Slashdot Mirror

Here is a graph of historical US wage growth https://tradingeconomics.com/u...

Based on the 5 year chart, wage increases steadily dropped from 2014 until around November 2017, when increases bottomed out at close to zero. Since the election, wages have recovered nicely. There are dips and peaks in the chart, but the current trend is very encouraging.

I think you are confusing that he's LIVED in a residence inside an Ecuadorian government facility with that he OWNS a private residence inside an Ecuadorian government.

The distinction you are trying to make is without difference. Unless you are going to claim, that ownership of one's dwelling is required to exercise that right I cited. Be careful with your answer, because such a requirement would disqualify about 30% of Finns, for example.

No Mr. Assange is an asshole

How interesting. Do assholes lose their human rights — without due process? And when did he become an asshole in your opinion? Was it before or after he exposed certain presidential candidate in bad light?

Remember he made a previous agreement with Ecuador concerning his usage of their Internet

No such agreement is even necessary, if Internet access really were a human right. Is it?..

Not really as clean as you make it out, however it is diminishing and below 5% for the last 20 years (maybe 1 blip over the line)
https://tradingeconomics.com/u...

Certainly not just simple one magic bullet but any genius can figure out if we can import with no mark up and export with a tariff it is not fair and business will move their production or supply point to get around it. While I don't think tariffs are the solution we need a level playing field (not totally level, just more level.)

Notice we put 60 Bil in tariffs on and China is thinking about 3 Bil. They know they have been busted but want to make it look like they are doing something. You know China has got a shock that the US will now do and not just talk. Your move Xi. However their move now I can pretty much guess is to bluster and wait for a democrat globalist to come into power, with the spending bill today hard to remember why we voted these guys in.

Steel and aluminum are of national security importance, and the US is just about out of the business, though fortunately, we get most of ours from Canada.

The US is not out of the business. We've been consuming at least 3/4 of the steel we produce and production has been consistent since the 1980s. The reduction in the steel workforce is due to technological advances so the same amount of production is possible with 25% of the labor.

Scope the steel production tons vs employment, ever declining, it's about 40% less even from 15 years ago. Now look at the usa.arcelormittal chart for utilization capacity, we're at ~75% for 2016, higher in years past. We consume most of it. http://usa.arcelormittal.com/sustainability/our-business/operating-context/understanding-the-domestic-steel-industry
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/steel-production

Middle America (working class) has been screwed over by globalisation. It was not intentional, but that's what happened. This is why you have a Trump in the White House. And don't think it can't get a lot worse. At least right now people do still have jobs. Shitty casual jobs.

Well, globalization meant a bunch of dirt cheap labor came on the market. But it's not so dirt cheap anymore. Just look at this graph, average wage in China: 29229 CNY/year -> 67569 CNY/year from 2008 to 2016. I found one recent forecast that says it's roughly 76300 now. If you look at the same figures for the US though these are hourly not yearly it's about $17.8 -> $22.3 from 2008 to 2018. You also need to pair this up with some inflation numbers but long story short "third world manufacturing" is closing the cost gap pretty quick. 76300 CNY = $12k USD, pretty soon you're approaching US minimum wage levels.

Middle America (working class) has been screwed over by globalisation. It was not intentional, but that's what happened. This is why you have a Trump in the White House. And don't think it can't get a lot worse. At least right now people do still have jobs. Shitty casual jobs.

Well, globalization meant a bunch of dirt cheap labor came on the market. But it's not so dirt cheap anymore. Just look at this graph, average wage in China: 29229 CNY/year -> 67569 CNY/year from 2008 to 2016. I found one recent forecast that says it's roughly 76300 now. If you look at the same figures for the US though these are hourly not yearly it's about $17.8 -> $22.3 from 2008 to 2018. You also need to pair this up with some inflation numbers but long story short "third world manufacturing" is closing the cost gap pretty quick. 76300 CNY = $12k USD, pretty soon you're approaching US minimum wage levels.

Electricity use has plateaued because the biggest industrial users of electricity have moved overseas. This includes the manufacture of aluminum and steel....

U.S. steel production has fluctuated in the broad range of 6 million and 8 million tons a year for 35 years and has been pretty much level since recovery from the Great Recession. U.S. primary production of aluminum however has dropped sharply, the large majority of aluminum production is secondary (recycled) aluminum, which uses much less electricity (and even the primary production consumption per ton has been cut with superior technology).

The US employment rate is not on a downward slope for decades. Quite to the contrary: https://tradingeconomics.com/u... It's considerably higher now (a good 60%) than in the 1950ties, 60ties and the 70ties.

Unemployment rate in South Korea is pretty low. Cue the UBI crowd coming to yell about the sky falling, but eh.

Tip of the iceberg. Cue the head-in-ass crowd who will dismiss the impact until they're standing in the unemployment line.

Unemployment rate in South Korea is pretty low. Cue the UBI crowd coming to yell about the sky falling, but eh.

Even most Western European countries are only as wealthy as say, Mississippi or Alabama in the U.S.

Really?

Which ones make up that majority?

The EU average GDP per capita appears to be right around Southern "shithole" state territory, but that average is dragged down by Eastern European countries, not Western European countries.

Here is a quick list I looked up. This is GDP per capita.

Norway - $52111
Germany - $45552
France- $42013
Britain (UK) - $41603
Italy - $34284
Alabama - $37,402
EU Average - $35632
Mississippi - $32,102
Spain - $31450

Of course, income distribution and the fact that every European countries guarantees or subsidizes health care also affects the quality of life.

Sources:

https://tradingeconomics.com/countries
https://www.opendatanetwork.com/entity/0400000US01-0400000US28/Alabama-Mississippi/economy.gdp.per_capita_gdp?year=2016

Uh:
France 21.80%
Germany 6.60%
United Kingdom 12.00%
United States 9.60%

If youth unemployment were by design, Germany wouldn't have a (very effective) apprenticeship program that exempts youth from the usual employment rules to make them more attractive to hire and train. The UK wouldn't have minimum wage that scales with age, which is actually lower than the US at it's lowest point.

The CBO scoring of the plan assumed a 1.9% GDP growth rate. Historically, the US GDP growth is closer to 3.6% annually, and if you use that as your baseline - there is an elimination of the deficit and a surplus after 4 years. So using the wonderful Bush/Obama baseline, we add debt; using the baseline of all other Presidents, we turn a surplus. Personally, I believe 1.9% is NOT the new normal; witness this year with 3%+ every single quarter. A baseline more like the historical 3.6% average should have been used.

Annual US gas prices https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/h...

Annual Canadian Gas Prices https://tradingeconomics.com/c...

Fossil fuel subsidies, which you are ignoring: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies#Impact_of_fossil_fuel_subsidies"

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X16304867

Roll those into the cost of your Spark or Versa, along with the staggering cost of keeping the US military in the Middle East and Afghanistan, and the picture is very different.

US debt to GDP is already at over 100%

https://tradingeconomics.com/u...

It's forecast to stay there

https://tradingeconomics.com/u...

Now going from $19 Trillion and 100% of GDP to $51 Trillion and presumably over 200% of GDP doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

And that's from one policy. Most people think the forecast is hopelessly optimistic and if you're willing to add $32 trillion to the debt over one policy to buy votes, what's to stop you adding another one?

It's disastrous. And up until the last election most Democrats knew it. Hillary still does

http://www.businessinsider.com...

In an interview published Wednesday, Ezra Klein of Vox asked Clinton, who defeated Sanders to become the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016, what she thought of the independent Vermont senator's Medicare-for-all plan, which he is set to release later Wednesday.

"Well, I don't know what the particulars are," Clinton said. "As you might remember, during the campaign he introduced a single-payer bill every year he was in Congress - and when somebody finally read it, he couldn't explain it and couldn't really tell people how much it was going to cost."

Clinton also highlighted what she saw as potential flaws in selling such a plan: special interests and public sentiment.

"When I was working on healthcare back in in '93 and '94, I said if we could've waved the magic wand and started all over, maybe we would start with something resembling single-payer plus other payers, like other countries that have universal coverage and are much better at controlling costs than we do, primarily in Europe," Clinton said. "But we were facing the reality of not just strong, powerful forces but people's own fears as well as their appreciation for what they already had."

As an example, Clinton cited the difficulties with the attempt at single-payer in Sanders' home state of Vermont, saying it was "difficult to out the pieces together."

In Vermont Single Payer For All failed

https://www.politico.com/story...

I bet the Democrats end up supporting it though and wheeling out Jimmy Kimmel to cry that anyone who opposes it wants kids like his to die.

US debt to GDP is already at over 100%

https://tradingeconomics.com/u...

It's forecast to stay there

https://tradingeconomics.com/u...

Now going from $19 Trillion and 100% of GDP to $51 Trillion and presumably over 200% of GDP doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

And that's from one policy. Most people think the forecast is hopelessly optimistic and if you're willing to add $32 trillion to the debt over one policy to buy votes, what's to stop you adding another one?

It's disastrous. And up until the last election most Democrats knew it. Hillary still does

http://www.businessinsider.com...

In an interview published Wednesday, Ezra Klein of Vox asked Clinton, who defeated Sanders to become the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016, what she thought of the independent Vermont senator's Medicare-for-all plan, which he is set to release later Wednesday.

"Well, I don't know what the particulars are," Clinton said. "As you might remember, during the campaign he introduced a single-payer bill every year he was in Congress - and when somebody finally read it, he couldn't explain it and couldn't really tell people how much it was going to cost."

Clinton also highlighted what she saw as potential flaws in selling such a plan: special interests and public sentiment.

"When I was working on healthcare back in in '93 and '94, I said if we could've waved the magic wand and started all over, maybe we would start with something resembling single-payer plus other payers, like other countries that have universal coverage and are much better at controlling costs than we do, primarily in Europe," Clinton said. "But we were facing the reality of not just strong, powerful forces but people's own fears as well as their appreciation for what they already had."

As an example, Clinton cited the difficulties with the attempt at single-payer in Sanders' home state of Vermont, saying it was "difficult to out the pieces together."

In Vermont Single Payer For All failed

https://www.politico.com/story...

I bet the Democrats end up supporting it though and wheeling out Jimmy Kimmel to cry that anyone who opposes it wants kids like his to die.

This https://tradingeconomics.com/s... says unemployment in South Korea is 3.6%

Norway nationalized the North Sea oil fields, their economy is atypical.

Norway has a very aggressive personal income tax rate, approaching 40%.

The average US worker pays 0% personal income tax, over 40% of tax filers actually get refunds in excess of all monies paid in.

https://tradingeconomics.com/n...

Huh?

What does the USA export, exactly? Even the USA buys most of its "stuff" from China.

Check out your balance of trade, it's never been positive, ever:

https://tradingeconomics.com/u...

The USA does not buy most of its stuff from China.
The USA imported is about $480 billion of goods from China and sold about $116 billion to China.. The USA's GDP is about $18,000 billion. Trade with China is about 2.5% of the USA GDP.
Most of what the USA buys is made in the USA.

Huh?

What does the USA export, exactly? Even the USA buys most of its "stuff" from China.

Check out your balance of trade, it's never been positive, ever:

https://tradingeconomics.com/u...

That is incorrect.
The USA was a net exporter for much of its existence (outside of US Civil war). The trade balance went only negative in the early 1970's.
http://www.econdataus.com/trad...

Secondly, you're looking at the wrong number.
The number you want is the per capita productivity. The USA is about 5% of the world's population and produces about 24% of the world's economic output by GDP ( but not by purchasing power parity, which balances for poor countries). The USA is a very wealthy country because of this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

There are several reasons why a country has a negative trade balance.
One is that the country is rich so they can buy everything they want. This is the case with the USA.
Also, the dollar is the world's reserve currency. A side effect of this is that it gives the USA a large advantage in international markets, and it also has a side effect of facilitating trade deficits.

Anyway, the upshot is that in the case of CO2 output, the USA historically made a fifth of the worlds industrial goods and thus alone used a fifth of the world's fossil fuels. Reminder: history did not begin in 2006.

Huh?

What does the USA export, exactly? Even the USA buys most of its "stuff" from China.

Check out your balance of trade, it's never been positive, ever:

https://tradingeconomics.com/u...

USD inflation has been less than 10% per year every year since 1982 (Reagan's recession). For 1990-2007 it was less than 5% followed by a brief spike from the Bush Recession, andsince 2009 it has been less than 3% per year. See here. Monthly smoothed averages are down lately, but by its nature that figure is heavily influenced by the distant past more than the recent one, so that pattern can easily reverse. Best timing is to take the money out now or as soon as you can, and put it into durable consumer goods with value. Particularly those you personally use on a daily basis.

So he did nothing?

Read more carefully:

he has done little to nothing of what he said he was going to do, none of it in any way close to exactly how he said he was going to do it, and everything he has done, he has compulsively lied about due to his tendency for braggadocio and irresponsibility.

Pretty much says he has done things, but failed to do it as he said he would, and lied about it.

If I had wanted to say he had done nothing, I could have said that, but no, I merely stated he had done little to nothing, and none of it was exactly how he said he was going to do it, and I certainly wouldn't have said that he has lied about everything he has done if he had nothing.

Stopped chemical weapons being used in Syria

Lied about stopping Chemical weapons being used in Syria, lied about his wasteful airstrike on an airport that was back in operation almost immediately, and certainly did not fulfill his promises on it. In reality, the Syrian Civil War is still a humanitarian crisis, and the use of Chemical weapons, no matter how deplorable they are, is only a small fraction of the tragedy.

And of course, Trump claimed he would solve the problem, which he hasn't, making his failure a lie. That he had previously denounced such missile strikes as he ordered as theater only harms your defense of him.

Increased S&P 500 by 5% (Real money gained by middle class)

Not directly attributed to anything he did, so...huh Thanks for showing the braggadocio though...the trend was already up and really, trying to assert it is real money gained by middle class? Ah, lies.

Unemployment claims at a 17 year low

A fuller perspective shows the lie.

Unemployment claims have been dropping steadily. Attributing it to Trump is like claiming that he put out a fire that was already mostly extinguished. Of course, he also claimed the same employment numbers were lies before relying on them for his own benefit, so there's another broken word of his. You really can't win with this, either Trump takes responsibility and admits that the complaints he made about unemployment statistics were false, or Trump has still left 90 million Americans without a job.

Illegal immigration drop by 75-90% depending on your source

Or you could at that some more. That isn't even getting into his already demonstrated lie about a Wall, his executive order, and his false sanctuary cities claims. Not to mention the toddlers and senior citizens added to his dangerous criminal list.

His handling of that has been yet another cavalcade of deceits, failure, and incompetence.

Supreme court nomination everyone agrees is good

Well, there's a lie. Your hyperbole betrays you. All it took is one.

There are others. 45 in the Senate alone.

Thats quite a bit for 3 months.

That's quite a bit of lies for 5 Sentences. No wonder Trump is your hero

If you still claim he did nothing, then y

So, what is the failure about the Obama economy? Do you object to the massive deficit reduction? The decrease in unemployment? The millions of people who could finally afford health care? The growth of the economy as a whole?

Maybe the stagnant wages?
http://www.tradingeconomics.co...

Or maybe that more people have heath care, but fewer people can afford it, and it's way more expensive?
http://time.com/money/4503325/...

There's many ways to gauge the success of the economy, and you can't pin it all on just a few metrics. It's also easy to show growth when you start at the bottom (granted is also hard to keep from from digging yourself deeper).

Defenders of IP? Seriously. Can you explain the rampant piracy.

Because the Chinese market (still) is dominant by huge number of small and tiny businesses, whereas the US is dominant by big businesses like Walmart. There are no effective ways to enforce millions of small poor targets whereas big corps are big and worth-while targets for the lawyers. On the other hand, try start a local store in the US to see how hard it becomes to compete against the mega store chain. Same for quality control problem

Secondary, it is a matter of stage of economic development. It's like every one has to go through trouble-making teenage. It is unrealistic (and probably not fair, because else they would be crushed by IP tolls imposed by foreign corps and would remain poor) to have developing economies following rules set by developed ones.

Defenders of global markets and free trade? Can you say state run/controller businesses, slave labor and currency devaluation.

Why have state-run/controlled businesses become a competitive edge? Those are known as the iron rice bowls in China. China actually tried to privatize their state-own companies but met great resistance because that would cause massive unemployment.

Slave labor? 1) It came off a very very low base; 2) There are 5x laborers in China and than in the US and so wage as well as working conditions have to suffer; 3) it has been risen exponentially for last many decades; 4) people in China are not forced to work, defying the very definition of slavery like that in the 18th century US.

Currency devaluation? 1) for most of the last 4 decades, the Chinese government are restricting people from buying USD; 2) the black market had a lower valuation for Yuan before the mid-1990s eventually forcing the government to re-evaluate the currency to the black market rate; 3) we should thank the Chinese government for popping up up Yuan, else it would have the exchange rate of Koran won or Japanese yen.

Oh - source - http://www.tradingeconomics.co...

I'd disagree with pretty much everything on your list. Pretty much every inventions purpose was to make something easier to do. As something becomes easier to do it reduces its labour demand.

Once things are created they are refined to fit new purposes. But the initial invention is meant to reduce human labour.

Power tools? Absolutely. A power saw does the work of 10 men with hand saws. Steam Engines? Again absolutely. It replaces horses, which reduced the demand for a whole swath of jobs. Mining and someone to shovel coal was no where near as labour intensive as horse care, control, breeding, and waste removal. Same comment for cars.

Automating is great for repetitive tasks. Where location is static. ie things like manufacturing. What it's not good at is anything highly mobile, complex or something that requires creative reasoning.

Sure the number of manufacturing jobs have decreased in the US. But the US has added an average of about 100k jobs a month, every month back to the 50s. This is despite the number of manufacturing jobs declining. http://www.tradingeconomics.co...

For example, he claims that up to 42% in the US are out of work.

No he didn't

“The number’s probably 28, 29, as high as 35. In fact, I even heard recently 42 percent.” The Real Jobless Rate Is 42 Percent? Donald Trump Has a Point, Sort Of

Saying you heard something isn't the same as you saying something is a fact.
In fact, The United States Labor Force Participation Rate is 62.7%, so 1 - 0.627 = 0.337, that's pretty close to his "probably" numbers.

If Americans deserved a higher standard of living then the market would provide it to them. Income statistics say otherwise.

Click on "10 year" on the following graph of Chinese wages:
http://www.tradingeconomics.co...

And "10 year" on the following graph of American wages:
http://www.tradingeconomics.co...

If Americans deserved a higher standard of living then the market would provide it to them. Income statistics say otherwise.

Click on "10 year" on the following graph of Chinese wages:
http://www.tradingeconomics.co...

And "10 year" on the following graph of American wages:
http://www.tradingeconomics.co...

http://www.tradingeconomics.co...

PPP from what I read in the wiki sounds more like you are measuring inflation and difference of production ,say , between the US and germany, adding confusing factors. PPP is used generally to comapre countries productions/consumptions... In fact there is this sentence in the middle "When PPP comparisons are to be made over some interval of time, proper account needs to be made of inflationary effects". It sounds to me that in constant dollar or constant Euro, inflation removed, the difference is actually not as great as you indicate. Taking the GDP in constant euro ( or whichever currency http://www.tradingeconomics.co...) I get a rise from 500 to 700. Granted this is still good in efficiency, but it is not the meteoric rise you indicate.

Were those people able to get hired elsewhere? The answer in general was almost certainly yes.

Actually, the answer is probably no. Labor force participation rates have fallen steadily since about the year 2000. Feminism caused the rate to rise from 58% (1963) to 67% (2000). Since then, it has fallen to 63%. In other words, we've already lost almost half of what we gained from women entering the workforce en masse. And the rate will only continue to fall in the future.

I'm just astounded at the number of folks on Slashdot pointing out "these things have been long time in the works, Trump played no part in this!" That's some USA Today level commenting. Yes, we all know, anything good and the President-elect takes credit, anything bad and the President-elect places blame on the current President. This play is about as old as all get out.

If anyone is on here stating the obvious thinking they somehow are revealing the lie, well my assumption is that the Slashdot users are a little more intelligent to not fall for the "look at what I did" game. If there's anything to note about this, is that it is starting to look like the majority of jobs that Trump aims to "bring back" to the USA are going to be low waged, we're missing one piece in the automation process, jobs that aren't going to on large scales do much for the economy. In order for Trump to make good on the infrastructure changes that he's aiming for and the tax cuts that he's aiming for, he's banking on 4% GDP growth (Note - From rightest leaning website I could find carrying it.) for every year he's in office. You can head over here to see what's been the going rate of change. You'll see lots of ups and downs that average over a year's span don't come out to 4%, ever.

If the old Trumpster fire thinks he's going to get to his goal with repeating over and over the 8000 of jobs that are being indicated here, he's dead wrong. They're jobs, yes. However they do not pay enough, to move the needle much. Even if this was repeated every day dude was in office. Just to note, that Carrier deal that Trump thumps, I'll just give him the benefit of the doubt and call it 1000, we'd need roughly five of those per day for every day he's in office for the next four years to reach the GDP growth he's aiming for, if we strictly keep it to trying to grow the economy.

No, what's interesting is that initial jobless claims have been at the lowest level since the 1970's. Is that going to continue under Trump?

Who knows? This doesn't contradict what I'm saying, though. If you're underemployed, you may still be ineligible to collect unemployment. Your same source says that jobless claims are currently "above market expectations".

No, what's interesting is that initial jobless claims have been at the lowest level since the 1970's. Is that going to continue under Trump?

Your disclaimer is false.

The above numbers are this year's numbers. But even in a 'bust' market like say 2009, plenty are sold, like 10M vehilces

http://www.tradingeconomics.co...

Which shows that my numbers above were low -probably only cars.

~18M vehicles/year = $550B market

It might have been 'steadily declining' but the rate of decline increased drastically starting in mid 2008.
http://www.tradingeconomics.co... (switch it to line graph)

And just because someone has a 'job' doesn't mean it's a good job - in fact there are a lot of very skilled people who are working shit jobs just to put food on the table because their previous jobs have never come back. Gallup has a very nice ongoing poll that shows just how bad it really is:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/125...

But I also think it's important to include the value of the jobs that have been created. And for that, I turn to these metrics:

Median household income, which tells us that Americans have not been earning any more money than they had been earning a decade ago.

GDP per capita, which tells us that the value of what the average American has been producing has been rising steadily (adjusted for inflation) since 2009.

So, unemployment is nearly half what it was when Obama took office, but people aren't earning any more, despite them producing more. Begs the question...who's pocketing all that extra money?

Let's consider just one statistic - workforce participation as a percentage of the population. Around the year 2000 it was about 67%, it has been fairly steadily declining since 2008 from about 67% to 63%...

In other words, 4% less of the working age population is employed.

I'll just mention in passing things like the majority of newly-created jobs being part-time, wages being stagnant for the last 8 years, and a national debt that has increased from an "unpatriotic" $11 Trillion under President Bush to nearly $20 Trillion after 8 years of President Obama...

That is what passes for "generally positive economic growth"?

The US baby boom occurred between 1946 and 1964.

Add 18-25 years, and a baby boom becomes a 'employee boom'.

Add 60-65 years, and a baby boom becomes a 'retiree boom'.

The workforce participation graph is just a chart of the lifecycle of 'baby boomers'. It really has fuck all to do with who's siting in the oval office.

Furthermore, it's a good sign for the economy that labor participation is falling. It means that 'boomers' are choosing to retire and leave jobs for younger workers to fill, as demonstrated by the falling U3 unemployment rate. The downside is that those retirees are putting more burden on the Social Security and Medicare programs, but we've known that would happen for the past fifty years.

If a war torn banana republic is beating you that badly on growth, there is something seriously wrong with your economic policy.

Let me guess... an embargo?
That aside get your statistics right: Cuba GDP per capita is up 250% since 1970 and Honduras GDP per capita is up 230% in the same period and still half of the Cuban GDP per capita, life expectancy in Honduras is 73 years, in Cuba 79 (higher than USA by the way). Sen. Joseph McCarthy legacy still lives on.

If a war torn banana republic is beating you that badly on growth, there is something seriously wrong with your economic policy.

Let me guess... an embargo?
That aside get your statistics right: Cuba GDP per capita is up 250% since 1970 and Honduras GDP per capita is up 230% in the same period and still half of the Cuban GDP per capita, life expectancy in Honduras is 73 years, in Cuba 79 (higher than USA by the way). Sen. Joseph McCarthy legacy still lives on.

It's not many, and they're not doing very well as a rule. Link. Japan is the only real oddball on that list and I'm sure there's a very interesting explanation for that, but I don't know what it is.

The link between purchase power and energy consumption is debatable.
http://www.tradingeconomics.co...

Electric energy cost tends to match purchase power with a few exceptions.

"19 Oct 2016 - Russian unemployment rate was recorded at 5.6 percent in May of 2016, down from 5.9 percent in the previous month. The figure came below market expectations of 5.8 percent and was the lowest October 2015. The number of unemployed people decreased by 217 thousand to 4.3 million". http://www.tradingeconomics.co...

which is why the REAL Issue is that Mexico has a pay of $3.00 PER DAY.

Average manufacturing wages in Mexico are more than $2 per hour or about $17 / day. That is low compared to America, but the cost-of-living is low in Mexico, so money goes further. The maquiladora close to the US border usually pay even more.

Nope. No, not by a long shot.

I am a Mexican. I work as an academician at a university, and have a quite comfortable lifestyle. I earn about US$20 a day.

Many of my students work part-time to get through life, although the university itself is free. They usually earn between a quarter than what I do.

Basic income (~US$3.5 a day) is not uncommon. Often, those jobs allow for extra income (say, tipping), but that's far from the norm.

I see the labor force participation rate [bls.gov] climb from 1970 to 1990, flat until 2007, then fall. That decline is a pretty recent thing...

If all you are doing is talking about population distribution in age ranges, you might want to re-think your argument.

In the US we have a nice population spike right at/after WWII, we call that the Baby Boomers. Born between 1940 and 1960, or so. And, hey, now in 2016 those people are between 56 and 76 years old. So your complaint about a falling labor force participation rate starting around 2007 is when the big Baby Boomer spike started hitting 65 years old.

Definition: The civilian labor force participation rate is the number of employed and unemployed but looking for a job as a percentage of the population aged 16 years and over. (definition from http://www.tradingeconomics.co...)

You're complaining that old people are not forced to work until they drop dead on the job.

This is really the argument you want to make?

which is why the REAL Issue is that Mexico has a pay of $3.00 PER DAY.

Average manufacturing wages in Mexico are more than $2 per hour or about $17 / day. That is low compared to America, but the cost-of-living is low in Mexico, so money goes further. The maquiladora close to the US border usually pay even more.

What is needed to adjust NAFTA to make it fair and better for all ...

What is really needed is for people to spend a few seconds checking their facts before posting nonsense.

In the three months to June 2016, the employment rate of the population aged 15-64 years stood at 64.7 percent, up 0.1 percentage points compared to the first quarter. Permanent employment rate for people aged 15-64 came in at 48.8 percent in the second quarter, unchanged from thr preceding quarter but up by 0.2 percentage points year-on-year.