income in 1980 in 2016-adjusted dollars was $22,038, so your current salary wasn't even above average back then.

In 1901 (PDF) the average yearly household income was $750, which in 2016-adjusted dollars is about $20,274. Compared to 1901, you're currently earning about the same as the average family did back then. While that's above average for personal income, it pales in comparison to the actual extremely wealthy people back then. For perspective, just ask yourself how many railroad empires you own or how many murders you've been rich enough to get away with.

Hey lookper GDP China is getting better rapidly. The opposite of what you claim.

Lets look at America. GDP growth in 2017 was 2.6% but the dollar fell 7% (trade weighted index) So the economy was only 95.4% the size it was before. From your own link US CO2 reduced 0.03Gt, for about half a %.

So US CO2 per GDP was a little over 4% worse in 2017.

China'a GDP growth in 2017 was 6.8% and the Yuan increased 7% against the $US in 2017. Your link shows 0.32Gt increase for China (a big jump from the previous years decreases) for about 2.5%

So China's CO2 per GDP was a bit over 11% better in 2017.

That's not even using fairer PPP numbers but just nominal.

PS: China isn't my nation, but all the evidence points towards them caring. They aren't the ones in denial about what the real cause of CO2 is, first world lifestyles and waste.

Who cares. Look into the summary and you'll see how fleeting this metric is. Obama never cracked 3% economic growth over all his terms.

I guess this is true if you leave out 2010 (3.8%), 2011 (3.7%), 2012 (4.1%), 2013 (3.1%), 2014 (4.4%), 2015 (4.9%), and 2017 (4.1%).

What you really need to look at is real compensation per hour because of all the non-wage compensation going on (health insurance, etc.). It is pretty flat since 2015.

The civillian labor force flatlined from 2008-2012, then start to a weak climb. Labor force participation rate only stopped falling in 2015 (the same time that total compensation flatlined).

My thought is that despite the low and flatlining unemployment rate, there are still people who are being sucked back into the labor force by availability of jobs. Many people marginally attached to the labor force are not high-productivity workers, so they can actually bring down average wages when they are hired.

Existing workers who are highly productive are seeing compensation increases so companies don't lose them, but new/inexperienced/less productive workers may be being hired at lower compensation levels.

What you really need to look at is real compensation per hour because of all the non-wage compensation going on (health insurance, etc.). It is pretty flat since 2015.

The civillian labor force flatlined from 2008-2012, then start to a weak climb. Labor force participation rate only stopped falling in 2015 (the same time that total compensation flatlined).

My thought is that despite the low and flatlining unemployment rate, there are still people who are being sucked back into the labor force by availability of jobs. Many people marginally attached to the labor force are not high-productivity workers, so they can actually bring down average wages when they are hired.

Existing workers who are highly productive are seeing compensation increases so companies don't lose them, but new/inexperienced/less productive workers may be being hired at lower compensation levels.

What you really need to look at is real compensation per hour because of all the non-wage compensation going on (health insurance, etc.). It is pretty flat since 2015.

The civillian labor force flatlined from 2008-2012, then start to a weak climb. Labor force participation rate only stopped falling in 2015 (the same time that total compensation flatlined).

My thought is that despite the low and flatlining unemployment rate, there are still people who are being sucked back into the labor force by availability of jobs. Many people marginally attached to the labor force are not high-productivity workers, so they can actually bring down average wages when they are hired.

Existing workers who are highly productive are seeing compensation increases so companies don't lose them, but new/inexperienced/less productive workers may be being hired at lower compensation levels.

You need to look at the numbers instead of intuition and guesswork. Real buying power rose consistently, and at a remarkably steep rate compared to most of the word, in the US from the 70s to about 2000. It's been effectively flat since then (lots of short term up and down, but little net effect), mostly because the economy has sucked.

Median HHI (but just since 84): https://fred.stlouisfed.org/se...

The second chart on this page is good, shows quintiles: https://www.advisorperspective...

You might find the total inflation-adjusted growth by quintile enlightening.

With your limited brain capacity, try to get simpler data .

Pedestrians killed (remember the topic being discussed) : over 5000 per year. https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehic...

Miles driven : over 3 trillion per year. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/se...

Demand back your money from your "algebra" classes. Because they admitted ineligible students like you who failed arithmetic.

And yet the actual money collected tells a very different story.

The U.S. corporate income tax, as a share of GDP, averaged 2.2 percent of GDP for the 2000 to 2011 period. This is in sharp contrast to its northern neighbor, Canada, which collected far more corporate income tax revenues than the United States at roughly 3.4 percent of GDP during the same period (Chart 2)

https://taxfoundation.org/us-c...

They don't actually pay that because there are so many loopholes deductions and subsidies. They pay a much smaller amount of tax because of this. As shown repeatedly in the data.

That is all the companies in the whole country. Not some made up company that is paying 2.2% of the entire countries GDP in tax. LOL
What single company do you think is paying half a trillion dollars of tax in the US??
You have no idea what you are talking about.

Total company tax actually paid to the US government by all companies is only 2.2% of US GDP
Total company tax actually paid to the Canadian government by all companies is 3.4% of Canadian GDP.
This is also averaged over a decade, not just one year cherry picked to prove a point.
Americans actually don't pay anywhere near the 'effective tax rate' Due to subsidies, deductions, loopholes etc.

Face facts
Lets look at a simple example
2016 GDP 18.6T
2016 Tax on corporate income 400B
Oh look its about 2.2%

https://data.worldbank.org/ind...

GDP 2016 in USD
1) USA, 18,624 billion
2) China, 11,199 billion
3) Japan, 4,940 billion
4) Germany, 3,478 billion
5) United Kingdom, 2,648 billion
6) France, 2,465 billion
7) India, 2,264 billion
8) Italy, 1,859 billion
9) Brazil, 1,796 billion
10) Canada, 1,530
11) Korean republic, 1,411 billion
12) Russia, 1,283 billion

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/se...
California, 2,600 billions

So if California was a country it would had been #6 in 2016.

We also had much much higher tax rates

No we didn't.

Federal tax receipts in 1955: 15.4% of GDP.
Federal tax receipts in 2015: 17.9% of GDP.

Citation: Federal Receipts as Percent of Gross Domestic Product

Maybe you should take a look at wage increases vs. inflation for the past 70 years or so.

In the current system, it 'appears' as if your wage is going up, but it is in fact shrinking.

But in a system built on lies... who wants to hear the truth?

You are actually wrong. It is not shrinking. Over the long run it in increasing very slightly. Over the last few decades it has mostly been stagnant. Any (slight) decrease is only in the shorter term. When we are talking about mortgage affordability we are generally talking about 30 year spans.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/se...

But you completely miss the point of my post. Yes inflation adjusted income only changes slightly over time (which is to be expected...cost of all good adjusts to what people are making, otherwise we'd all be living in mansions and driving ferraris). But look at that graphs above and notice the slope of that nominal income line. Now realize that the slope of your nominal mortgage payment over 30 years is zero. Your mortgage payment stays the same every year, while your income grows and grows. Even if that larger income doesn't give you more buying power, it makes your large mortgage debt easier and easier to afford every year.

Now try switching to a deflationary currency. To do that, you just flip the graph upside down. Your real (inflation adjusted) income/buying power stays more or less flat over time, but your nominal income would be sloping down. Buy your mortgage payment would stay flat, and every year get just a little more difficult to afford.

The statement on the bill was so that no-one could refuse it during the "Great Rebellion", as the American Revolution was called at the time. A citation from 1869 is typical: https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/...

At that time, the government did not wish to give person the option of refusing the (new) U.S. Dollar and demanding gold or silver before completing a transaction with the government or private individuals.

The Department of the Treasure has stated a legal opinion that the law does not apply to a large class of private transactions, on the grounds that a "debt" does not exist until the transaction is complete.

There is case law on paying the debt in cash as opposed to gold and silver, but Google Scholar doesn't report anything on refusal to accept cash for a non-debt.

An arguement can be made that the intention of the US founding fathers was to give "debt" its broadest possible reading, and that the position of the Treasury is pilpul, and requires authorizing legislation, such as (Canada's) "Currency Act"

This, of course, does not speak to other parts of the criminal code. For example, it may well be illegal to refuse to sell a necessity to a minor if they only have cash.

30 grand wasn't 50 years ago. average wage for oil field welders in 1972 was 4.47 an hour. I guess if you get lucky and include pension valuation and other benefits you might get to 13k/ year? maybe? assuming a 2000 hour year. I doubt any other welder made anywhere near 30k in something outside this particular specialty (the only one I can find solid data for).

https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/...

the bigger issue is probably people assuming a random tidbit you hear was at the beginning vs the middle or end of a career. It's more likely it was 30k circa 1985, which is close to 70k today. Which is slightly under what a mid-career welder can expect to make today.

Ahh, the pie cannot grow! I guess that's why the GDP went from $3.2 trillion in 1981 to $5.2 trillion in 1988. That's a 62.5% growth. The GINI ratio went from 0.406 to 0.426; under President Clinton it went from 0.433 to 0.466 - a much bigger jump. Money comes from creating wealth; if it didn't, we'd still have a sub-$1 trillion GDP.

Change the GDP growth, and the tax receipt growth changes. The "additional" doesn't matter - the baseline will do it on its own. A total GDP growth of 3.5% will result in a surplus after 4 years. That's the point - assuming we just return to historical GDP growth levels, this tax plan gets us out of deficit spending. Assuming a baseline of 1.6% (or even 2%) and adding on your 0.9% bump - that's still well under the historical average and what we are seeing today. A GDP growth of 3.5% will result in a surplus.

As far as President Obama not giving $1.7 trillion to the wealthiest Americans? Quantitative Easing was a $2 trillion giveaway - and the ACA forced everyone to give thousands of dollars to health insurance companies. That's why the GINI ratio reached an all-time high under President Obama - the rich did MUCH better with his policies than pretty much anyone else.

Lastly, about GDP? Per the BEA, current dollar GDP growth was 4.1% in Q2 and 5.5% in Q3.

I think you have misinterpreted the Quarterly profit chart. I believe that it is quarterly profit, before tax, at an annualized rate, rather than profit for just that quarter.

The chart you provide at https://fred.stlouisfed.org/se... shows the after tax annual profit for US corporations ($1.7T), which is similar to the after tax annual profit shown by https://www.statista.com/stati... for 2000-2016 ($1.6T in 2016).

Unless you think the effective tax rate on US corporations is already over 75% of profits, the explanation is that the quarterly profit chart is annualized. That would imply an effective tax rate of 15%, which seems much more like the expected numbers.

In any event, the amount of additional profit that can be confiscated is less than $2T per year, which works out to less than $6000/yr for every resident of the United States.

The government doesn't consume the entire GDP+

The Federal Government currently owes more than the annual GDP

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/se...

But you can't deny it's a lot more laissez-faire than the Nordic model.

How little you know.... http://www.heritage.org/index/...

For a little background, that site favors less regulation when it comes to the economy, and if they didn't like a particular country's state of regulation, you'd see it show up. Having said that, they do a pretty thorough job in their measurements, and you can poke through their data if you'd like. As you can plainly see, it places the Nordic countries as being roughly the same as the US.

You've obviously never tried to run a business before if you think the US is AT ALL laissez-faire.

What's that? Just throwing money at a problem without actually changing the underlying socioeconomic model that caused the issue in the first place doesn't fix the problem? Who could have predicted??

And what about the socioeconomic model is different in their case? It's really all the same thing.

I can pick 5 things straight off the bat that haven't been improving:

1. Cost of housing [inflationdata.com].

This doesn't tell you much. The cost of housing has always varied depending on what incomes look like in any given region. What matters, depending on how you look at it, is either the housing opportunity index or the housing affordability index. The HOI, which roughly measures what your mortgage rate would be vs your income, currently sits roughly where it was between 1990 and 2003 at about 60. It went down to about 40 during the 2006 bubble, and went up to around 75 when the market bottomed out, and then has returned back to 60. The HAI measures how affordable the median house price is for the average household, with 100 normalized to mean that the average household has exactly enough income to afford the median priced house. Right now, that index sits at 150ish, which means that the average household makes 50% more than enough to afford the median priced house in their region, though around 2011 it was much higher, but again, this was after the housing crash.

So to put it another way, while housing prices are in fact up, they're no less affordable.

https://www.nahb.org/en/resear...
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/se...

In other words, it's very much a moot point.

2. Healthcare costs [killingthebreeze.com].

/facepalm That's not health care costs, that's health care spending.

And if you bother to pay attention, you'll notice that it's increasing globally, practically in lock-step. And the cause of this isn't what you no doubt think it is based on your comment about housing (increased pricing) rather it's because people are adopting bad habits, i.e. being more sedentary, consuming more alcohol, sugar, etc. And this has nothing at all to do with lower incomes or anything like that, rather it's because of the opposite: They can afford be more sedentary, afford more booze, and afford more twinkies. This is one of those things that could be fixed by behavioral/cultural changes, not socioeconomic ones.

Oh, and there's this:

http://www.washington.edu/news...

3. Income inequality [forbesimg.com]. The majority of wages have stagnated while only those at the top have seen their wages increase. Stagnant wages combined with increasing the living costs above is leaving far more lower and middle income families in a precarious position.

I found the Bernie fan! But actually this is highly misleading, and in many ways its an outright farce. I'll show you some hard numbers later, but first, I'm going to give you a lesson in economics:

Even the U-6 is unmitigated horseshit. Take the inverse of the labor participation rate and see what that looks like. Hint: Like shit.

Here's the labor force participation rate over time.

You claim that today's labor force participation rate indicates a terrible economy, but take a look at the left end of the graph. The labor force participation rate in the 1950s was about 10% lower. Was the economy terrible in the 1950s? No.

Almost like the labor force participation rate doesn't indicate what you are claiming.

It does mean that, but nominal wages are not stagnant; they have been increasing quite rapidly for the mentioned period. I don't even know what to say about your second sentence. Are we now going to make decisions based on "most people" not understanding how the CPI is computed?

Have you ever been hired for a good job by a poor man? Gum up the works with regulation and taxes and jobs stop being created. Things moved that direction under Obama. Companies were failing faster than they were being created.

The same thing happened due to regulations and taxes under Obamacare. Before Obamacare it was becoming more and more common for low wage jobs to include health insurance and other benefits. After Obamacare low wage jobs started being essentially cut in two - no more full time and benefits cuts, including no more health insurance.

47% of the US population doesn't pay Federal income tax already.

Notice anything about this graph? - Federal Receipts as Percent of Gross Domestic Product

They're in favor of SMALL (ie, less) government moreso than local government.

In general most conservatives have no issue with a higher level of government saying to a lower level "No, you can't do that".

You know how when Linux geeks say "I just want the OS to be unobtrusive and stay out of the way so I can work."? Apply the same logic to government.

No, they say they are in favor of small government but when the rubber actually hits the road they never actually shrink the government overall. Here is a graph of the number of federal employees, where are the big decreases when these "small government" Republicans take office? That graph doesn't count the military, which Republicans tend to increase as well. I'm certainly for a smaller government, but neither of the authoritarian parties are going to provide it, they got into this game for power and money and they aren't going to do anything to reduce either of those.

You claim Labor Force Participation rate only includes those who are of working age, who are physically able to work, but are not actively working, but then link to a chart which lists the participation rate of everyone 16 and up.

The commonly used participation rate for working adults is the Civilian Labor Force Participation Rate: 25 to 54 years. It is currently at 81%, which is still lower than it has been in 30 years (not 40). But if you take away the second half of the 90's, where it peaked, our current participation rate is only about 1% lower than the average over the last 30 years. It has also been trending up since 2014.

Those who are physically unable to work, students, stay at home parents, or whatever are all included as part of the 19% in this statistic.

These figures still show around 1-2 million people who would have been working 15 years ago and aren't today, but the problem certainly is "exploding" as you put it. A bigger problem which isn't reflected in this statistic is how stagnant wages have been; mostly as a product of our economy losing $20/hour jobs and replacing them with $12/hour jobs.

Would you care to support your false claim with data? Of course not because the data says you're wrong.

Labor Force Participation Rate: 55 years and over has been increasing since the 1990s.

Not only are the demographic bumpers not retiring, women are taking our "jerbs" !

Women are on the rise.

Men are losers.

Would you care to support your false claim with data? Of course not because the data says you're wrong.

Labor Force Participation Rate: 55 years and over has been increasing since the 1990s.

Not only are the demographic bumpers not retiring, women are taking our "jerbs" !

Women are on the rise.

Men are losers.

Would you care to support your false claim with data? Of course not because the data says you're wrong.

Labor Force Participation Rate: 55 years and over has been increasing since the 1990s.

Not only are the demographic bumpers not retiring, women are taking our "jerbs" !

Women are on the rise.

Men are losers.

Labor Force Participation has fallen to 62.7% which is a rate unseen since 1977. It's literally a 40-year low.

data: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART

You call that a natural rate of unemployment, I call you a liar. You have your head lodged so far up the safe space inside your own ass, you can't see the people all around you who are unemployed.

It would be nice if the government would live on collected taxes alone. BUT, there's deficit spending and on top of that, occasional money printing by the central bank to buy government debt. The debt increases won't stop until the system breaks. And no one knows where that is, but spending money helps senators and representatives hold onto their jobs, so they won't stop until they find out. Admittedly, US government debt is slightly over 100% of GDP but Japan's is up around 240 percent. Their historical chart is interesting. I suppose they'll find the limit before we do.

After the US went off the gold standard in 1971, and went to pure paper (fiat), the sky became the limit.

> even though it hurts one particular segment or another.

If you don't take care of them, they will come for you with pitchforks and robocop won't be enough to stop them.

> Once big rigs are fully automated,

There are 3M+ people employed as truckers. It is the last high-paying job widely available to people with only a HS degree or less. And then there are the ancillary industries like truckstops that are significant employers in tiny little towns all around the country.

The coal industry has shed only about 130,000 jobs in the last 30 years and not only has that devastated entire communities, it was partly responsible for the election of donald grump. Now consider what losing 3 million jobs in just 10 years will do to rip apart society.

Ignoring the impact on those "particular segments" would be like Marie Antoinette telling starving people to eat cake.

This chart tells a very clear story:

Since NAFTA passed US manufacturing output is up over 70% in inflation-adjusted dollars and is at the highest level that it has ever been.
But employment is down over 30%

That's primarily due to automation. The exported jobs were the totally shit, sweatshop jobs that couldn't support a living wage in this country anyway.

Factories didn't automatize to the point people were driven into other fields. They were regulated to death and they moved abroad.

Except that manufacturing output in the US is at an all-time high.

[This entire post regards the United States]

Uh, 5% unemployment at historically-high labor force participation rates? We're not at peak, but we're above the 59% historical labor force maximum participation rate.

See US Civilian Labor Force Participation Rate which is currently 62.9%, down from a peak of just over 67% 1998-2000, now back to a level reached in mid-1977. It has been flatlined for about 2 years.

But yes, the labor force participation rate is higher than when women worked in the kitchen barefoot & pregnant...

You might be thinking of the Civilian Employment-Population Ratio which is at 59.9%, a level equivalent to Dec. 1984. It has been rising since July, 2011.

Regarding wages, Average Hourly Earnings of Production and Nonsupervisory Employees: Total Private is currently at an all-time high, $21.84/hour.

If you'd like to adjust for hours worked and inflation, and look at a median instead of an average, Employed full time: Median usual weekly real earnings: Wage and salary workers: 16 years and over is also at an all-time high of $348 1982-84 CPI Adjusted Dollars, but frankly that isn't too much higher than $335 in 1979, but above the lowest point of $309 in 1981.

Over the last 10 years, the following costs are up: food, health care, child care, vehicle maintenance, and college is way up. On the other hand these prices have fallen slightly: housing, personal care, clothing, cell phone service, and these are much less expensive: toys, computers, televisions.

Unemployment was 0.1% higher in January 2017 than December 2016--no surprise, there's always that slump.

At least the total number of jobs has been increasing since March, 2010.