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The Jobs Crunch
randall_burns writes "Neither major party is accurately describing or combatting the Jobs Crunch that Americans are facing. Bad immigration policy-and bad trade deals are combining to decimate the middle class in America."
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For the first time in my life, within 4 weeks of one another, my sister lost her job, my friend lost his job, and his wife lost her job.
These are NOT good times...although Bush would have us believe otherwise.
What about the state sponsored outsourcing? The US government is actively supporting outsourcing, examples here, here, and
got sig?
Since it's so fashionable to compare our policy to the European powers, let's look at some of the numbers. In France, unemployment was 9.3% as of last year. Germany's unemployment rate was 9.7% as of 2 years ago. We had a bubble during the 90s, and it's only expected to pay the price now. The economy moves in cycles and is an extremely complex nonlinear system. To conclusively blame immigration and trade policy as the cause for an increase in unemployment is easy, but unfortunately also meaningless.
Oh no neither party is helping? Gee.. wouldn't it be great if there were other parties besides the Dems and Reps? OH WAIT
Randall Burns ... recently helped create the Kucinich campaign's position paper on H-1b/L-1 visas.
I guess he hates both Kerry and Bush equally. Should we call him non-partisan?
The problem is that these men who represent our presidential canidates, are the best that the parties could come up with. Out of everyone in the whole country. These four pricks. Thats insane. If this is the best that the dems and republicans can come up with then we need some different parties invovled in politics.
Welcome to the wonderful world of free trade. Not only does free trade totally destroy 3rd world countries, it harms 1st world one's too.
I am one of the folks who is unemployed but not counted. I get sporadic work, so I forego even bothering with unemployment during the gaps. This whole situation sucks, there's no way out, and I'm depressed.
"The story itself is just a massive advertisement to vote against Bush too."
Why? According to Bush the economy is doing great. If Bush is good for jobs then this thread may be an advertisement for voting for bush. It's only anti bush if Bush is horrible for jobs in the country.
" I know I wont be trying to moderate anyone in this thread, because every second post will look like trolling or flamebait depending on the perspective of the reader."
I have to agree with you there. I have never seen our country divided so much. The people who relish driving wedges to set the country apart have been very successful. I don't know what it would take to get the country back together again. Maybe if we had a president that was a "uniter not a divider" things would be different.
evil is as evil does
It is difficult to be sure from a distance (I live in the UK), but what seems to be happening in the States is a move to what I can best call a neo-feudal society.
At the top end you have the rich and super-rich, with limited call on their wealth in terms of taxes.
At the bottom end you seem to have people who have to hold down more than one job to make ends meet, have limited access to medical care and whose children receive only a poor quality education.
This leaves your middle classes, who are being squeezed. If they don't work in a service that requires personal contact then they are in danger of being outsourced to cheaper locations elswhere on the globe.
Barons, serfs and guilds is the way it appears to be. It isn't quite as extreme here in Britain, but we are going the same way.
If you are good enough to do the job of Prez, you are also likely to be sane enough to not want the job.
His stated policies, among other things, are to enforce the tax laws already on the books. Something the Clinton administration was lax in, and something the Bush administration simply doesn't do, unless you're relatively poor. Close existing legal tax loopholes, and benefits for companies that outsource. As well as provide tax incentives for companies that don't. Which is of course just what he claims, but 180 degrees from what the current administration does, and admittedly plans to continue doing. He also planned to be more aggressive, and possibly heavy handed in dealing with trade organizations when it comes to protecting US interests. He also supports enforcement of current immigration laws, and proper funding for border patrols and NIS. (Which Bush won't do since a "let 'em run free" policy puts a downward pressure on what services cost.)
The trade deficit, and outsourcing aren't about cheaper labor, their about unequal access to capital. People are forced to pool and discount their capital which no longer is used to build infrastructure in their local communities or the larger community of the whole of the US. But rather it's hemoraged out to other locales where a quicker short term gain is percieved, rampant corruption is considered a cost of doing business, and it's hard to blame people in other legal jurisdictions. We in America have the most capital and have to pay a premium for access to it. Thanks to the 80's the 'B' in MBA stands for "Bullshit".
If Kerry followed his plan up with a pledge to subsidize lighting up a bunch of huge walk away nuclear reactors, I'd say his was the beginings of a perfect economic policy. Bush, yeah, that's not going to happen.
Data just came out showing that Cleveland, Ohio has the largest unemployment rate of any major city in the US. Cincinnati is on the brink of (and has fallen into) racial and class conflict. The whole state is an unbelieveable mess and it appears that even with an inept Republican govenor that Ohio will vote Republican and give the rich and corporations more and more tax cuts which they, in turn, will use to buy more foreign products and fund more outsourcing projects.
Distribution of wealth is an nasty necessity that is created by the greed in all of us (once I hit the million dollar threshold I will give to the less fortunate - then it's once I become one of the 331 billionaires in the US -- well you get the drift...). Anyway, the Republicans have never and will never talk about redistribution of wealth. Flat taxes and sales taxes are rigged against the poor, but people seem to think they are a great idea because of conservative thinktank spin.
The Democrats may have become as much of the problem as the Republicans, but at least they are still talking about these issues. I can't for the life of me undersand why a the population of a state on the brink of disaster would vote for a party that still talks about supply side economics and trickle down. I shake my head and then realize that to be a politician these days you have to be rich already -- it's no wonder that we are where we are.
There will never be another farmer from Illinois in the Whitehouse, and I just don't see any solutions on the horizon...
Wasn't it the Two Minutes Hate? Great book, btw.
I don't use Emacs; it uses me.
Wow, thanks. I'll be sure and let my Dad know that his 24.5 years of working for the same company were obviously not productive enough. Isn't it funny how we all become unproductive just before retirement? F=ing Troll.
Howdy.
agreed. Poor choice of a 'story'
--- "End Of Line" - MCP
All the layoffs of recent times have flooded the teaching ranks with people getting alternative certification. Add to that a recent flood of people who spent years in other roles in education just now finishing their degrees, and the new teachers are getting pushed out. That whole ETS scoring fiasco didn't help either.
Read again to understand this: there are too many teachers. People in other countries may not understand the gravity of this, but for people who are used to teachers being the most pissed on of American professionals, this should be the ultimate sign of how bad things are right now.
"You're never ready, just less unprepared."
Agreed. Twice today we've had whining that draws directly from the Kerry camp:
1. It's a bad economy, and things are getting worse.
2. Google's evil, because searching for John Kerry in the news section shows a lot of negative articles.
First off, the economy isn't doing badly - I'm right here in the valley, and things are picking up quite nicely. Is it at dotcom levels? No - and that's ok too. After all, the dotcom era was essentially a lot of people spending money while providing no real service or product. Sooner or later, the economy pays the price for that kind of crap.
Second, Kerry's getting more negative articles written about him because his campaign is virtually tripping over itself to incur more PR drubbings. The race was Kerry's to lose, and he's well on his way if they don't get it together.
One way or the other, it's a joke to try to disguise this as some sort of outsourcing article... try attaching an example to your editorial commentary.
Yeah, it's always the fault of those pesky foreigners...
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Well, I never expected to see this story on the front page of slashdot. What next?
Mod parent up!
> I am not sure how it's measured in Europe but I would bet it's different. You may be comparing oranges and apples.
There is a common measure of unemployment across Europe, the Labour Force Survey. The survey seeks information on respondents' personal circumstances and their labour market status during a specific reference period, normally a period of one week or four weeks (depending on the topic) immediately prior to the interview.
The LFS is carried out under a European Union Directive and uses internationally agreed concepts and definitions. It is the source of the internationally comparable (International Labour Organisation) measure known as 'ILO unemployment'.
On this measure the UK jobless rate is just under 5%, with France, Germany and Italy all at around the 9% mark.
The unemployment numbers are political dynamite in any country, so they're pretty heavily doctored everywhere.
My native Sweden has fairly low official numbers, but they are achieved by having some 10% or 20% (*) of the working age population that is not working being classified in other categores. The big ones are long term sickness, early retirement and "education". Some of that education is no doubt useful in the way you describe, but most is little more than long term people storage, and everybody involved knows it.
In all these categories you are getting paid fairly well by the government, to a much larger extent than in the US, which you may or may not think is a good thing.
So where is the unemployment really highest? Who lies the most and the best? I don't have that information, though I'm sure there are plenty of studies someone can look up. But as a Swede living in California I have no doubt at all that there are far more Americans gainfully employed, and that it's much easier to get a job here.
(*) I haven't seen actual numbers in a long time, and these things are very hard to measure precisely anyway, but that's the range.
When the rantings on a xenophobic loonie site are presented as fact.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
The job market in this particular state (Delaware) is completely shot to hell and back. In February of 2002, the local DuPont plant laid off almost half of the entire work-force, including myself. I have been unemployed since then, and those unemployment benefits ran out back in November 2002... not fun. At first, I was a bit picky about my next job, I'll admit; having just lost a $15/hour job (with no college education, which is another rant for another time), I really didn't want to drop down to a McDonalds job due to the obvious decrease in the weekly check. After I realized that finding a similar-paying job wasn't going to happen, I went out to the usual teenie-employers to try my luck... Wal*Mart, Burger King, etc etc. I've been unsuccessful even with these places, and have been since I've started my job-hunting two and a half years ago. For the record, there's nothing about me that would lead someone to not hire me, such as criminal records, disability, race, any of that nonsense. (Obviously, those aren't supposed to matter, but speaking for this state, it does). Wrapping up my sob-story, moving to a new state is out of the question due to personal reasons involving my daughter, so we're stuck here. Always nice to hear Bush on TV saying that the economy is great, hah.
LOL, Out of everyone "these four pricks"? I don't think it is the party that picked them. It is special interest and money that picked them. The candidates that can be purchased get picked. Look at Cheney and Haliburton. Look at Edwards and the Trial Lawyers. It does not matter what party gets in the white house, they are pretty much the same. What we need is campaign finance reform.
Come and say hi. http://forum.penpals.com/index.php
Yeah, but unless your former company is small, you can't compete with your former companies advertising budget. Co-ops. I wish I could convince everyone of this. This is the answer to taking back the industry from management to the geeks who know their stuff.
Anyone who can do PC Repair work and is interested in finding out about a tech co-op that is forming to provide such work, please email me at veridium@linuxmail.org. Geography not important, as long as you're in the States.
Think for yourself, destroy your television.
Umm, how could this post be considered to be trolling?
Internet bubble bursting = no funding = no work.
Then your out your savings and 911 hits. worst your stuck in a area code recruiters ignore and don't find this out till two years later. Now I nolonger equate MBAs as idiots who can't do like Gym Teachers teach Gym. However I still don't like their choice of clothes.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
This article is not economics, not public policy, not even deserving opinion. Just the typical xenophobic, bigoted kind of rant that the nativist crowd likes to engage in. Anti-immigrant sentiment is the omnivorous reptile in the fauna of politics. A recession with falling wages? Cheap immigrant labor must be to blame. Terrorism? Without immigration there wouldn't be any. Traffic? Too many immigrants must have moved in. Whatever the issue at hand, the subterfuged racism of the nativist crowd always translates into an immigration problem.
The United States has millions of illegal Mexican immigrants who live in fear of getting caught and are regularly abused by employers who can get away with paying them slave wages. Both from the point of view of the immigrants and the citizens, we do have some sort of immigration problem. It isn't the key problem behind everything wrong in the United States, but at the very least, SOME sort of problem is there. There's no reason to jump between the extremes of "the immigration problem is the new apocalypse" and "there is no immigration problem, you bigot". There's a very wide area between those two ideas, and I believe that the United States is somewhere within it.
Yes, we've got a job crunch in this country, and we had a severe job crunch in the dot-bomb technology industry, with an estimated 49% of San Francisco's high-tech jobs disappearing, so my friends were affected much more strongly than the average American, and there's a non-trivial chance I'll get laid off next week.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
5.4% jobless rate. Economy growing at 3-4%. Jobs being created every day. All sectors of the economy are coming back nicely. Even the interest rates are starting to climb back up. A good sign that the economy is stronger. Stock market is back up, investments are growing. There's another indicator about jobs to. The household index which looks at people who have jobs by households instead of calling up employers and asking "How many people did you hire?". The houshold survey takes into account small businesses and self employed. That survey is through the roof. Very good as far as the economy. People are going out on their own for jobs (can you say consultant). BTW, the emplyment rate is lower now than it was in 96.
Although something that suprised me was an interview with Ralph Nader the other day. In it he decried the Democrats and said the blame lay mostly on their heads for outsourcing. I thought it was a little odd because a lot news sites seem to be trying to only blame the Republicans. Of course he also said that both party's have gravitated to an imaginary middle and are virtually indistinguishable. I don't know what to think, it's almost a farce at this point.
Thank god for that article. I was beginning to wonder if *I* might be the one responsible for my unemployment due to my choice of remaining in a one factory town, with my limited skill-set, narrow education, zero-ambition and unwillingness to take any job that was far beneath my abilities that can apparently be replicated by someone who grew-up in a third world country without indoor plumbing while educated in a classroom with a dirt floor. I'm so glad I can blame them foreigners and people in Washington. I was almost thinking that I was some kind of loser slacker who spent all my time on message boards downloading music (cause it was meant to be free!) and not trying to make myself into someone with valuable assets. Not my responsibility. There's no way you can convince me otherwise now. Forget the "data", this economy sucks because all my loser friends are out of work too.
Does this study even take into account the greater number of retiring baby boomers?
With the huge numbers of people in their 50s and 60s hitting retirement age, we can't blame the decreased labor force on the recent recession or outsourcing. I do believe that may contribute to the issue, but I don't think it is the sole factor. On the other side, many baby boomers are working past retirement. The dot coms didn't end up to be the best place to stick retirement money.
The unemployment numbers are deceiving, as percentages can be swayed in many directions as to exactly who is unemployed. The labor force participation rate is the percentage of those who are willing and able to obtain a job. Willing and able aren't exactly purely quantitative variables.
Anyone here know someone who majored in CS and can't find a job? Guess what, the tech bubble didn't really burst, it just sunk to the other side of the planet. Of course US CS majors aren't employed, the demand for their profession has dropped severely. It may be harsh, but the simple truth is that the US needs to reorient its workforce in a new direction.
I clicked on this headline in the Slashdot RSS feed thinking it'd be an Apple story.
.. stop whinily suckling their corporate and/or public sector feeding/cocoon pods and shed their fat middles and go do some real inventing and entreprenuering. Its shameful to see so much whining from the offspring of those who kicked Nazi and Soviet ass, gave us the moon landing, modern computing etc etc. Sheesh, at the very least these whiners can daytrade on indian and chinese and korean companies' stocks from a starbucks for crissakes...
Hey, this is strange: the "lowest grade" people from east europe, asia etc. get new jobs in US sector, while the "middle grade" people loose them? Don't you see there is a problem with the americans on themselves?
But only because they don't count those who have been out of work so long they're no longer eligible for unemployment assistance.
I have to say that a lot of issues presented in that article are the same sort of crap that's been tossed around for decades.
For instance, mining and metallurgical refining are extremely high-risk cost-dependent ventures, and they always go wherever is cheapest. My dad's been designing mines for decades, works around the world, and sometimes you can't even get a gold mine going in a place with incredibly low labour costs like Costa Rica! So to point to a shift of refining work to Canada and Mexico as being a fault with NAFTA is just incorrect-- it's exactly what NAFTA was designed to do, in order to make it cheaper for Americans to buy products.
As for Visas, many people on HB-1s, J-1s, etc... leave the U.S. after a few years. They're here for training, and that's it-- and when you consider the legal hurdles that companies have to go through in order to get foreigners (like moi) into the country in the first place, you should realize it's not going to happen if companies could easily find adequately skilled people here in the U.S.
No, I'm afraid what's really wrong with the U.S. job situation is very simple-- there are extreme disincentives for companies to hire new employees if they can make current employees work overtime.
'Fess up. How many of you work overtime for little or NO pay? 50% of you? 75%? How many of your companies had massive layoffs in the past decade, then been very slow to rehire even as the bottom line improved?
I'm good at what I do, and I'm willing to work hard, but realistically, the company I work for should have hired half a dozen more people instead of just me.
The parties only picked people that they thought could get elected. Maybe you should blame the electorate instead of the parties for the quality of the candidates.
11.0010010000111111011010101000100010000101101000
Frankly it is tiring, Western Europe and what is today's EU has always respected free enterprise and private ownership, cornerstones of a capitalist economy.
People in the US have no idea what they are talking about when they say EU countries are socialist.
They may be more socially responsible than the US goverments perhaps, but private property and free enterprise has never been stopped.
If you want examples of Socialist countries look at Cuba or North Korea, where everything is Socialized by means of state control and ownership.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
My area must be an exception to the norm. Employment is up, want ads are filled to the brim with great opportunities (including some pretty outstanding IT jobs), and I'm giving IT consulting work away to colleagues because I'm too busy to handle it.
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
Bad immigration policy-and bad trade deals are combining to decimate the middle class in America.
In the country where I live now I'm an immigrant, having settled and got citizenship about 8 years ago. I have been through many arguings and blind quarrels over the years over "immigrants take our jobs" and the like.
What I've found is the people who complain the most are those who are just down in the dumps, not necessarily because they couldn't get a job, but because they didn't want to accept any job, or just politicians who are what they are, anyplace, or just bloody ignorant.
It's the most easy to blame increasing uneployment rates on others who have jobs, especially if they come from abroad.
Really no offence and forgive my ignorance, but I have to tell, U.S. people also have their history on intolerance, racism and xenophoby.
You also have to take into account that some effects of the late dotcom boom and blow are still showing today. I mean there was a continuing very large over-employment of IT "professionals" , very many of which are dismissed even today.
What I want to point out is that there are very many aspects that lead to the given rising unemployment rates in the U.S. (and just that you know, that is _not_ that high if you consider other countries as well, which americans tend not to do), and only one of them may be connected to immigration of qualified professionals (I intentionally don't mention seasonal uneducated workers, that's another area of the problem).
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
or has the level of intelligence slipped a few notches aorund here. somehow anecdotal evidence for a few people suddenly means gospel truth. didn't you guys ever take a statistics class? holy crap. look, you could use the payroll survey or the household survey, and see huge differences. one of the unheralded changes of the tax cuts was to Chapter S corps. Small firms can claim personal taxes rather than corporate taxes, which has saved them lots of money, and spurred a huge growth of small businesses. they aren't figured in the payroll survey. the economy has been seeing good growth, and it can't be growing without new jobs.
people are complaining about bush, but he inherited a recession and we've been at war. plus, what the hell would yo have him do. okay, not cut taxes. but then what. we have a 8 trillion dollar economy. what exactly can the federal government do? it can change the rules and regulations that make it a bitch to start a business, etc. but that goes beyond simple fiscal policy, and everyone has irons in the fire there. both parties are basically identical economically. Bush wants all his tax cuts, kerry wants 99% of the tax cuts, with more for middle class. and the difference is...
one other thing people forget, is that europe is in a long term slump. they have been at 9-10% unemploymenty for years. they have aging populations and increasing welfare rolls. we've been the only economy in the west that has had real growth. china is experiencing very good growth as is india. but they have living standards well below ours. give that a few years. rememebr japan? you want to hate bush because he's religious, pro-life, pro-war, pro-patriot act, pro-whatever, fine. claiming that he has some magical power to outsource jobs or create rapid growth is asinine. clinton governed as a moderate republican. balanced budgets, eventual tax cuts, welfare reform, spending cuts, etc. if he wasn't a democrat, y'all'd be calling him a fascist. the business cycle is going to happen. what needs to be done is to look at long term economic conditions. we need a better business climate, tort reform, a flat tax, monetary discipline, fiscal restraint, among others. but w live in a overly political, sound bite driven society. we can't have an honest debate. it's our own fault. but don't put the finger on any one person, bush, clinton, etc.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Ya gotta be flexible. There is no box. There was a time when I had sweet geek dream jobs, but due to my new geographic location, I had to adapt.
Now I do mostly POS/online store integration for small business and handle small business IT needs and home user repair/upgrades. Not as exciting, nor as prestigious, but it pays. It sure beats working in a company worried about whether or not they'll be downsizing soon.
Think for yourself, destroy your television.
Funny how nobody complained when the working classes were decimated. Oh wait, that's right, anyone earning less than 10k a year must be a crack addict and deserves to be poor.
The American worker, on average, works longer hours than any other country - including Japan.
Probably correct. However, working longer is not always a good thing. In my experience (IT environment), working ridiculously long hours isn't all that productive.
Also, our culture has fewer holidays and days off than any other culture.
Holidays are actually comparable to a lot of other countries. Vacation time though is way too low in the USA, in my humble opinion. As a good friend of mine once said: "I can do 12 months worth of work in 11 months, but I can't do it in 12 months."
Really, 10 days of vacation is a bad thing for the US economy...
MSN 8: Now Microsoft even has bugs in their ad campaigns.
>"I Kinda care when people start trying to make our
>country use thier system (socialized everything).
>I'd like to point out everything is a trade off."
>As opposed to what? Socialized some things? Which
>politician is advocating getting rid of social
>security, medicare, medicaid, public schools,
>state universities, farm subsidies etc? That's
>right NONE OF THEM.
Try the Libertarian Party's Michael Badnarik. http://www.badnarik.org/
:O
--pyro_dude
Please tell me you are kidding... Or if not, tell me how one-third of the population of the worlds single remaining super power cannot even read or write. Is it lack of education? Are the school so bad? Are students no longer interested? Why?
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
NO. A co-op is not anything like a Union in the Teamsters sense of the word.
A Co-op is a co-operative business where members are owners/operators. Unions are labor organizations that lobby the businesses their members work in for pay, benefits, working conditions, etc... Two different beasts.
Think for yourself, destroy your television.
A very real change in Iraq policy would need to send some serious messages. It might even require some mass civilian casualties. Drop a BLU-82 or MOAB on Tikrit and Fallujah. Stop interrogating Iraqi detainees, but killing them and letting dogs and pigs eat at their rotting bodies. Let them know that these little kidnappings and chicken-shit roadside bombings will be punished 100-fold, 1000-fold.
You mean over 12,000 dead civillians are not enough to get our point across?
I realized I accidently cut out a part there during editing, not just PC repair work, but general office IT work as well. Sys admin type work. If you're a sysadmin out of work, maybe doing some contracts here or there, and want to learn more, email me. Veridium@linuxmail.org.
We're still planning, but we are getting closer to launch.
Think for yourself, destroy your television.
A very real change in Iraq policy would need to send some serious messages. It might even require some mass civilian casualties. Drop a BLU-82 or MOAB on Tikrit and Fallujah. Stop interrogating Iraqi detainees, but killing them and letting dogs and pigs eat at their rotting bodies. Let them know that these little kidnappings and chicken-shit roadside bombings will be punished 100-fold, 1000-fold.
Hello? This is 2004, not 1004. You're not on a crusade to get the Holy Grail from the infidels. It is apparent you have no respect for them if the human in question does not have an American passport --- a form of racism, I suppose.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
before that, your sister, your friend, and his wife were thinking ... hmmm... perhaps we can go to Europe for a nice vacation, and never realize that their own jobs were hanging by a rope.
Wake up, people.
Don't blame "bad immigration", or "globalization", blame YOURSELVES for being COMPLACENT !
This world we live in is increasingly interconnected. Whatever we'd seen playing in the halls of UN 20 or 30 years ago today is playing right at our doorsteps - and that is, we aren't compete against other Americans for our own survival, but against THE WORLD !
Yes, globalization goes both ways. While the third world countries are whinning about "Developing world conspire to re-colonize us", we, who live in FIRST WORLD COUNTRIES, must realize that while those sons-of-bitches are whinning, their cheaper labor is taking away our jobs.
Usually, we single-minded Americans will yell and shout and demand our "representatives" to "DO SOMETHING" - which, more than always, mean "closing our borders", "stop outsourcing" etc, which in itself WILL NOT WORK ANYMORE IN THIS WORLD WE ARE LIVING.
Instead of closing up, we SHOULD be OPENING UP EVEN MORE, and yes, that means, we should roll up our sleeves and COMPETE AGAINST THE CHEAPEST LABOR IN BANGLADESH, by using OUR BRAIN.
Our plush lifestyle is at threat. If we don't do something, our high cost of living ain't gonna last. We gotta figure out ways to be BOTH the CHEAPEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD TO DO SOMETHING, and THE COUNTRY WHERE WE CAN LIVE In WHATEVER LIFESTYLE WE WANT.
I am saying this base on my experience of a guy who have traveled and worked in all over the world. I am not that type of "Americans" who coccoon himself in the "protection of Uncle Sam". Rather, I go out into the WORLD and see what's going on, and btw, making money at it.
Yep, there are people in the third world countries who will accuse me of "exploitation", but I don't mind. If they won't let me exploit them, then they won't get jobs. It's that simple.
And then, there are Americans who accuse me of "exporting jobs to other countries". Again, I don't mind.
You see, if I can't make a toaster oven in America under U$ 2.25, then I won't make money selling them not only in America, but also all over the world. I gotta find the CHEAPEST PLACE IN THE WORLD to do what I need to do, and if that means doing it OUTSIDE AMERICA, I'll do it in a jiffy.
In the same token, the money I earned, I sent back to my good ol' U. S. of A. for safekeeping. No matter how I like the world outside America, America is still my country.
To to those who want to close our borders - please don't buy any clothing, any furniture, any electrical appliances, any thing, in fact, because 90% of them are MADE OUTSIDE America !
You can close the border to "immigrant, but you can't stop those things from coming in. It's us, the Americans, who demand CHEAP but QUALITY goods, so something gotta give.
Until the day you realize you can't live the way you did, you wouldn't understand which world we are living in, my friend.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
It is apparent you have no respect for them if the human in question does not have an American passport --- a form of racism, I suppose.
Should have been: It is apparent you have no respect for human rights...
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
First off, if you read the /. FAQ, you will notice that /. is primarily an American website intended to entertain a mostly American audience. They acknowlege this, so that is not grounds for complaint.
/. audience right now, and not to give credit where none is due but articles that get more into depth about how to view the various available statistics are very interesting to thoughtful people who want to consider the issue in-depth, if not specifically "geek" oriented.
/. primary "columnists" can get a numerical feedback on the quality of their selection process.)
Secondly, the topic of jobs is on the mind of a very large number of people among the
The article is pretty iffy though. To start, while it is true that the unemployment rate does underestimate the severity of the problem in times like these when a lot of people give up aggressively looking for work tactically or out of desperation, it is not simply based on who draws unemployment checks, but rather on an ongoing survey process. Not getting this fact straight was one of the first indications that this article was not going to be completely accurate.
As you go through the article, and consider each of the points, you can see that the author is indeed excercising signifigant bias -- not as a partisan, just to support his own premise. It's like a badly researched college essay. Which is too bad because the case he was trying to make is correct -- he just stretches the facts too far.
It's also a pity because, given the way the campaign has been "anti-intellectualized" by the whole non-issue of flip-flopping the article is a letdown for those of us wanting a breath of fresh air.
As a fallback, if you want to look at the quality of the job market, ask yourself how your employers, or if jobless, your potential employers, are treating you... do you feel expendible or treasured? In a bad job market employers will try to get away with things that inconvenience or annoy their workforce. In a good job market, employers will be attentive to the needs of their employees, sometimes to the point of pampering, for fear that a competitor will steal them.
In my personal opinion, you really don't have to know the national rate to decide who to vote for. Factor your own *personal* satisfaction level in with the other issues that concern you. If everyone does so, justice is delivered at the ballot box. Unfortunately most people obsess on a single "sticking point" wedge issue and ignore their own welfare. While social conscience in voting is good, only you can vote for your own needs and you should allow your own self interests at least 75% of your vote.
(I'm finding it hard to moderate in political threads as well -- there are whole entire threads that go way off topic and with only five points it is impossible to cut them down. The only solution would be if everyone who cannot resist responding to an off topic comment would please try to follow their response up with some sort of comment that brings the topic back into the thread.)
(I do think main page articles should appear in the Meta Moderating section so
Someone had to do it.
In europe we got slightly more experience with it since it is so easy to get the news from another country. Pretty common for politicians claiming that their country does better because factor X is lower/higher then in other EU countries. Neatly forgetting that factor X is being calculated differently in all the countries.
It is so simple to do. First of all you can mess around by counting how many people there are in your country. In the modern world with illegal immigrants this can really screw up your stats. After all one way or another they are either taking jobs or being unemployed.
A second one is determining who is looking for a job. Is a student looking for a job? Most have side jobs so they have to count somewhere but are not in the market for a fulltime job. Same with 2 parent families, if one parent stays at home is that because they are unemployed or is that a life choice? If I can afford to retire but am still working age where am I counted? Just because I don't have to collect benefits doesn't mean I am not looking for a job.
Then there is how you count jobs. Not all jobs are equal especially not in non-minimum wage america. You can say 20.000 jobs or whatever have been created but what has really happened? If X high paying jobs have been replaced by X+20k starvation wage jobs then yes you have had job growth. Not sure if this is a good thing however.
Of course there is the nice thing of having seasonal work. Some seasons have more work then others. Very nice to measure at a seasonal peak to show how many extra jobs there are.
I don't know much about america but I seen to many shows and "documentaries" were american families are working 2 jobs per parent and still barely making ends meet to have much fate in your style of economy. A simple stat like the number of unemployed has very little meaning when you can have a 4 job household and still be in debt.
I am to lazy to look it up but I remember a movie with 2 ex american presidents being forced on a roadtrip together. At one point they take hitch a ride in car with a family. At first it is all peaches but then the presidents keep being to full of themselves and it comes out that they both created policies that make the family loose their job and their house. The family is not on trip. They are living in their car.
American really needs a third option but until things really hit the fan I don't think it will happen. Just a constant change between two sides who both are determined to screw america up and the rest of the world along with it.
Don't feel bad about it. Dutch politics is in the same shitter. The party that when I was young was totally ruining the country is back and they are taking off where they left off. Making holland into an american style ghetto with all the dis-advantages and none of the advantages. No matter how bad the americans screw their country up, we can do it better.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Free trade is always good in the long run. What do you prefer to it: protectionism or socialism?
So does Randall Burns get to put being mentioned on /. on his CV as a publication in a peer-reviewed journal?
regardless of the article's merits, he does link to a good page on the underground economy that is well researched and presented.
00010111 always try everything twice
What Kerry says, essentially, is "I AM GOING TO TAX THE AMERICAN COMPANIES SO THAT THEY CAN'T OPERATE AT A PROFIT ANYMORE, SO THAT THE JAPS WILL WIN THE COMPETITION !"
You mean he might actually get them to pay some taxes? 82 Big U.S. Corporations Paid No Tax in One or More Bush Years.
Did he inhale?
If everyone does so, justice is delivered at the ballot box.
This is assuming that at least one of the choices offered is one you approve of. If the system only results in choices you despise then you'll never get justice at the ballot box.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
I may be totally wrong, because I've not read the full report nor have I sat down and done the research necessary to properly address the arguments raised in the report, and anyways, a ./ reply is hardly the place to properly reply to what is a very long article, but my strong feeling is that what is written is entirely incorrect; the reasoning presented seems simplistic, sensationalist and highly selective, and reflects the authors pre-existing beliefs rather than accurate objective conclusions.
--
Toby
Bad immigration?
Bad immigration are the social leeches, criminals and terrorists.
Anyone who comes and works is good. Being born in the US isn't a right to a nice high paying job, it is just a better opportunity then almost everyone else has. Since when is more people a bad thing? They can only 'steal jobs' if someone owned it to begin with. When I buy my gas from one gas station and switch to another you don't see the owner complaining the other guy stole his customer.
Bad trade deals? Walmart and your local car lot are full of the results. Cheap goods available to raise your standard of living.
The trade deficit is just a choice that people make. If you choose to buy a hard drive made in taiwan, or a chinese chair, the trade deficit will increase.
The only way to stop this is protectionism, which will cause a downward spiral in the economy.
Plus this is also self correcting, the US dollar will eventually drop relative to other currencies if the trade defecit doesn't change.
Ah, the old saying:
...and a recovery is when George Bush is out of work.
A recession is when someone you know is out of work.
A depression is when you are out of work.
This should be insightful.
Then we are in a MAJOR depression.
This should be funny
This should be +5 funny!
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
It goes like this:
High Degree of Wellfare = High Unemployment
Low Wellfare = Less Unemployment, but a large "Working poor" class.
IOW, you wish you had Germany's economy (assuming you're an American) and enjoyed the social wellfare benefits that these countrys enjoy, earned as much money as they individualy do, enjoyed as much vacation time as they do each year, etc.
The strength of a country's economy and the measure of its social well-being are not measured by the rate of unemployment. Remember that in a eutopic idealic country noone would have to work (or at least very few would), and everyone would still enjoy life to the fullest.
The power of Christ compiles you!
Welfare State != Socialism....
...
... sad .. very sad. Reminds of the Douglas Adams's Aorist Rods ...
,
Socialism != "Down with the rich"
There are places in the world where socialist economies are bringing into being a Middle Class world. As the percentage of very poor (desperate) and very rich (lazy) reduces the economy seems to stabilize. Especially the crime rates are seen to fall
Unfortunately "Get Rich Quick" is the modern version of "laissez-faire" Capitalism
--
Seen on National Highway 1 to New Delhi
"When you go home, tell them we gave our today
for your tomorrows . -- Indian Army"
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Presidents don't create jobs, unless it's a massive make-work program like the Civil Conservation Corps in the 1930s. The real responsbility lies with the hundreds of CEOs who decide to lay off or add more workers. Period. And it's been far more of the former, than the latter - and that's been the case for about the last 30 years or so. Shedding workers is really a redistribution of wealth - from rank and file workers at the bottom, to the executive leadership at the top and the shareholders. But this is something that a sitting US President has little control over - each of these business leaders indivudually decides, "I want fewer workers and therefore more money for myself" which adds up to a grisly collective result. Since the early 90s I've read Business Week, Forbes and the Economist on a fairly regular basis, and I never once recalled reading about a specific economic policy of Clinton's that lead to the spectacular economic growth of that decade. In fact, his tax increases shortly after he took office probably had the effect of dampening growth. He was the lucky beneficiary of Greenspan's aggressive rate-lowering from 1990-1992, and a wave of IT investment and payoff. Am I writing this to defend Bush? Perhaps a bit. But I sincerely believe that it's easier for people to blame a President than an amorphous mass of private sector executives for their economic woes.
The rich employ clever tax lawyers to avoid paying alot of tax. Even Bush admits it: The rich hire lawyers and accountants so that the middle class gets stuck with the bill.
Did he inhale?
"He not only turned a routine recession into the great depression, he instituted the practice of the federal government taxing the wages of each and every worker in the country."
In 1933...
When FDR entered office the unemployment rate was 25%, with an underemployment rate of 50%. He had to close the banks to stop from them from failing. Germany that year would appoint an austrian named Adolf Hitler as their leader. Veterans the previous year had rioted in washington. If you want to make the argument that FDR had prolonged the depression through bad policies...you can make that argument but calling the economy of 1933 "a routine recession" is idiocy.
Second of all the relocation camps didnt happen until TEN YEARS LATER in the middle of a little conflict called "world war II".
Other than not knowing anything about history, economics, or politics the author of this comment seems relatively well informed.
--
Simon
And income taxation is the best thing that ever happened to civilization. We just need more of it.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
The American worker, on average, works longer hours than any other country
Correct (and over a lifetime has worked 40% more hours than in other comparable countries), but it does not mean they are more productive. Both France and Germany have a higher GDP/head/hour than the US. See this based on an Economist article based on a Goldman Sachs report. In effect, it implies that working looong hours ain't doing you the world of good.
Did he inhale?
In short, it is not the government's function to create jobs. It's the government's function to get out of the way and let businesses create jobs. Yes, government has a place in regulating businesses to ensure they are not endangering people or the environment unnecessarily. Every government regulation costs businesses money -- money that might otherwise go to hiring new employees to produce more product. These are especially hard on small businesses (who are responsible for over half of all US jobs). These regulations also affect the quality of your work life, so don't think they only affect the fat cats.
About three years ago, my employer was working out the details of a formal telecommuting program, which would make my work life easier and save them money (fewer people on site == lower expenses). This would have included picking up part of the tab for internet connections, new computers, etc. Unfortunately, the Labor Department announced that they had the power to regulate home offices used for telecommuting the same way they could regulate those office spaces provided by the emloyer. This extended to inspecting home offices just as they do employer-provided spaces, and the intention to fine employers for regulatory violations found in the home offices. Employers could also be held liable for injuries incurred in the home office.
Needless to say, the telecommuting project died before it began -- the potential liabilities were so great they posed a significant risk to the company's future.
This is but one example of the government often doing more harm than good. And there's not much any president can do to alter that -- the people who came up with this hare-brained idea are probably still there, waiting for a more favorable time to put this idea into action. They can't be fired because they're civil servants, so they don't change with the administration.
There really isn't much a president can do to create jobs (and it's not his responsibility anyway). The best thing he can do is push policies that give businesses the freedom to act.
Also, note that the Labor Department just declared they had this regulatory power -- no act of Congress granted it, they just assumed it -- such is the power-hungry nature of any bureaucracy. And any entity that has the power to find you a job has the power to have you removed from that job. Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.
The main reason we are in this mess is that our leaders, our elite, operate not in the best interests of the general welfare, as the Constitution requires them to, but in the best interests of the corporations and the investor class. Bush is the most extreme example of this, but Clinton did it, too, as did Reagan. Bush the Elder may have been the worst. Carter practically started it.
The reason our leaders have been able to do all of this is because some ultra-rich people and the multinational corporations spent billions of dollars over the last 30 years or so to convince all of America that liberalized trade and immigration policies would benefit Americans. In a way, they obtained our consent to do this, but they actually "manufactured" our consent.
For a more detailed explanation of this 30-year propaganda blitz, See this September 2004 article in Harpers magazine about these "Tentacles of Rage."
The massive propaganda machine was built around think tanks and foundations that literally from the ground up built a vocabulary and worldview favoring free trade (and liberal immigration, which just one part of "free trade"), all designed to drive down wages and taxes for corporations and the rich, and increase corporate profits and increase unemployment and underemployment, and in general disempower the average worker.
It worked! Corporate profits are way up, and they pay less in taxes, while the average worker is scrambling.
What do you call politicians and bureaucrats who willingly go along with such a scheme?
I call them traitors, guilty of treason. I think our leaders, including our Presidents, present and past, should be held accountable in a court of law for this treason.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
You might want to read about the Constitution's "General Welfare" clause.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
All he did was state data, interpret, and generalize. He indicts rebuplicans and the current administration for corporate decisions; democrats for their failure to understand their constituents. He is assuming the Kerry-Edwards campaign will succeed in November by advising them in what they should be doing, manage the trade defecit and immigration. By doing so will magically grow the middle class and their disposable income.
For being an economist, why doesn't he understand that and unemployment rate of 5.4% is very good and one of the lowest in the world. Its certainly better than the double-digit numbers in most of the world and certainly this overall number from India.
As for the shifting of capital and the growing divide of the classes, name one successful society, where the controlling power had a monetary policy will divide the currency exactly among its citizens. Just one... Nope? I didn't think so. The closest example I can think of is the USSR, and they still had the rich elite controlling the working class; and it only lasted 70 years.
Last time I checked, my blue-collar, low-wage friends and I all have the same opportunity of wealth as the rich kids we tend to resent. Notice, I did NOT say that it would be easier because often capital is more difficult to obtain, but we have the same basic opportunity to start a business as the next person. We have the greatest entrepreneurial environment in the world and its ours to take advantage of. People from other countries see this and other advantages our country offers and immigrate. Is the global playing field level? No, it never has been and it never will be. Life is not fair. Life is hard. Get over the idea of being employeed in one place for your entire life in a job that a trained monkey or robots can do.
Will the election in November help? No. Its just a corporate sponsored figurehead with a puppet administration. Either one. What about a third party? Well, we effectively shut them out a generation ago and now, they're just a talking point.--Amigori
"The quality of life is determined by its activites."--Aristotle
I hope you're not reading the Washington Post for your conclusion that the middle class is getting decimated. They've simply been misreporting the data. Because while it's true that the middle class is getting smaller, it's not because they're moving into the poor class. The data simply doesn't support that conclusion.
The "middle class squeeze" is a myth. If anything, the middle class being "squeezed" up into wealthier classes.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
We had no qualified teachers ... yes, we had 3 people who had Masters from IITs - but the rest was pure JUNK. Anyone and everyone who knew to use a mouse got a job in IT . The choice of faculty jobs was left to a very small minority of "I can't get no job in IT" graduates. I mean, who'd quit a job that would pay 5-6 times that of a college teacher ?.
We (As in students) were pissed ... I was in the top 50 students in my state and I still couldn't get a teacher who understood datastructures properly ?. It's very frustrating when the people teaching you have just passed out a year or two ahead of you and still have no idea what they are teaching. We were even more angry at the system when the dotcoms crashed in 2001 - we were going out into the big bad world very very unprepared . Anyway, some of us did learn a bit on our own .... but we could have done a lot better with teachers who knew things better than us (rather than teaching off a textbook).
In my opinion, if you people have to dig yourself out of this position - get good teachers , people who know programming as an art, build a second line of good programmers instead of letting it die out because there's no future in IT assumptions.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Most European countries give laid off citizens YEARS of unemployment benefits if they need it. How can they afford to do that? THey tax the rich and upper income earners more than we do (50% at least), and then they do not spend all that tax money on military and war, but instead spend it on unemployment/welfare benefits and healthcare for everyone. What a concept!
eat shiat and bark at the moon
What I'm saying is get off your duffs, keep up to date in whatever your field is, and don't look to the gubmint to provide. Waiting for them is like waiting for your lazy brother-in-law to pay you back that money he borrowed. Ain't gonna happen. I lived in near poverty as a kid and decided I didn't want to live like that. I saw the politicians only wanted to help a few and to keep the rest poor as a pool of need they could point to as a reason for increasing the bureaucracy and taxes.
So quit your whining, vote for which ever party/person you want and remember you are the one resposible for your life. We wouldn't need so much help from the government if we weren't already getting too much help from the government.
Too lazy to create a sig...
I live here in Germany in the economy and one thing for sure, I'm in no way better off here than I would be in the US. The ruling socialist party has decided to stop unemployment benefits altogether after the year of unemployment insurance is up and have decided to switch those unemployed over to the welfare system where they all get a monthly EUR 345 ($360) and even less in the eastern part of Germany. In addition to the $360 they get another modest housing allowance which is capped at around $250. Personally, if I were out of luck I wouldn't even qualify for their welfare because I would have to report all of my and my wife's property and income which is not allowed to exceed $7000 for people our age.
You lose your bet: If a person here stops going through the unemployment or welfare system then they are dropped from the statistics. The labor department actually works hard to bring unemployment statistics down by actively expelling people from the system whenever and by whatever means they can.
The newest development over here is workfare where they plan on putting millions of qualified people to work in menial jobs for welfare money.
Looks like we're comparing oranges and oranges here.
Finally you don't care how much worse Europe is. Think of it this way.. Europe is another place you can not escape US unemployment. Wouldn't it be great to be able to say, fuck you, Bush I am taking my business elsewhere? I would sure as hell love to say Fick Dich, Schroeder you fucken sierra club commie!
People over here are comparing their situation to four years ago before the socialist party took over. They voted for the fascist party in the state elections.
So you are saying that because America is majority white, then white Americans are not allowed to say that America should stop or slow down immigration? Are their any other policies that should be tied to skin color?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I work 14-13 hours days - this is actually the time I spend in office. I work on saturdays (like today) and sunday afternoons as well.
> Really, 10 days of vacation is a bad thing for the US economy...Last year I got 5 days of vacation time .
I work here ... now you know why outsourcing works ?.
Sadly my office is airconditioned with free coffee , while at home on a hot day is totally different... (oh, and I DON'T HAVE A LIFE).
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
... then GAFC.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
NT
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
We Americans have a right to protect our jobs. And we have the means to do so.
This economic treason by the elites all started decades ago when they shipped out our advanced manufacturing jobs to Japan. Advanced manufacturing jobs are not assembly jobs, but more like fabrication jobs. See this article for more info.
Now they are doing the same thing to office work (like software, financial etc) that they did to advanced manufacturing. But we office workers are more able to stop them this time, mainly because we have some access to the media via the internet and boards like Slashdot.
Tariffs do make things worse, but only for the upper income group. For the average working person, tariffs are good.
Let me ask you something: if free trade is so good for lowering prices, then why is an average car costing more of the average salary now than it did 25 years ago? For more details on this check out Marshall Brain's Concentration of Wealth blog.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
How is that addressing unemployment in a "more positive way". It actually sounds like it isn't being addressed at all, they are just waiting for Eastern Europe to catch up and accepting a more frugal lifestyle. Sorta "spreading the misery." rather than reducing it.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
Labor costs are the PROFITS of the worker. You don't hear business owners complaining when their profits get too high, do you?
Look, the highest standards of living in the world are in the social demcracies of Europe, and they have HIGH labor costs--they have minimum wages levels of like $12/hour. High lahor costs are a GOOD THING...IF, and ONLY if you are a WORKER. Now, if you are an investor or business owner, that is a Bad Thing.
Fortunately, over 90% of Americans are WORKERS. Your problem is that you have been tricked by investor/corporate propaganda into thinking that YOU are an INVESTOR. Well, you AIN'T an investor. YOu are a WORKER. Deal with it. Accept it, and then help organize your country to HELP THE WORKER, like they do in Scandanavia.
The reason the 3rd world IS the 3rd world is that they have LOW LABOR COSTS. That is the DEFINTION of being 3rd world.
The reason many of the countries in NW Europe have the highest quality of life is because they have the HIGHEST COST OF LABOR. And it aint no accident. The two concepts are DIRECTLY RELATED.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
FDR tried to alleviate the suffering caused by
the depression's very high unemployment rate by
instituting SS, and work programs like CCC and WPA
that provided a public benefit. He did not make
lies, half-truths, and political doublespeak
an Executive Branch SOP. He did not slash
corporate taxes, and the tax rate of the very
wealthiest Americans, and then shift the tax
burdeon onto the backs of the shrinking
middle class. FDR did not encourage the flight
of American jobs overseas because "what's good
for General Motors is good for America". FDR
did not open the floodgates of illegal
immigration into this country to force wages
lower.
George W. Bush has done all these things, and
more. It is pretty sad when the only decent
paying jobs available to unemployed Americans
is to drive a truck through Iraqi free fire
zones. The high point of Bush's "job creation"
record was 135,000 new jobs in a month -- which
unfortunately doesn't even cover students from
high school or college entering the job market,
let alone those unemployed. Bush has embraced
"corporate national socialism", and abandoned
the working class. From all reliable accounts,
one of the Bush administration's top policy
goals was the invasion of Iraq, from before his
inauguration. All the lies and doublespeak that
was employed (WMD, terror links, and "imminent
threat" were cobbled together and used after
9/11/2001 as cover for this war. Each have
proved to be false. The Bush "war plank" was
an agenda hidden from the voters in 2000 by
such promises as "no foreign wars", "no nation-
building", etcetera, all while planning for
Saddam's ouster. Bush mismanagement of the
war in Iraq, and of domestic policy decisions,
have been equally disasterous to this country,
with the sole exception of the GOP-aligned
multinational corporations. George W. Bush
spoke the truth (finally) at a Washington,DC
fundraiser when he said "the HAVE's and the
HAVE MORE's are my base (constituency)".
If this country should be cursed with yet another
George W. Bush term of office, do not expect that
there will be any improvements in job growth,
health care, international relations, or the
war in Iraq. Do expect more tax cuts for the
corporations and wealthiest 2% of taxpayers.
Do expect SS and Medicare to be gutted, as Bush
finds new ways to drive the country deeper into
debt. Do expect greater loss of personal freedom
in this country, as "Patriot Act" extensions
are subverted to crush political opposition.
Do expect Bush to continue promoting religious
organizations as the only source of welfare
and social assistance. Do expect America's
open borders to continue to encourage illegal
immigration, because America's businesses
want ever cheaper labor.
"I don't know much about america but I seen to many shows and "documentaries" were american families are working 2 jobs per parent and still barely making ends meet to have much fate in your style of economy. A simple stat like the number of unemployed has very little meaning when you can have a 4 job household and still be in debt."
I would say just the opposite, it's very hard to tell how representative your documentary family is w.r.t most poor people. Naturally, the documentary maker has an agenda, which is fine but we do have to assume that he/she found the worst case they could for their film.
The other problem is that debt isn't just about income, it's about spending. The average poor person in the US has a larger house, more cars, etc, than a poor person in the EU, even though the EU has (relative to it's economy) a more generous safety net. The reason is pretty simple, the median income in the US is significantly higher, thus some people who are poor by US standards would not be considered poor in some EU member countries. The higher median income in the US also influences the cultural definition of "subsistance". I would bet that some things that poor people in the US would consider necessary or normal would be considered normal or luxury. In other words, expectations are higher, thus many poor people feel the "need" to go into debt. Just look at things like Cable TV, cars, etc in the US.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
As an Autstralian seeing the US political system from the outside, I couldn't agree more - at least about the need for finance reform.
Australia has its fair share of problems too, but many of the things that are routine for politicians in the US would be illegal here. Sadly, we seem to be on a trend toward a system more like the US - lately conflicts of interests by politcians have barely merited a mild telling off.
... you're willing to give up all those cheap imports (including practically all your PC and electronic hardware) and live in economic isolation from the rest of the world. THERE IS NO ECONOMIC DIFFERENCE BETWEEN OUTSOURCING A JOB AND IMPORTING A GOOD. Here's a short argument to convince you. If you're still not convinced, ask your favorite Econ professor, or even anyone who paid attention in their International Trade class.
I'm always amused when presidents take credit for good economic times, and receive blame for bad times. Fact of the matter is, despite what the campaigns would like you to think, the Fed chairman probably has more influence on the economy than the president, and even the Fed chairman probably doesn't have that much influence. I say, by all means, go ahead and vote Bush out of office for the mess he created in the world and the assault on civil liberties at home, but don't think protectionism is good for the country, or that Kerry will solve the unemployment problem.
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
The United States are already the richest country on the planet. So, immigration is bad because you don't want other people from poorer nations to have any of that wealth? And trade deals are bad because poorer nations that produce much more cheaply because they're poorer are unfair?
At the risk of sounding troll-like, wake up. This sounds like the richest nation on earth being greedy.
Utility is ordinal, not cardinal. This means that we cannot make comparisions between two different groups/individuals/nations, because they all have different utilities at different levels. Thus it isn't a good logical basis for a progressive tax system. The flat-tax argument is an "equal share of burden" argument too. The point being that if you cannot equalize marginal sacrifice, then the best way is proportional sacrifice (flat income tax). I agree your idea would be better, if you could compare utitilty across individuals/families.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
I disagree... Outsourcing means taking money out of the American economy (wages that would be paid to someone getting taxed and buying stuff over here), and sends it overseas where that money (generated with the assistence of US-taxpayer funded US infrastructure, and taxpayer funder corporate tax breaks) now instead helps a competitor to America. That's not a good thing.
The free trade of high paying AMerican jobs for cheap overseas labor also would not naturally end until some natural balance in global salary levels has been achieved... Now, when you realize that the US *currently* has one of the highest salary levels in the worls, but only represents ~5% of the global population, you'll begin to realize where that eventual equilibrium may be achieved... it wont be the midway point between current US and Indian/Chinese/Russian salaries, but rather it'll be much closer to what those Indian etc salaries are right now, since their population sizes swamp our own.
Now, if you actually give a crap about quality of life over here, and your ability to earn a wage that'll pay an American mortage rather than paying for a Chinese apartment (not much use unless you live in China), then you'd be concerned about this, but don't go looking for enlightened CEO's to stop gunning for expense-cutting bonuses in this way, especially since there duty to shareholders is to maximize profits for them, regardless of anythign else (such as whether by doing so they're screwing the American economy, and screwing the job prospects of their shareholders and everyone else).
The only thing that will stop the quality of life in America being dragged down to what'll be supported on an Indian salary is indeed, as Kerry says, to have the government provide disincentives to do so... What I'd support is tax penalties that are proportional to the difference in cost of living between the US and where a company outsources to, since that levels the playing field. I'll happily compete with anyone in the US for a programming job, since I'm good at what I do, and my competitors have pretty much the same cost of living as myself... but trying to compete with someone on the same skill level who's cost of living is 20% of mine is going to be a losing proposition since they can work for 20% of the salary that I need. That's not competition, it's slaughter, and it may be good for globally reducing labor rates to a minimum (if that for some reason is your goal), but it's sure not good for the Americal lifestyle that we enjoy, even if you want to roll out the old excuse that I'll be able to buy a VCR at Walmart for $28.99 instead of $32, because of the Chinese labor.
I'd be voting for Kerry anyway based on the danger to America that Bush represents, but I certainly also support him on this issue - his policy will be good for working Americans, while Bush's outsourcing-happy policy is only good for the independently wealthy and business owners to which lower US labor costs are a plus rather than a negative.
Fast forward to 2004. I'm working in a menial factory job, making $8.00/hour, no health insurance, no paid vacation, working through a temp agency. If I get hired on permanently at the plant, I've already been told there will not be a raise involved for at least a year, and the payroll deduction for health insurance is about 15% of my gross pay. The plant recently lifted a 2-year freeze on raises and gave its permanent employees a 3% raise. Inflation is currently running about 5-6%, so the net effect of that 3% raise is that the employees are making a bit less than they were before the raise freeze. In the same plant meeting in which the raise was announced, they announced yet another record month for production and sales, and also informed the permanent employees that their health insurance costs were going up yet again. Yay. Meanwhile the company executives are buying new luxury autos and boats and swimming pools. Gee, thanks for that 3% raise. Oh, wait, I don't even get that because I'm one of the ~40% of the plant employees who work through a temp agency and thus don't get raises or insurance or vacation pay.
How do I make ends meet? I do small home improvement jobs on the weekends. Anyone want their kitchen remodelled in the Chattanooga area?
"Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
OK. Reality check.
The computer you typed that post with -
were all of the circuit boards domestically made?
Own a cell phone? Pull the battery cover off and see where it was made.
Oo-h! My coffee cup! Made in Mexico!! Do you have an American made coffee cup? I've got about a dozen that aren't. Watch? Japanese.
There could be more great examples, but that's what I see in front of me right now.
If you can't catalog your life and say 'yes, I have no forign made products', than YOU'RE THAT GUY that Taco Cowboy is talking about.
Pot calling Kettle...
Oh, here's a fun scenario for your economic treason (i.e., where do you draw the line):
I work in construction, and we use a lot of cranes. Now, there is a certain class of cranes called Duty-Cycle cranes, mainly for heavy foundation work - slurry walls, drilled shafts, tasks that beat the crap out of equipment.
The best American made entry is the Manitowoc 1015, which is a huge POS. Just doesn't do the job. (Too bad really, since the rest of their cranes are wonderful products.) On the other hand, the German Liebherr makes an excellent duty-cycle crane, the HS 833 HD.
Should I be punished for buying the Liebherr? Should I buy the Manitowoc out of some sort of loyalty to USA?
What you are proposing by such a law is rapidly approaching the "anti-dog-eat-dog rule" from Atlas Shrugged. Honestly, you don't have to agree with everything (or most) of what Ayn Rand says, but it should be very self apparent that rules like that are misguided, idiotic, and self defeating.
I think I need a new sig here.
$500.000.000.000+ and rising each day.
That too will have some impact on the economy. GLOBALLY. Thank you mister Bush!
Privacy is terrorism.
Someone wondered why Slashdot is right wing and this story proves it. How could Slashdot quote from a fascist site like vdare.com? What's next? An article from the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan? Or maybe Aryan Nation?
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
To the upper class, which most high level politicians are in, the job market IS good.
They don't really see the real world, just what circles they run in. So, they honestly don't see a problem.
Meanwhile, I agree that us down here in the middle class is getting beaten to death, between the job market and increasing taxes, and prices.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
nah, it's not about the race or color..
it's just that it's easier to think that "somebody took ourr jobbbsss!!!!!" than to be reasonable about it().
besides, america has not exactly been welcoming for immigration in the last, what, 80 years?(compared to times before that)anyways.
but it's not like isolation from the world is going to help anyone.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
you wrote:
The computer you typed that post with -
were all of the circuit boards domestically made?
Own a cell phone? Pull the battery cover off and see where it was made.
Oo-h! My coffee cup! Made in Mexico!! Do you have an American made coffee cup? I've got about a dozen that aren't. Watch? Japanese.
There could be more great examples, but that's what I see in front of me right now.
THe reason that I have foreign goods is that the foreign goods are cheaper and better. They are cheaper and better because of low labor costs.
If I deliberately buy AMerican-made goods, then I pay more and get less. The reason I pay more and get less is that labor costs more.
Now, if I deliberately buy AMerican-made goods, then I pay more and get less, which means I have less money to use for rent, mortgage, food, transportation, etc. That means I am less able to survive.
I am in essence being FORCED to buy foreign goods, and my own government is doing it by not using tariffs.
Also, I am killing my own livelihood by buying foreign products.
THis is all brought on by my own government, which I pay to support. THey have sold us out by forcing us TO MAKE COMSUMPTION CHOICES AGAINST OUR OWN BEST INTERESTS.
If they would enact trade barriers and tariffs, then I would not be forced to make these destructive choices.
When you posed your question, you used circular logic.
And, BTW, I read Rand years ago. Pure crap...
eat shiat and bark at the moon
The illegal Mexican immigrants are NOT squeezing the middle class in any way. There is nobody in the middle class that would their jobs.
Several researchers have actually said the illegal immigration is good for the country, from the job market perspective, that is. Sure, illegal immigration brings other problems, but they sure as hell aren't taking any jobs away from the us middle class.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
http://www.econedlink.org/lessons/index.cfm?lesson =EM219
Pay particular attention to the line where the government DOES NOT COUNT 75 MILLION PEOPLE (retired, students, individuals choosing not to work).
"individuals choosing not to work"
That includes people who still can't find jobs so they're given up actively looking for them.
I want that number taken OUT of that calculation.
I can see lumping students and retired people together. They are either still training up for the workforce or have retired from it.
But not counting people who CAN work but have given up LOOKING for a job is wrong.
Read the Good News bible and spread it to others. God seriously spoke to me,"Good news" and later that day I recieved a Good News bible from my dad! I'm not lying here, go get a bible, read up on it, and start spreading the message to the best of your ability. I do have a job, but its almost a waste a time, that I could be spreading the Gospel. I've seen tons of miracles, I 100% know God exists.
God spoke to me.
Your comments are premised on the notion that there is a distinct difference in the fundamental worldviews of the Demopublican and Republocratic parties; that's a big mistake.
Those two factions of our single party are both funded by the wealthy and corporations, and are both beholden to their funders. They employ different rhetoric to try to rally the populace, but there is no significant difference in their worldviews.
Compared to the range of parties and political choice that a citizen of most any European country has, there is no political freedom in the US -- we're a one-party state.
Cut taxes!
Terrorism?
Cut taxes!
Health care?
Cut taxes!
Crime?
Cut taxes!
Crumbling roads?
Cut taxes!
Poor Sunday church attendance?
Cut taxes!
Seriously, as long as politicians can get away with empty quick fix slogans, don't expect anything to change.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
You're not guaranteed a high paying job that you like.
Outsourcing is what makes the free open market free and open.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Seems to depend on what you're teaching, and where:
Shortage areas by skill and geography and year
NEA has a whole section on shortage
Article for administrators on the shortage and need to attract teachers
Same source, saying how some disagree in view of low pay, but some districts are increasing pay
State of FL forgiving student loans for 04-05 for education students
more on where and in what areas teachers are needed
That's just with a quick Google search, and the only reason I bothered is because I live in the DC area, where schools last year were increasing pay and offering signing bonuses in the VA suburbs of DC. DC itself has trouble holding on to teachers, but that's because it's a hellhole.
I can guarantee you if a Democrat gets in again you'll be sliding deeper and deeper.
Almost four years later you're still trying to blame Clinton? And what are we sliding deeper into? When Clinton was president the economy was booming, people had jobs, we had a budget surplus. America was a lot stronger under Clinton than it is under Bush. If Clinton was running against Bush then dubya wouldn't have a chance.
I will say this, though. This time around we can blame the supreme court. But if Americans actually elect that idiot, then we deserve what we get the next four years.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
This is a terrible frigging article.
Anyone with first year stats should know this guy is totally out there.
Plus it's a useless non-technical political post what's up with that?
Solve joblessness by stopping immagration they must be mad!
It might even require some mass civilian casualties. Drop a BLU-82 or MOAB on Tikrit and Fallujah.
:-(
Yeah, that will show them the meaning of "freedom!"
Let them know that these little kidnappings and chicken-shit roadside bombings
I'm sure that they would happily kill American GIs with Apache gunships and Bradley IFVs if we would be kind enough to give them the weapons. But since we don't, should we be criticizing them for resisting a foreign occupier with whatever tools they have?
If you really want to stop the killing, take the US troops out of Iraq and send them halfway around the world back to Kansas -- that would do the trick.
You mean over 12,000 dead civillians are not enough to get our point across?
Please note that the dead cited by Iraq Body Count are by no means the total. The Iraq Body Count is only dead which are cited in the mass media -- it does not count the civilians who have the audacity to die without getting into the newspapers.
I think many of the problems that are plaguing our economy is caused by our progressive income tax system with its very complicated deductions. It's too easy to cause unintended changes in our economy due to this issue.
We should start all over again with a true flat tax system (no tax with income up to poverty line, 3.5% up to median income, and 6% above that) that has effectively no deductions. Not only would Americans save some US$250 billion per year in compliance costs alone, but a true flat tax system would ensure we don't get strange effects on the US economy like way too much emphasis on building expensive housing. Also, with such an extremely low tax rate, you'll see huge amounts of money being invested in the USA because we would approach tax haven status.
Roosevelt came into office when the depression was three years old, and Hoover had done nothing to alleivate any suffering. Stock market crash October 1929, election November 1932, inauguration March 1933.
Some "routine recession", it had lasted three years so far with no uptick in sight, far longer than any recession to date.
The Japanese internment was despicable, but it could be more fairly blamed on lies and forged evidence by his lackeys. He should have had enough backbone to not sign the executive order, but it wasn't his idea. Furthermore, that was 1942, February I think, 9 years after he came into office, after the war had started, and after the economy finally came out of the depression.
How many of the rest of your beliefs are backed up by facts as accurate as this?
Infuriate left and right
They don't count people who're no longer collecting unemployment and have simply given up.
That's not correct
You are misinterpreting the point. Though the "collecting unemployment" part may be incorrect and not a factor in determining unemployment rate (as per the snopes article you cited), it is correct that people who have "simply given up" are not counted.
Unemployment rate:
The unemployment rate represents the number unemployed as a percent of the labor force.
Labor force (Current Population Survey):
The labor force includes all persons classified as employed or unemployed in accordance with the definitions contained in this glossary
Unemployed persons:
Persons 16 years and over who had no employment during the reference week, were available for work, except for temporary illness, and had made specific efforts to find employment sometime during the 4-week period ending with the reference week. Persons who were waiting to be recalled to a job from which they had been laid off need not have been looking for work to be classified as unemployed.
http://www.bls.gov/bls/glossary.htm
also look up "Discouraged Workers".
I see that you have bought into the idea that the media have been trying to plant into our collective consciousness - that the "Dollars going out is unattainable" crap.
Stop thinking of the flow of money in the Zero Sum term. You have to understand, whatever that's flowing out of America is in US dollars, and whatever flowed out of America will flow into some other people's hands, and when they accumulate enough, they will use that money to BUY something !
After all, what else is money for, right ?
So, we shouldn't concentrate in how much our money has flowed out, we should instead, think of ways to get those money back - by earning it !
When those people want to buy something - and they ain't buying toaster oven, for sure - we better be prepared to provide them with whatever they want to buy, and charge accordingly for it.
The market isn't a static one, it's dynamic. So, don't worry.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
It's easy to blame immigration and say, "Look at all the foreigners coming into our country and stealing all our jobs."
Let me ask you this? Why must we have immigration?
The answer is that you want you society to resemble a pyramid with the youngest at the base of the pyramid, the middle aged in the middle, and the eldest at the top of the pyramid. If your society is not shaped like a pyramid, social programs and the system of collecting taxes completely fall apart.
In order for society to maintain a balance, every woman needs to have on average about three kids. How many kids did your parents have?
How many kids are you going to have?
Because citizens don't have enough kids to fill in the bottom of the pyramid we must have immigration or, we have to re-engineer our social systems and methods of tax collection. Take your pick.
This is why France has the largest muslim population in Europe. Native France citizens didn't have enough kids to support the country. SOo to supplement they had to allow immigration.
This is why Japan is doomed without immigration. Women there are now refusing to marry and having kids later and later (post 35). Pretty soon the population pyramid of Japan will be inverted with the oldest at the top. I predict they will allow immigration soon.
Africa's population has no middle. Only the very young and very old. The middle was wiped out by AIDS.
So that's the long and short of immigration. If you want something different, you have three choices:
1. Have more kids.
2. Change your system of collecting taxes (shift the tax burden higher up the pyramid).
3. Change your system of social programs. Maybe public education is no longer free. Maybe social security vanishes. Lot's of cuts will have to be made since there are fewer older people to pay taxes and usually they pay less.
The sad thing is that our politicians don't explain the social engineering of our country and let everyone jump to their own conclusions. The Repulicans know that if they do not capture the Hispanic/Latino/Mexican vote that they will NEVER win an election again. That is why Bush speaks spanish and was going to open the immigration flood gates to Mexio prior to 9-11. Right now, it's a giant mess and we really need some good social planners to figure out how best to manage our society in the direction that we want it to go.
did anybody read the article or is this just about comiserating about unemployment?
American trade policy has been pro-"free trade" without requiring that the trading partner have equivalent environmental or employee protections. These blind spots have, for example, caused the export of almost all American non-ferrous metals processing jobs to Mexico and Canada.
while "made in china" might mean this, i can't believe how this article tries to take a shot at the NAFTA countries. Mexico might not live up to US standards (but i want to see the American consumers pay the prices for "made in USA" DVD players etc.
immigrants are an important economic factor in the western world.
-look at Europe: europe is struggeling because of its aging population which causes health and old age pension costs to skyrocket; not so the US. the birth rates are no higher in the US but immigration keeps the average age at bay because young people enter the country.
-immigrants are not only workers; they are also consumers. so they don't take jobs away from americans, they simply increase the population.
-legal immigration should be simpler because legal immigration is much better than illegal immigration - legal immigrants work under the same labour and health standards as Americans and they pay taxes. none of this can be said of illegal immigrants. they are at high danger of abuse in many ways by their "employers" (or slave drivers) and they have no way of defending themselves because any legal action would cause them to be kicked out.
in my opinion, this article is full of xenophobia and uses the current anxiety about jobs to try to convince people that immigration and immigrants (clearly one of the weakest groups of society who have little or no political voice) are the root of all evil. this is simply disgusting.
We don't need trade barriers.
What we need is no "free trade" UNLESS the other country matches our levels of worker/environmental protections.
If everyone in the world is working 40 hour weeks (or less) and has health care and so forth (not counting China's prison labour here), then I don't see a problem with the jobs going where it is most profitable.
The problem I see is NOT looking at those factors and letting the corporations use slave labour. Your tariffs and such will NOT stop that abuse nor will they stop the jobs from going to overseas slaves.
Well, there's the whole "all men are created equal" bit that suggests that citizenship to those that truly desire it should not be denied to anybody by basis of accident of birth (or are you suggesting a "divine right of natural-born citizens?"), and our constitution only says Congress can set naturalization policy (how people can become citizens) and doesn't say anything about them being able to set immigration quotas and who gets to go through said naturalization process.
So it's not so much that you're white, it's that you don't have a moral leg to stand on in light of what this country is supposed to be based on. If you're worried about maintaining any sort of social demographic by way of law (be that immigration law or otherwise), you're in the wrong country.
everyone be of above average intelligense
Oh well, at least I caught it before someone else rubbed my nose in it.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics itself keeps track of those who have given up looking for work. It measures these in a statistic called "U-6", but it's "U-3" that is called the "official unemployment rate" that is reported by the mainstream media. The mainstream media -- and it seems also snopes.com -- never mention U-6. See my blog article Real U.S. unemployment rate is 9.5%.
Despite all my years in the workforce, I have NEVER been surveyed by the government to see if I was working or not.
"Because unemployment insurance records, which many people think are the source of total unemployment data, relate only to persons who have applied for such benefits, and since it is impractical to actually count every unemployed person each month, the Government conducts a monthly sample survey called the Current Population Survey (CPS) to measure the extent of unemployment in the country. The CPS has been conducted in the United States every month since 1940 when it began as a Work Projects Administration project. It has been expanded and modified several times since then. As explained later, the CPS estimates, beginning in 1994, reflect the results of a major redesign of the survey."
Not that I doubt The Government. But I am also not aware of any of my friends who have been surveyed to find out if they are employed or not.
The incursions of which he speaks are those of the Dorians leading to the Golden Age and of the Goths, leading to the Renaissance.
It appears that Western Civilization is in its final stages of Empire and has imported all manner of slaves to prop up its increasingly untenable practice of paying for the costs of protection of legal rights through taxation of productivity (income, capital gains, value added, sales, etc.)
The problem is this time around all of the barbarian pastoralists have been domesticated.
Seastead this.
The reason to get rid of Dubya and his posse is that they're crazy psychopathic MoFos and they've stolen billions from a trillions surplus. Trickle-down Voodoo Jobs? Just look at the statistics.
That said, it is unlikely "good middle-class" jobs will spring up like dandelions in spring if Kerry is elected. Considering that Al Franken has had Kerry over to his place for potluck and strategy, I thought it was pretty telling when someone called the show and demanded details on a job strategy and got, "Hmmm, yeah. That's a tough one. Can't roll back global trade. It's a new world. Yup, a tough one." All I ever hear is eliminating tax breaks for off-shoring. All well and good, but what effect will it really have on jobs?
Is the cost of living versus wages. No politician can afford to let out that the real poverty level(for a family of 4, since thats the standard they use) is about $28,000/year. A family making less has little to no health coverage(but makes too much for assistance), rents housing, buy used vehicles and appliances. Today anyone making any salary in the U.S. can buy 30% of what there parents did 40 years ago with the same money.
It's time to elect amatures to every office at every level. Look what the pros have done to us.
Lawyer/Politician = Vermin
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
That's not true. Unemployment benefits are not financed throught (progressive) taxes, but through a collective (that is: non-optional) insurance for which workers pay a fixed percentage of their income. The same goes for other social securities (like workers' disabilities etc.).
Public services, welfare, 'defence', etc., are of course being financed by progressive taxes.
Does this take the self-employed into account? I read tha article and saw nothing about the self-employed mentioned anywhere in there.
From what I have read from the federal government's figures, once you take the self-employed into account, Bush is creating jobs, not losing them. Since the self-employed are not being taken into account by the "left", I can not trust anything they have to say about avarage salary since they are not taking millions of workers into account.
Now don't take this to mean that I support Bush either. The whole Homeland Security continues to rub me the wrong way. And the federalizing of the airport screeners?!?
As far as outsourcing goes, every company I have personally been involved with that has outsourced to India (5 in the IT arena) have all seen it as a huge failure and pulled it back in-house. 2 where development and 3 were tech support.
I do agree with their take on worker visas. If you want to work and live in America, become a citizen.
The lowering "disposible income" figure is very misleading. This has been torn apart by the "Right" because you look at what is considered "essential" today as compared to 30 years ago. Who doesn't have a washer, a dryer, a television, and a telephone today? Today they count as essential. Decades ago they didn't. Thus, the "cost of living" goes up and the "disposible income" goes down.
Economics is the easiest thing to understand at a systemic level and the hardest thing to actually implement at the individual level. "Economies" do not change, the earning, spending and investing of individuals changes.
But when you get right down to it, you need the American people to keep more of their own money and for them to spend that money buying products from American companies that employ American workers. Those workers need to invest in those American companies and thus increase their personal wealth while giving the companies more capital to expand.
Oh, and those of you blaming the President for the economy need to remember that it is CONGRESS, not the President, who rules the country's taxes and spending. While the President provides the leadership, CONGRESS is to blame. Vote accordingly.
In my opinion (and, since I am not an economist, it is just my opinion), we need to:
- reduce federal spending (make Congress personally responsible for any deficit?).
- lower taxes for those who pay taxes (the lower 50% of the earners in America pay no taxes!).
- streamline the tax system with the Fair Tax. Once you get rid of most of the IRS, you lower federal costs, you lower the costs of businesses and individuals doing their taxes, you make your tax burden directly linked to your spending, you remove ALL tax burden from those living in poverty, and you lower the cost of American goods, thus making them more competitive in the world economy.
- as individuals, buy products from American companies (preferrably made entirely in America if you can still find one).
- phase out social security (the third rail of politics!). This will never happen, but it should. Over 12% of every worker's paycheck goes to retired people. Imagine if half that money went into your personal IRA account that would actually be worth something when you retired! (Also, as a side note, black men have the lowest life expectancy in America. White women have the highest. Statistically, social security takes money from young black men and gives it to old white women!)
- get the government out of the charity business. Let groups like the Red Cross, the United Way, religious charities, etc. do this work and treat people as individuals instead of numbers.
- put the government back on focus to what it MUST do, not what people WANT it to do. The government should not be a wealth redistribution plan. Government should provide the Common Good Required For Existence.
- Without breathable air, drinkable water, and land that can support farming and ranching,
However, you should note that the Democrats aren't much different. No, I'm not a Libertarian, but the Dems are pretty much the flip side of the coin to the Reps these days- you almost can't tell who really is who in Washington these days. If you honestly think that the Democrats pandering to corporate interests is really any different from the current batch of Republicans in charge, well, you're fooling yourself.
And, for myself? I've been trying to take what is mine back again for YEARS now.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I'm No economist, and I don't pretend to know how to fix whats wrong (other than shooting the rich, then re-distributing thier estates evenly to the remaining population). But here's an example of the gap I see every day...
I work in Stowe, Vermont, which has one the highest concentrations of "truely rich" residents in the US, with perhaps the exception of Beverly Hills.
Stowe has about 5000 full-time residents, and housing that will support about 10,000. about 50% of the homes in Stowe are occupied by thier owners less than THREE WEEKS A YEAR (though they are often rented for a large portion of the year). The inflated property values caused by the vaction homes owned by the (super) rich make it not mearly difficult but IMPOSSIBLE for the service industry workers who keep Stowe alive to live IN the town.
Just for laughs, how about this number: the AVERAGE cost of a new construction home in Stowe (not including land value) is now in excess of $1.6 million. Thats the SIMPLE AVERAGE mind you, so we're looking at homes that cost more than I'll probably make in my entire working life. How many of these (new homes)are owned by full time residents, read: workers? Arround 2%.
I realize that being a "resort town" Stowe is an extreme example, but the gap isn't simply big, it's FRIGHTENINGLY HUGE. My boss is a reasonably succeful small business owner, does he live in Stowe? No, he can't afford to compete for realestate with the super-rich vaction home builders. We're talking somone who has been running a profitable business, employing 7-14 people for more than 20 years. My boss seems rich to me, but the people who are really rich are even richer than him in comparison to me. I live safely above the poverty line, but I'm definately not "upper middle class"...
The problem as I see it that "upper middle class", though it may be "comfortable" is no where NEAR the level of the rich.
The gap is growing, and It's not just a question of the rich paying more taxes than me, it's a question of the rich skewing property values and consumer goods prices to the point that somone who used to be "doing ok" can't afford to live or shop in the city in which he/she works.
In this part of my state theres a dagerous trend to slums surrounding the rich towns and we aren't talking inner city here, we're talking a rural state that rates smack in the middle of the US standard of living by state.
A Call For A New Slashdot Moderation Level!
I just want to put this URL out there, because I want to know more about this group, should anyone have any info on its leaders and stuff.
I generally agree with their policies, as an american programmer and worker.
http://www.fairus.org
Sadly, no intelligent discourse has come from this.
Who needs the middle class? We'll all be RICH!
--
make install -not war
Why is social security going bankrupt? Because there will be too many people taking money out and not enough putting money in. If you want social security, have more kids who will work good jobs and pay into the system. As a side note, I know that my wife and I, and those like us, are ultimately going to "win" in the long run. Our country will grow more conservative, yet also more compassionate. Not in the "Compassionate Conservative" political speech of today, but in the true religious sense of standing for the Right to Life, standing for Social Justice, helping the poor, healing the sick, etc. Do you want to know why? Because the couples we know that are only out for their own self-intrest are either not having kids or are only having one kid. We are expecting number four. We raise our kids in a religious framework that focuses not on self, but on other. "What can I do for my brother to show God I love Him", not "What is in it for me." The "Me" kids grow up, marry each other, and only have one kid. The "Other" Kids grow up, marry each other, and have a lot of kids. Look three generations ahead and tell me what you see.
Sarasota and Manatee Counties here in Florida are begging for teachers, with or without educational certification. Basically, if you have a 4-year degree and no felony convictions or record of abusing children, they are likely to hire you.
My wife (BS, Psych) has been thinking of working for one of the school districts either as a teacher or as a counselor, another job classification with more openings than applicants.
The pay isn't huge, but a teacher's salary here will rent a decent apartment or buy a modest house, pay for a passable car, and still leave enough $ for entertainment, clothes, savings, etc.
I'm sure there are other school districts that are also hiring, especially is states with growing populations.
Oh - while you're waiting for your teaching job to come through here you can go do day-job construction work fixing hurricane damage down in Charlotte County or over toward Orlando. There is *lots* of cleanup/fixup work available in those areas!
... because I want to officially start calling myself a cyberpunk and start working in the shadows. As soon as I get that neural interface implanted, I am going to work for the MegaCorps so that I can use their own money against them as I try to bring them down.
I see a new poll in Slashdot's future and I see Cowboy Neal winning.
Por Favor
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
I'm scared of the xenophobia too. There is a lot of it around, just look here at the jokes about Indian programmers and the cheap shots at their accents.
But the reason why we see stuff writen that sounds like it came from 1931 is that there is a lot in common with our economy right now and 1931.
some are more progressive than others.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I've seen you on night-time cable!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Corporations and Investors want a Race to the Bottom, which increases profits by decreasing wages and benefits. The end result will be a large amount of wealth concentrated in the hands of a few.
Workers want a Race to the Top by increasing wages and benefits. THe end result here will be a large amount of wealth dispersed into the hands of many.
As we can see here on Slashdot, the real problem we have is that the wealthy and the corporations have funded a network of think tanks and foundations that have spent the last 30 years spewing propaganda to make everyone think that a Race to the Bottom is good and that a Race to the Top is Bad. And most Americans (and most Slashdotters!) are buying into the corporate propaganda!
It just goes to show you the power of propaganda over a long period of time--if you spend billions of dollars saying that black is white and white is black, that after 30 years, you will have a bunch of people walking around telling you black is white and that high labor costs and protective trade laws are bad....
THe details of the this RightWing/Corporate propaganda machine are starting to be made public. You can get more info about these "Tentacles of Rage" in the lastest edition of Harpers Magazine here.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Clue: This is not due to the population precipitously joining the ranks of the independently wealthy.
Seastead this.
Some of us have this wacky belief that it is possible for the federal government to in some way influence the economy, and since the president usually has some influence over the federal government-- and the Bush administration, who holds near-complete influence over the republican-dominated congress, definitely has influence over the federal government-- it is thus possible for the Bush administration to take policies which influence the economy.
Meanwhile the only economic action taken by the Bush administration and the Republican-dominated congress under his term that we can see has been cutting taxes to his campaign contributors under a policy formed when the economy was wholly different. It seems the Bush economic policy in response to a recession is to sit and wait for the recession to get better, then take credit for the recovery. Except there hasn't been a recovery yet, it's just that in the last six months or so the rate at which the underemployment rate has been growing has slowed. Somehow we're supposed to believe this vindicates Bush's economic policy.
So, here's what it comes down to. We've got a president who, if re-elected, has indicated his economic policy will be to do nothing other than cheerfully and constantly insist the economy has improved despite evidence to the contrary. Then we've got a presidential candidate who, if elected, has been talking a lot about how he wants to work to improve the economy and improve the situation of the middle class. This doesn't mean he'll succeed. But he might. At least he cares. And unless you buy into the republican idea that "lasseiz-faire economics" is the only valid economic policy and "lasseiz-faire economics" is defined by whatever the republican economic policy is at the moment, the mere fact that he cares seems rather promising.
In short, perhaps entirely blaming Bush for the current economic issues is not entirely reasonable. But blaming the underemployed makes even less sense. And I think we can at least reasonably expect Bush could have done more to improve the current economic issues.
And in the meantime, considering the economic issues are still continuing, I would say that when faced between a presidential candidate who will generally try, in whatever small extent to improve the economy, or a presidential candidate who will simply consistently deny problems with the economy exist, I would say the former is obviously preferable.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Dear Poster,
Your "Bad Immigration Policy" is the reason I hightailed myself and my business back to Canada.
It's much, much easier to get skilled people here (citizen or immigrant) and we can afford pay our staff a wage which provides a significantly higher standard of living than would be possible in your imaginary land of milk-and-honey.
I guess our tax dollars weren't 'merican enough for you. Good enough -- we'll give those dollars to another government and the jobs to another nation's citizens.
You have an immigration problem all right: You're driving away the skilled and resourceful people which previously MADE your nation. Take a close look at your schools to see what you're getting instead.
My original comment got marked troll.
I've worked in the corporate environment and I've seen the quality of some of the workers.
Not everyone, just a few. But those few really left an impression.
They were lazy, obese, and expected someone else to do their work. Employers have the constant fear of being sued for silly things by their employees. We also have to deal with all the political correctness crap.
On the other hand, I never personally knew any terrible quality employees that were foreign.
If you were an employer of a small company and had even one frivolous lawsuit from an employee you'd start thinking about outsourcing overseas too. The cost of a lawsuit is much more than the cost of hiring an army of Indians to code away at your project.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
You haven't read much on the internet.
Here's some reading so you can catch up on the lack of education spreading across the internet:
http://www.johnkerry.com/
Working longer doesn't mean quality employee, in fact, maybe it's part of the reason so many Americans are lazy/grumpy workers.
It sounds like you support corporate greed. As a human I would rather make slightly less money and have pleasant happy employees.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
blah blah blah the left is wrong bush is right... self-employed people are God. the left is bad, the right is right. We go to war so you don't have to. we loose record numbers of jobs, we have the first president to loose jobs. You're right George W. Bush is creating a ton of self -employment opportunities out there, and no doubt a bazillion of those no longer able to be considered for unemployment are firing up their awesome pc's to make an amazing living, as Dick Cheney states, off of E-Bay. As John Edwards stated "This economy would be cooking if we considered Bake Sales as part of the economy"
The numbers "No Doubt Cooked up by the Liberal Media" are stating we're losing jobs, and the jobs that we do manage to create don't provide a livable wage. How long before the nation realizes that with a Republican President, a Republican Appointed Supreme Court, a Republican Congress that there is no other place for the blame to fall than on the republican party.
As John Stewart wisely stated on the daily show, if I may paraphrase it poorly: The Republicans are sick and tired of being in control.
The left isn't a group of skeptical quitters, unfortunately they have the thankless job of promoting things that are ruthlessly attacked which with the hindsight of many years become taken for granted: Unemployment Insurance, Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, FDIC, SEC. The list goes on.
Read something by someone other than Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and the world is different. Might I suggest a book by another decorated Veteran Liberal such as George McGovern, a shameless and proud liberal -- who I happen to agree with.
The only people quitting are the right wing nut jobs who don't think and proceed to blame the left for everything bad in the world, or proceed to say the left is distorting everything. My eyes tell me the trust of the reality. I know a lot more unemployed people now than in the 90's under a democratic president and the strongest economy in the world. How we could reach record deficits in the span of four years comes as no surprise when you start a war and reduce taxes -- BTW: A fiscal conservative probably wouldn't recommend tax breaks as you begin a war. What happened to the concept of a nation that sacrifices in a time of war for the betterment of the country. i.e. fuel conservation in fuel effecient vehicles (not SUV's and increased reliance on terrorist country's -- Saudi Arabian -- oil), increased taxation to pay for a stronger country, better care for veteran's who bear the burden of fighting,
Neocon's suck, because they are ignorant. Neocons are ignorant, because they buy the line that the left wing controls the media. Wake up!
Brian Seppanen
Minister of Information and Propaganda
Area 54 The Secret Government Disco Labs Provo
So if you look at job ads and there aren't any you qualify for you are considered not unemployed according to the US government.
http://www.cabe.ca/cbe/vol4_2/42-zagorsky.pdf
My last company was a Fortune 5 and we got 4, yes 4, holidays per year. That was for the whole company not just for specialy needed groups that needed to be on call etc. The vacaction time was comparable to everyone else.
September 21, 2004
BY MARISOL BELLO
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
A majority of the Detroit City Council wants to implement an economic development plan it commissioned for $112,000 that preaches racial isolation and rails against immigration in its bid to gain economic success for poor blacks.
The crux of the plan is the creation of a business district -- dubbed African Town -- that would be funded in part with city money and made up of black-owned businesses catering to a black clientele.
The report also complains that immigrants from Mexico, Asia and the Middle East are stealing resources, jobs and other opportunities from blacks and calls on city leaders to stop the economic shift.
...
Seastead this.
"how would you like it if your boss gave you a timely drop in salary, to keep up with the drop in the cost of living?"
I'd actually prefer it if my personal cost of living decreased faster than my income. Anyone in an inflationary area where expenses rise faster than income would agree... +30%/year LA housing market compared to +1% salary raise etc [1]
The point is: what matters most is your income-expense delta, not the direction of prices.
Prices can rise or fall either in your favor, or out of it (depending on which prices change, and by how much).
So, based on your own definition, a depression is not necessarily worse than a recession. You may argue that the 1930s depression was worse than the 1990s recession, but the general argument is false.
[1] Housing deflation would destroy the American consumer economy which is funded largely by home equity debt--separate topic though
Ok and what has SS turned into? A pyramid scheme that is looted by Congress. It's dying and needs to be replaced. Support Bush's plan for SS reform.
Neither do the political candiates whom I trust and believe in. This is your opinion, not a factual argument. Learn to keep the two separate.
Ahem. Did you not receive a tax cut? Thank you. And what's more, your argument here is predicated on the "given" that the Government owns all of everything, and that tax cuts "cost" the Government in lost revenue. I don't know about you, but I want to keep *more* of the money I make. I want to "allow" the government to take only that which is necessary to provide what the Constitution says it should--and not a penny more.
I can't respond as intelligently to the jobs overseas issue, I'm still learning about that. But I think it could be just a phase, frankly. Evidence #1 is when Dell had to "insource" their helpdesk because of customer satisfaction issues with the outsourced provider.
As far as the health of the economy goes, from what I can tell, the left is using historical figures and the right is using current trends. The left are in effect blaming Bush for the dotcom bubble bursting, which is pretty laughable. Bush is doing a "decent" job helping the economy to recover in a tough time, that's how I read it. The current trends are good, and that is well...good. Sorry, you can't disagree with this, it's an actual fact.
Whoah Nelly! Now you're going a bit off the deep end. I think you have stepped from debate into the realm of fiction. When you get back to earth, let me know and we can continue.
The rest of your rant is characterized by unsubstantiated rumors, personal gripes, incorrect conclusions, and a disconnection with reality. Sorry, they did find WMD's...hate to break it to ya.
Oh I hadn't heard that was something on his platform. I think this is awesome! Let the people help themselves!
From the LP's Poverty & Welfare platform.
Hold your horses. Unemployment rates only cover people currently in the labor force and according to government statistics, the portion of the adult population actually working or seeking work has dropped by more than two percent since its peak level in April 2000.
Our unemployment rate only looks good thanks to people who quit looking for work. If Bush wins, he owes those poor chumps a debt of gratitude.
- Extremely compressed salary distribution. Raising your yearly pay with just a few thousand dollars will take you from the lowest to the highest tenth of earners. High minimum wages also mean that a lot of service jobs never get done, or get done but not taxed. There's a reason you see so many Swedish brain surgeons paint their own fence instead of hiring someone to do it.
- Progressive tax rates and communal service fees, severely limiting any incentive to better yourself wage-wise.
- Extremely rigid firing rules, which leads to employers being very reluctant to hire, and workers to change jobs, since that'd put them first in the firing line.
- Oodles of red tape and confiscatory taxation rules for small companies, thus disicentivizing anyone wanting to start their own business.
In summary then, you have a textbook recipe for economic stagnation. If you lack all ambition, then by all means you'd thrive in this system. If not, I'd stay well away.I will say that one thing that still puzzles me is why US executives still need golden parachutes. In Sweden, it makes sense since they're the only ones that typically can be fired at will, but in the states, "fair" isn't the first word I'd use to describe that practise. And yes, I'm a "worker"...
Your "prediction" about Japan ignores Japan's high investment rates in automation.
Are you referring to the robots that Japan is building to care for the elderly in it's nursing homes since there won't be enough young people around to work and take care of the eldery?
The Nursing Home Of The Future?
Japan's Push Button Nursing."
Japan Seeks Robotic Help in Caring for the Aged
I say to you sir, that warehousing the elderly of a society in storage facilities that are manned by robots is immoral. A society should have more respect for elders and care for them better.
I can not follow your argument between "slave holders vs. automation.", perhaps you could elaborate. I am not arguing we need more people to pick cotton or do slave labor. I am arguing that society must maintain certain proportions (percentage of young to old) in order to maintain stability over the longterm with social programs intact.
Thanks for trying to break the spell on these blockheads.
If you like what you're getting and where things are going, you must be rich and a corporate owner.
If you don't, and want to have a future with a decent retirement, and fight for the middle class, vote Kerry. Work to turn the tide.
Of course they didn't. Corporate taxes are a sham in general. They're just another way for politicians to hide from you how much you as an individual pay in taxes. When a corporation DOES pay taxes, because it did not disburse its profits to its shareholders, those tax dollars come from the company's customers. You pay them in the higher cost of goods, and it helps hide your tax burden from you.
Now, let's see how corporations pay taxes, and how this differs from how an individual pays taxes. When you work for somebody else, you do work, the employer sends your taxes to the government, and you keep the rest to spend on your expenses. Work, tax, spend. When a corporation operates, it does work for a customer, the customer pays the corporation, the corporation pays its expenses, and then pays taxes on whatever is left over. Work, spend, tax.
This may seem unfair, but when it comes down to it, it has to work this way. Different businesses operate on different profit margins. If a high volume, low margin corporation (say, Wal-Mart) got taxed 10% on its gross, it would never make that 1% of gross that's the net profits.
Just because the corporation itself does not pay taxes does not mean that they did anything wrong, or that taxes were not paid. They were paid by the employees and the shareholders. I'm self-employed, and I own a corporation that I also work for. Last year the corporation did about $100,000 in business. It had $60,000 in expenses, and the rest was disbursed to me as salary and dividends. On my corporate tax return, it says we made $38. Does that mean no taxes were paid on the $40,000 profit? Of course not! I paid those taxes as my personal income tax.
Just because a corporation pays no taxes does not mean that no taxes were paid on the corporation's profits.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
I think the wealth the US achieved in the last century was a temporary windfall from the aftermath of WWII and the turmoil the rest of the world found itself in. Today, Europe, China, India, and Japan have recovered, and they represent modern, highly competitive nations.
In the long run, I see no reason to expect that the US should be doing economically better than those other nations. Nor, frankly, do I see much justification.
Immigration and free trade, on the other hand, are unlikely to have much to do with America's economic issues. The net effect of curbing immigration would be to make the US even less competitive, and the net effect of curtailing free trade would be retaliatory actions by other nations and an even larger foreign trade deficit.
So, I think Americans better get used to the idea of decreasing standards of living because it seems pretty much inevitable at this point. And there is nobody to blame for that either.
However, serious social problems are not a necessary consequence of that. Just like the Europeans used their period of economic boom for building up an unsustainable social welfare system, the US used its period of economic boom for building up an unsustainable elite class of fabulously wealthy individuals. Both represent excesses that one can afford only if there is plenty to go around; but when money gets tighter, people have to make hard political choices, on both sides of the Atlantic.
Just "blaming immigrants" is not going to help anything. There are deeper problems in play.
Yeah, it's true that neither party directly talks about them. But then again, nobody else really talks about it either. Because in order to talk about it, you need to start to link issues together, and once you do that, well..people's heads start to explode I think.
Try this link: here
Yeah I know. It's Slate. But it's still the best article I've seen on the real problem. To those who scan and don't like to clink links..here it is.
Infrastructure inefficency. That's the long and the short of it. The US is in a terrible bind at this point, basically held hostage to a few vested interests that prevent any sort of progress. Health care is the obvious one, and it's the big one. Costs have gone up about 45% in the last 3 years (YIKES!!). But it's seen as the bottom floor for a decent job. It's almost to the point (if not there already) that health care costs are MORE than employment in some cases. As well, you have transportation and energy, which are all wrapped up together. These interests fight increased gas milage standards, as well as fight for more sensible urban design/mass transit. Which increases demand for energy which increases cost.
401ks, where growth in the fund more and more is not reliant on dividends and profits from your investments, but on short-term trading and having some sucker buy your investment for more than what you paid for it...but it'll rarely pay out.
An educational culture that, frankly, gets parents up in arms when their kids are actually tought to think for themselves. No thank you, we just want them indocrinated.
All these things..and more.. are major infrastructure problems inside the US that need to be taken care of ASAP, but very few people are talking about them. Mainly because I think the biggest infrastructure problem of them all, is this negative optimism that persists, where people don't want to hear problems. They want to think that everything is just fine and peachy and nothing can ever get better. Things never get better unless you make them better.
You have to give him credit for that.Until he signed the Marijuana Tax act of 1937 people could use,posess and sell the dangerous drug without facing any Federal charges AT ALL! Much less face any well-deserved prison time.Thank God FDR nipped this dangerous drug trend "in the bud" so to speak sparing us an anarchic society with crazed Pot-Heads roaming the streets.
So how, without using the uncaring phrase "not my problem", do you expect me to go to college again for another degree while I'm still making payments on my first degree's student loan on state assistance?
Around a year ago I read an excellent book by Simon Head, "The New Ruthless Economy" in which he described what is happening to us very well. I would reccomend this book highly to anyone who is interested in what is going on.
Basically, it is a crisis caused by the success of our methods of increasing productivity and decreasing the need for many people to work. You can trace the problems and successes back to Frederick Taylor's theories of 'scientific management', which held that many workers spend more time slowing work down than working. So he devised a system to continually automate - or commoditize and compartmentalize manufacturing wark.
This was an incredibly successful system, and Taylor, who is probably the most influential person in American business history, left a very big mark on American business practice. His technique, (some called this "Taylorism", but a better term is 'scientific management') which was later adapted and refined by Leffingwell for service/office type jobs, was the core idea around which the rest of the changes evolved. (Now we call this pervasive trend 'reengineering' and it is commonly seen in ERP, CRM and other logic-driven decision-making systems that take 99% of all decision making out of th hands of skilled staff and move them to machines, with humans only handling the increasingly rare 'exception')
It goes without saying that this revolutionized American - and by extension, the rest of the world's business practices.
The missing pieces of the puzzle were computers and the Internet.
Taylorism and scientific management were slowed for a while in the postwar years but this was more of an adjustment period than a setback..
But reengineering is back and in the competitive global business climate most companies don't see themselves as having choices not to implement it's effciencies. Working people are now increasingly expected to behave like machines or lose their jobs. Speedup is taken as a given, and there are even situations where the pace of work is speeded up at regular intervals and anyone who cannot make the newer, faster pace is let go. (this is common in phone-center type work see this excellent description at http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/ch6.pdf
)
Unfortunately, the postwar lull in this aggressive move towards automation blinded many people to the fact that this pervasive 'speedup' was occurring everywhere - because the media kept the focus on the increased skills that were becoming necessary for the new - temporarily emergent middle management class.. "white collar workers".
the introduction of computers, however, should have made more of us realize that many of the functions of this middle manager group were destined to be automated.. it was only a matter of time..
Basically, I think that we are headed towards a society where only scientists and artists will need to work. Any other job that can be defined as a series of rules and decisions can probably be automated in some way.
That process will take some time, but as the pieces fall into place, the cost incentive in various fields will drive rapid, and very disruptive changes, concentrating the displaced workers in ever shrinking areas. Some big changes in the immediate future will probably be in agriculture, customer service and driving/delivery work.
One thing we could do now is shorten the working week, like they did during the Great Depression. But that would take a decision by society to face and accept these changes. Otherwise, wages will continually be depressed as the remaining low and medium-skilled jobs migrate to low-skilled countries or workers with reduced bargaining power accept pay cuts 'to keep their jobs'.
I don't think that this HAS to be a crisis for capitalism, but our current 'pretend there's not a problem' attitude in many ways bodes ill for the political stability and social contract on which capitalism - and our system's current stability - depends...
You can cry "correlation doesn't imply causation" all you want but you have to measure something or you are preaching theocracy -- not economic theory.
So what else might we measure? How about the "success" of companies that most heavily lobbied for and used guest workers like Sun Corporation?
Again, how many coincidences like that do you need before your cries of "racism", "xenophobia", "protectionism", "loser", just sound like so much religious cant?
Seastead this.
President Bush isn't entirely to blame for the recession and subsequent jobless growth, as the situation is more complex than a sound bite:
Pure greed makes companies turn to the lowest cost of production
What exactly are you smoking? You do understand that a company exists for any one purpose, and that is to make money, turn a profit? Its not greed, its the nature of the beast. Commercial entities owe nobody anything, especially not social consideration.
But if you want to wave your moral flag around, try this on for size: Your competition is producing goods at half the cost you are. What do you do? You outsource or get out of the kitchen, baby. And if you pay Ameican wages to people in India or Asia, they will only be working for you for a few years before they retire to live like kings on the vast fortune they have accumulated.
How does this stuff get modded up as insightful?
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
"Self employment" means I am ineligible for unemployment benefits even though I may be experiencing zero income for a year or more and paying more taxes than "other employed" people when I do make money.
"Self employment" is the second to last resort of the socially sadistic. The last resort is to actually imprison people -- and that is exactly what the article points out is happening. This takes things from being socially sadistic to being sexually sadistic.
Don't be surprised if one day you find yourself skinned and rolled in salt.
Seastead this.
Over 1967 to 2003 period, the percentage of families making less than $35,000 (in 2003 dollars) also fell from 52.8 percent of households to just 40.9 percent. In short, the ranks of the middle class could not have fallen because they became poor, because the ranks of the poor also fell.
The truth is that poor and middle class households alike became better off, which increased the ranks of the "rich" (those making over $49,999 in 2003 dollars in the (as some media records it)) as a share of the population. In 1967, those with such an income constituted 24.9 percent of households. By 2003 this had increased to 44.1 percent. The inescapable conclusion is that the declining ranks of the middle class result from one thing only-more of them are now "rich."
Census Data
Yeah, but it's not like Bush has done anything to help the situation that I'm aware of. (and his "tax cuts" didn't work. All the predictions of job creation that were made by his very own economists were wrong.)
It's "you're", for the contraction of "you are". Don't even get me started on F-in.
--- What
The authour writes that 195,000 H-1Bs are available, and this was true for three years (FY 2001-2003). The current number has dropped back to the original amount, 65,000 annually according to the DHS:CIS (what replaced the INS).
Confused with the TLAs? Me too!
In other news, Microsoft Windows users are now covered under the Americans with Disabilties Act...
"Neither do the political candiates whom I trust and believe in. This is your opinion, not a factual argument. Learn to keep the two separate."
Hmmm, and who are those "political candidates" that you "trust and believe in"? Why do you not just name them instead of typing all of that?
"Ahem. Did you not receive a tax cut? Thank you."
Yep, from the Federal government. But it wasn't much of a tax cut and I have paid MORE in total taxes because Bush is running of the deficit and dumping the problems onto the states who then have to find ways to pay.
Sorry, I'm paying higher taxes.
"And what's more, your argument here is predicated on the "given" that the Government owns all of everything, and that tax cuts "cost" the Government in lost revenue. I don't know about you, but I want to keep *more* of the money I make. I want to "allow" the government to take only that which is necessary to provide what the Constitution says it should--and not a penny more."
You need to look at the deficit then. Or don't you understand that BORROWED money needs to be paid back.
Bush is just shifting the FEDERAL tax burden.
"As far as the health of the economy goes, from what I can tell, the left is using historical figures and the right is using current trends."
Current trends are based upon historical figures.
The only difference is WHEN you start the chart.
Republicans want to start the chart when the situation was WORSE so any improvement, no matter how slight, APPEARS to be an OVERALL improvement.
Democrats want to start the chart when things were much BETTER so any improvement APPEARS to be an OVERALL loss.
Personally, I'll take the Democrat's approach.
"Bush is doing a "decent" job helping the economy to recover in a tough time, that's how I read it. The current trends are good, and that is well...good. Sorry, you can't disagree with this, it's an actual fact."
Ummm, "good" is not a term usually associated with the word "fact". The term "good" is a judgement call.
So it is NOT "an actual fact".
"Whoah Nelly! Now you're going a bit off the deep end. I think you have stepped from debate into the realm of fiction. When you get back to earth, let me know and we can continue."
You seem to be more than a bit mis-informed on that. It has been on his agenda. Even his own people admit that he was asking about it.
"Sorry, they did find WMD's...hate to break it to ya."
No they did not. Not in the respect that Bush was talking about. All they found were the remains from before the PREVIOUS war. You seem to be a bit out of touch with current events.
To bring back some of the jobs that Heinz has exported. Let's see. Almost all of their factories are located outside of the United States. Thank you John Kerry. I'm sure you'll lead by example. Asshole.
Job Crunch and Economics Inequality URLs - sorry if it is a little ragged, I'm just doing cut and paste...
/wasow_secure_ret.pdf
Reality Check: Going Nowhere: Workers' Wages Since the Mid-1970s http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/wasow_nowhere.pdf
Economic Injustice for Most http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/cwlmorris813.pdf
Bush's War on the Middle Class: A Special Report http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7635
American Families at Risk http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7625
Middle Class and Going Broke http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/warren_prospect.pdf
Schools of Hard Knocks http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7637
Why Governors Are Seeing Red: A New Reality Check http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/hall_redstate.pdf
Reality Check- The New American Economy - A Rising Tide that Lifts Only Yachts http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/wasow_yachtrc.pdf
Reality Check: Life and Debt - Why American Families are Borrowing to the Hilt http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/baker_debt.pdf
Hidden Agenda- The convention trumpets compassion, but the real Bush agenda is clear: Use tax policy to starve the government even more.
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewWeb&articleId=8449
The Great Tax Shift-The Bush administration claims that the guiding principle for its fiscal policy has been "lower income taxes for all, with the greatest help for those most in need," as the White House Web site puts it. The reality is starkly different. http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7641
RetirementSecurity http://www.tcf.org/Publications/RetirementSecurity
Diverting the Social Security Debate
Over the 75-year period for which the Social Security system's trustees are required to plan, Social Security in its present form will fall out of balance. We can restore balance with moderate changes to the program's revenues, its benefits, or the returns on its accumulated assets. But the longer the decision to do so is postponed, the greater the required adjustments.
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7642
Setting the Record Straight: Social Security Works for Latinos-
Some sugge
Yes, Then Tell John Kerry to bring back some of the jobs that Heinz has exported. Let's see. Almost all of their factories are located outside of the United States. Thank you John Kerry. I'm sure you'll lead by example.
What the f*ck is John Kerry supposed to do about a company that he does not own, that his wife does not own, and that she has no control over? Teresa Heinz Kerry does not own the H.J. Heinz Company and she has no involvement whatsoever with the management or operations of it. She owns less than 4% of the company's stock, which she acquired through her inheritance of the Heinz family trust. The trust sold most of its shares of Heinz stock back in 1995.
Asshole.
You are the asshole -- and an ignorant one at that, as you have just proven.
"...Bad immigration policy-and bad trade deals are combining to decimate the middle class in America."
Here (Argentina) most commies/lefties complaint against any chance of getting into FTAA (a larger version of NAFTA) claiming it is harmful to us, and exclusively beneficial to greedy, nasty Yankees.
Of course, I'm talking about people with no objectiveness when trying to impose their ideas.
Got Pike?
Blithering about how horrible it is for old people to be cared for by robots is so shallow as to be silly. There will still be children around even without immigration. The old people should be socially interacting with their descendants -- not with some imported grunt workers.
The south lost the war between the states because of their reliance on low productivity human labor as compared to the northern states which were vigorously industrializing. The southern states were opposed to trade tariffs for all the same reasons modern slave holders are.
Seastead this.
Self-serving lawyers are having a field day inventing class action suits against manufacturers, and it isn't just about the things that they manufacture. Distributors are on the list, also. Any company that makes or sells or promotes a product is in the line of fire for class action suits based upon the flimsiest of data. The litigators don't even have a need to make a good case; the majority of these cases are settled out of court because of the incredible costs of any possible defense.
In the absense of statutory protection, no manufacturer in their right mind would establish a new plant in the United States. Doing so is just posting a target at which überrich law firms can take aim. Most of my consulting work in the last decade has been with companies from Mexico and Brazil, because their principals - U.S. Citizens - told me they could not take a chance on building soda machines in the US, because they might well be involved in a class action suit claiming that their machines facilitated obesity among their many clients.
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
Bleah.... I started reading that PDF file with his policy plans, and quite frankly, I stopped after page 2, because at least half of it is "pie in the sky" generalities that I'd expect anyone running for president to claim as their "goals".
EG. His plan of "giving our nation independence from foreign oil". Umm, just how and in what timeframe does he plan to succeed in this goal? Just because you're the leader of a nation doesn't mean you can wave some type of magic wand and change the country's requirements for energy. This strikes me more as a "jab" at Bush, since Kerry knows he has business relationships with foreign oil interests. (If I were making these types of claims, I'd start listing line-item changes I wanted to implement to help achieve them, like incentives for construction of more nuclear power plants. But being a Democrat, his interests in pleasing the ecologists probably prevent him from going that far.)
As far as the issue of job loss in America goes, I think we need to eliminate the H1B work visas completely, except in individual cases where documentation is provided showing that all reasonable attempts to hire within the country for the position were made. If the only "qualified applicants" are foreigners, then fine. But it shouldn't just be leveraged as a tool to underpay skilled workers.
On the flip-side, I'd be all for opening up the borders to immigration, WITH the provision that under no circumstance do they receive any government benefits/welfare. If they come here, they're on their own, period. They weren't a U.S. citizen paying taxes into the system, so they shouldn't be able to collect any benefits back out of the system. If this were done, I think much of our immigration from Mexico problem would sort itself out on its own - and save us a lot of $'s on border patrols too.
It's now claimed that FDR's "helping" prevented the Depression from ending in 1937 instead of 1943. I've read that Britain came out of it sooner than the US because of less interventionist policy. For this reason as well as many others, I consider FDR a self-serving nincompoop and his "New Deal" to be a huge and on-going problem.
I've grown to expect idiotarian feel-goodism from both parties pandering to the nitwits who constitute their respective bases. I don't expect less from either; only the character changes a bit. If I could vote so that none of the current candidates won in November and they all had to go back and start over, I would consider it a good election. Instead, I am stuck with voting the rascal out as a lesson to the next rascal to try to be less idiotarian.Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Huh?
On what grounds do you claim Kerry is "teh most liberal senator in the history of Earth!"? How is John Kerry more liberal than, say, Barbara Boxer? What about Dennis Kucinich? Technically a representative, not a senator, but still so far to the left of Kerry that it's a wonder they can cohabit the same political party.
Next, on the question of flip-floppery. Why isn't Bush a flip-flopper for vacillating on his reasons for invading Iraq? Before the war, it was, "We have to take Saddam out to make America more secure! He has weapons of mass destruction and he's putting them on boats to the U.S. even as we speak! He'll detonate a nuke in New York by year's end!" Then when all the reasons he told us we had to go to war evaporated, he just starts talking about how wonderful it was that he removed Saddam Hussein from power, and how Iraqis are free from his brutal regime. Anyone who doesn't see the value of the war must have been glad that Hussein was in power.
But it's not like that. Sure, Hussein was a brutal dictator, a cancer on his country that needed to be ripped out. But he's been precisely that since he took power in the '80's. On the basis of human rights being violated by crazed dictators, there are dozens of countries equally worthy of consideration. We're not invading those countries, there's no indication that we're looking to invade anyone else for such reasons, and it's clear that America had little desire to go to war solely to remove Hussein from power. But the alternative is for Bush to admit that he shouldn't have gone to war, so he flip-flops.
Kerry, far from flip-flopping on the war as his critics claim, has been as consistent as we have a right to expect. He didn't vote to go to war, but to give the President the authority he needed to be credible in the U.N. Kerry voted for a process, whose end result might have been a declaration of war, but also included several intermediate steps which Bush ignored in his obsessive drive to remove Hussein from power.
After the war began, Kerry "voted for the $87B before he voted against it." But that lovely, oft-replayed soundbite doesn't fully convey the complexity of the situation. The bill Kerry voted for and the bill Kerry voted against were not the same bill. President Bush threatened to veto the version of the bill that Kerry supported, so if Kerry is a flip-flopper, then so is President Bush.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
While we are nit-picking...
:-D
An apostrophe is also used when you contract the trailing G in a gerund. So it's "F-in'".
Muahahaha... e.g. I enjoy nit-pickin'.
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
I call bullshit... by most measures Americans compete or outcompete most other countries. What you're seeing are little robber barons lining their pockets for THIS quarter by outsourcing vital corporate work to overseas people who can afford to work for less because they don't have an artifically high cost of living (aka housing with minimum costs or $50000/$100000/$200000). These robbers get bonuses and rewards.. by the time the shareholders figure out they've screwed what makes the company a good long term investment, these robbers are exiting stage right. The last full time company I worked for (before my current "freelancing" status ... and obtw I'm not on any Unemployment List either thanks to the way the state counts its data) ... sliced and diced this way... highly productive and profitable company -- new management moves in with cronies on Board of Directors -- while they're all getting much higher bonuses, company loans (never paid back), and perks... they're screwing up our price structure and moving us into the Fortune 100 market (total customer base abandonment) where we can't compete with the Top 4.
Result: 10 branch offices go under... the remainder of the company is a facade under which the management slurps whats left of cash on hand.. we drop off the NYSE (its all in the plan they say).
All you morons supporting this line of thinking: message - YOU AREN'T IN THE COUNTRY CLUB. These thieves use you and your ideological theories while laughing all the way to the bank.
Interesting that you proposed a flat tax with progressive rates. That is the first time I have seen that.
I cannot figure out why so many people seem to think "getting rid of deductions" and "same percentage for everybody" are equivalent and cannot be seperated. It sure seems to me that you could eliminate all deductions and then still tax the money people make at different percentages depending on how much there is. Conversely you could keep all the complicated deductions you have right now and tax everybody the same percentage of what is left. It just seems to me the concepts are unrelated.
Without arguing for or against any style of tax, can anybody explain why so many on both sides of the argument seem to think that "no deductions" and "same percentage for everybody" are equivalent and you cannot get one without the other?
It does work. It keeps wage costs down. But the real culprit is automation and I.T. It's enabled companies to dramatically cut their costs by automating an increasing number of jobs. In 20 or 30 years, only a very few people will be needed to sustain the same size economic output we have now. And those jobs will probably be in low wage countries. So we will have achieved a major goal of technology.
Freeing people from drudge work!
Note that I don't think that mass unemployment is a good thing. But corporations are in the business to make money, not spend it unnecessarily.
They are not welfare programs...
"First off, the economy isn't doing badly - I'm right here in the valley, and things are picking up quite nicely. " I'm so glad your provincial clue holds true for the whole country... sorry, try again. If we're going to compete with the global market...then the housing industry is going to have to figure out how to sell us decent housing for less than $10,000, the auto industry is going to have to create cars for less than $10,000... and the government is going to have find something other than personal income tax to gather money with because they are not taxing the wealth transfer in the top 1% and the rest of us are going to only be making $20,000/yr if we're lucky... if we're going to compete globally.
You can reduce your wage costs to zero by hiring no one.
Alternatively, you can just hire those who are willing to work for nothing.
Seastead this.
The Heinz company is Republican-linked, has endorsed George W. Bush, and opposes John Kerry.
If you recall, Senator Kerry's wife was originally married to Senator John Heinz, a Republican from Pennsylvania, but then he died in a plane crash and subsequently married John Kerry.
Neither John nor Teresa have any real control over where Heinz' factories are. But, it is not uncommon to blame the Senator for all sorts of things that are not his fault or doing.
you'd be surprised how little time it takes to manufacture amphetamines....
And of course, once you've got a load made, you're going to have to employ a few people to help you shift it..
If all you can do is call me Hitler, I guess that means you are intellectually bankrupt.
What's the matter? Rush Limbaugh didn't give you a script for my arguments?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
you have to consider another occupation
The "IT audit" occupation appears to be related to accounting. How can I afford to take accounting courses and make payments on my existing student loans? And how can I be sure that the profession won't become full between when training begins and when training ends?
But that doesn't make it OK to blame foreingers for all your country's problems.
The Labour force participation is dropping because baby boomers are retiring. This means that the generation younger will be paying a hefty bill for their retirement. Social Security will not withstand this problem--people do not have as many kids and the only way to "pay" for it is to have immigration. Grampa is not going to have the retirement he hopes for.
Much of Europe has the same issue. Many of those countries have declining populations. How will the old be able to have a secure retirement? They won't without immigration.
If you want to blame something for the unemployment rate, it is not sufficient to assume that every immigrant entering the US == one job lost to an American. It is simply a too simplistic view.
To blame trade agreements for lost jobs is unfair. Every time a government negotiates a trade agreement they claim that they will train people with new skills for those who have lost their jobs. They should do it. This is the right policy, but how many governments have actually followed through with the promise? Not many.
With free trade, those that have 3rd world skills will be offered 3rd world wages. Ask what your government has done to lower tuition lately?
There is a classic economic discussion about economies: "Guns and butter" Essentially, the argument is that some societies place more emphasis on the Guns than Butter (or vice versa). These are just two products, but they have symbolic value: You folks spend more than the rest of the world combined on the military. Could it be better spent? Do you really want to be an empire, knowing the costs to your own society? One stealth bomber can pay for an awful lot of teachers. North Korea has made it's choices. They blame the evil south and the evil US oppresssors--bla bla bla. They have a militaristic outlook. Their people must eat bark and roots and possibly each other. Don't walk down their shoes, alright?
To single out some arbitrary group, and then blame them for your ills, is a classic approach seen many times throughout history. It has never solved anything before, so why do they think it'll work this time? Sure it'll get one politician over another elected, but that doesn't really solve anything does it?
For those that agree with the page's ideas: Instead of thinking about how to worsen someone else's situation, at least try to think about improving your own first.
-b
The failure rate totally depends on the type of business, who your mentors are, who your partners are, how much previous experience you have in business, etc.... People are willing to spend 16 years in school to learn how to become a good employee (and they think this is a success) and they are unwilling to take risks and learn business by doing it (and, yes, failing in it often). Wouldn't you consider spending 16 years in school to end up in JOBS that you hate a bigger failure than starting a business and losing say $1000-$10000?
I'd be happy working in the US for $10000/yr ... just explain to the auto and housing industry that they need to sell their products for less than $10000. Oh... and let the Feds and the corporate industrial complex know that their business model is about to become toast because a bunch of serfs making $10000/yr won't pay for their cute toys like Hummers, plasma tvs, B-2 bombers, subsidizing corporate fun like logging roads, oil refineries...
Hell, even the closet nazi Henry Ford knew you had to pay your workers enough to buy product and pay those lovely corporate welfare supporting taxes...
You are a MORON and should be punished as such.
... unless you're an idiot. Companies and countries are completely different things. See the minor difference in spelling? It makes all the difference in the world.
Look, what you suggest makes no sense
It doesn't really matter which country a company is located in, just as it doesn't matter which state, county, town, village, street, or address a company is located at.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
You're talking about Bush, right? I've never seen somebody who could so completely change their position & pretend like they've always thought that way. I'm not sure what you mean about his "vision" - about the only thing I think he's been consistent on is the "us" vs "them" mentality - all of his other messages seem to change depending on whatever his political handlers are telling him to say at any given moment.
Kerry's not a simple person (maybe unlike Bush). Based on what I've read about him, he seems like the type of guy who analyzes all sides of an issue before making a decision about what to do - and what he decides to do may not be the obvious thing that someone else who hasn't thought about the problem as much would have picked.
You can probably guess who I think is better suited to be a world leader. :-) I have no idea why so many people in the American public think Bush is a good leader. I keep having flashbacks to the popularity-contests called student government in high school. Bush is portrayed on TV as a personable-if-somewhat-slow guy, while Kerry seems to be portrayed as some kind of unlikable ivory-tower "Lurch" character. It depresses me to know that many of my fellow Americans don't pick their leaders based on demonstrated merit (or reject them based on demonstrated incompetence).
In my neck of the woods I've been recruiting software engineers for several months and found slim pickings. Good recent grads are around, but senior people have become much more difficult to find. The way I see it, my good news anecdote is just as good as other people's bad news ancedotes.
If US corporations don't outsource, those people in those nations will be doing the same jobs for foreign corporations. If US corporations outsource to them, at least some of the money comes back to the US.
You need to subtract inflation idiot. www.bls.gov Incomes have gone down for the last 35 of 36 years when adjusted for inflation. 1984 is the odd year.
Again, illegal immigrants are not squeezing the middle class, because the types of work they do are the ones no middle class person in the US would ever do.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
There is an analysis of the so-called "flat tax" at Citizens for Tax justice (www.ctj.org)
t &n ame=ViewWeb&articleId=8449
http://www.itepnet.org/sale0904.pdf
The Economic Policy Instuitute (http://www.epinet.org) has also analyzed the consumption tax.
Basically, in order to preserve the current level of government spending, it would need to be 45-60% It would represent a huge tax cut for the rich, since they consume a much smaller percentage of their income. It would shift most of the tax burden to the middle class.
Its a huge mistake..
The Republicans hidden agenda is to decimate the middle class..
See this article:
Hidden Agenda- The convention trumpets compassion, but the real Bush agenda is clear: Use tax policy to starve the government even more.
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=roo
So you're saying the us middle class would pick grapes at winerys? Or clean tables at McDonalds? Or clean toilets in bus stops?
If so, I think someone's definition of middle class is way off.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
You wrote:
Even by usual Slashdot standards, it's stunning that the above crap actually got modded up.
Nice tone!
His argument, explicitly spelled out, is that he buys foreign goods because they are cheaper than American goods and that if he bought American goods he would have less money for the rent and therefore, he argues, the government should FORCE him (and you and me and everyone else) to pay higher prices for all goods, bringing the foreign ones at least up to the price of the American ones he's unwilling to pay for, and thus to have less money to pay the rent. And someone somewhere bought into this?
As Joe EveryAmerican, my real wages have been dropping for decades, in large part because of globalization, immigration, paltry minimum wage raises and anti-union laws. I need to buy carefully to survive and to give my childrn the best chance to survive. If I buy American product A at cost $N, I have $K-N left over to survive and leave to my children, and everyone else buys foreign product B at cost $N/2, they have $K-N/2 left over. They are their children will outcompete me for living space (they get the good neighborhood, while me and my children get the bad neighborhood).
What my govt should do is not place me in such a harsh competitive environment. That is what I pay them to do--to provide for my General Welfare, and provide my and my children with the best possible quality of life.
Leaving asside the morality of forcing foreigners
They and their fellow citizens pay their govt to look out for them, and I and my fellow citizens pay our govt to look out for us. All of us, not just the rich and the corporations. When my govt places the welfare of foreigners ahead of my own, they commit treason.
you actually want the government to FORCE you to pay higher prices because it's not a choice you'd make on your own? This is insanity.
No, I pay my govt to place me in the best position. Making me compete against low wages foreigners is treason.
What if I owned a business and hired a manager who put the interests of competing businesses ahead of my own business?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
That's just history repeating itself. Look at Germany in the 1930's. Who got the extreme right wing into power? Two groups. On the one hand were corporations, who believed they could profit handsomely, on the other hand were the out-of-work, who were lured in by notions of "national pride", history, family values, Christian heritage, tariffs, promises of jobs, etc. The US isn't quite as extreme (yet?), but the psychology and social dynamics are analogous.
He makes Nixon look good - and people are looking back at the golden years of Reagan, where the way to deal with terrorists was to give them billions in cold hard cash (US hostages in Iran, Iran-Contra arms deal, US taxpayer funding for Osama bin Laden etc.)
"Japan was depressed economy just a few years ago."
The people who say this are always those who know nothing about Japan. Sure, the stock market bubble collapsed, and the Keynesian indicators American economists look at pointed to trouble.
The thing is, none of the normal Japanese people noticed. I have plenty of Japanese friends, and their standard of living remained higher than ours the entire time. There's never been significant unemployment; there are always 11 jobs for every 10 applicants.
A Japanese friend of mine came to Canada for a few years to study music. When she decided to move back and get a job, we asked her how long she thought it would take. She looked surprised. "I'll get one the same day I look, of course!" And she did, too.
Talk of a Japanese recession is just FUD from American economists who don't want you know how bad things actually are in the US.
Greens: Organize your neighbors and start sustainable cooperatives, especially around "life necessities" (food, shelter, health care, education). Undercut the corporate monopolies.
These are both viable alternatives. However, they both require determination, optimism, personal responsibility and hard work; therefore, they won't be popular with people who were brought up in an educational system that encouraged them to be passive workers, rather than active owners.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
I, as a person, would love to have such a clear cut standard for my wage !
Formula..... (Rent + Utils + Food + gasoline)*1.337 = wage
regards
dbcad7
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
I love how in TFA, they say (under " Professional "Guest Workers.""):
"Since the employer pays a token fee for a guest worker visa, the employer is essentially using the public resource of immigration rights as a partial compensation--a practice even pro-business economists like Milton Friedman admit is a de facto corporate "subsidy"."
Friedman is *not* a "pro-business" economist. He is a pro-free-market economist -- and there is a difference. Pro-business economists prefer policy that explicitly favors businesses. Pro-free-market economists favor policy (or more-often, a deliberate lack of policy) that favors a freer, more-open marketplace, or the elimination of policies which oppose the goal of a free-market -- even if that more-open marketplace comes at the expense of the desires of some businesses.
Friedman would support fewer regulations on the financial industry, for instance. Yet, having worked in a big financial firm myself (which shall remain nameless), some of these companies actually support increased regulation -- because they know it benefits their cause of making a profit. In this way, Friedman could be alternately described as anti-business -- or, more-correctly, a neutral onlooker who prefers a free-market to outright pro-business policies.
Not that I would expect the illiterates of free-market economics (i.e. "progressives" or "socialists" or "Greens" or whatever they're calling themselves this week) to actually understand the difference between "markets" and "business"...
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
For crying out loud. :P
Make $50K as a household and you're rich?
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
Problem solved.
By the way - it's the same for farmers. In Iowa, they're paying $3k/acre for good corn land and competing against equally good land in Argentina that's worth something along the lines of a nickle an acre. Makes things tough.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
The government steps in and bails out the big boys all the time.
Seastead this.
On a side note, coops are a good idea. I'm from a rural area and we have a rich tradition in that form of business - elevators, power companies and the like. Of course, in those kinds of coops, the customers own the business.
I'm not sure how your "geography is not important" coop will do, but the telephone and power coops I've dealt with have been far easier (and more customer-centric) than your public companies (Alliant and US West).
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
I'm afraid that you'd get plenty of press over how "confusing" the ballot would be, given what happened in Florida. I mean, some people can't even figure out which candidate they like best, let alone which they'd prefer over which other candidates.
It is unfortunate that people say these things, then disregard the fact that GWB has done nothing to reverse it.
My case remains, if Clinton screwed up, then why do we not see a reversal of any of his policies?
The underlying issue here is that a country should care for its people who are indigent, poverty-stricken, ill, weak, and downtrodden. Its a matter of humanity. Period. Forget everything else.
I can't believe I'm reading posts about flat taxes and people saying that they are fair. Does $6,000 mean more to a person making $30,000 a year versus $60,000 for someone making $300,000? OF COURSE. There's nothing "FAIR" (whatever that means) about a rich guy paying the same percentage as a poor guy. Whoever said that FAIR means that everything is equal all the time? That is totally moronic. Being humane and caring for the downtrodden isn't some magic EQUATION. It is a state of mind. An attitude. A principle.
I simply can't believe that people in the USA, my own country, are still fighting to see how we can take care of these issues without sacrificing anything out of our own lives.
I don't care how it gets done. Taxes. Charity. Donations. Faith-based organizations.
Get over your pocketbook and your ego and take care of your country for once.
Pay Raise, Promotion, Relocation Package, Sign-on Bonus, etc ... Furthermore, I claim the cost-of-living in Silicon Valley is LESS-EXPENSIVE than San Diego ... rent, gas, electricity, burritos, coffee, etc.
So far so good, I have survived every RIF, layoff, down-turn, etc thus far. If I do get 'whacked' then I am prepared for at least one-year of unemployment, psuedo-vacation, Pacific Crest Trail, renewal, etc
Having watched my father loose his job during the Carter Years, never regaining employment due to his age, being the first child in the family to receive college financial aid, I learned early on that if you want a job then YOU have to "hustle" ... YOU have to "work for it" ... YOU have to "prepare for it" ... YOU have to be ready financially/emotionally/physically to be unemployed also ... in otherwords YOU have to take charge of your own destiny.
Advice ... always be learning something new ... always save money (coins and dollar bills add up very very quickly) ... avoid debt ... avoid buying beer/wine/booze/tobacco/drugs (the money thing again although an occaisional high-end craft beer is OK ;-) ... be willing to relocate ... have reasonable salary/wage expectations - a high school diploma and reading "HTML 4 Dummies" does not entitle you to a six-figure salary ;-);-);-)
Overall, stop your whining and start learning.
--
"Seared in My Memory - Reclaiming stolen honor this election year."
I believe Juanita
Read the article please. Much of what you talk about is explicity covered there.
Easy to say if you're working. After all, we all know that statistics tell the whole story, right? If qualified people, who were replace by H!B visa workers can't find a job it MUST be their own fault, right? And there's no such thing as chronic, and therefor unreported, unemployment, right?
Conservatives suck.
Milton Friedman is pro-business in that he would like to see a much larger portion of economic activity carried out in the private sector instead of the public sector. He would like the market to sort out how that is divided between large and small businesses-and tend to feel that can be done with minimal regulation or tweaking of tax policy(something that I tend to disagree with him on- I think his estimates of monopoly impact on the economy are way too low).
hehe:
s/their are not enough/there are not enough/
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
Please address the points in the article.
Unemployment isn't a good measure of joblessness anymore. Home ownership doesn't mean much-you need to look at equity levels. Wealth? Look at median levels of wealth-and ask how is wealth increasing relative to population.
You chose IT as a profession. Did you think about how many IT jobs there are in the area where you live?
I chose a career and enrolled in a four-year college program in August 1999, before there was any concept of a bubble bursting. And with my disability, I don't know what else I could do well.
Also, have you tried non-standard IT positions?
Yes, I have cold-called the HR departments of quite a few local firms in many industries. Should I wait until I get seven times seven "thank you for your resume/interview but we regret to inform you that the position was filled with somebody else because somebody else has experience and you don't" letters before complaining again?
I found companies that need IT work done but could not afford a full-time person.
How does one learn to run a consulting business if one has zero experience straight out of college? Or am I screwed because I neglected to take summer jobs?
lower taxes for those who pay taxes (the lower 50% of the earners in America pay no taxes!).
Really? Wow!
Does that mean that people in the lower 50% of earners don't have to pay FICA, sales tax, gas tax, property tax, or cigarette and alcohol taxes? Dude! I have some good news for some of my underemployed friends. Do they need to get special 'lower 50% of earners' cards to exempt them from these taxes or something? Where do you get those?
Because, you know, if you want to lower taxes for people who pay taxes, why don't you start with the taxes that everybody actually pays? Maybe graduate FICA so that the first $20,000 is exempt, the next $50,000 is at the current rate, and everything above it is at a higher rate? That'll save a lot more money for a lot more people than cutting things like the income tax and the estate tax.
If most Americans want to reduce their personal tax burdens, then they're a lot better off keeping (or raising) things like the estate tax, many capital gains taxes, and the upper rates of the income tax, and lowering things like FICA and state sales and property taxes. Unless, or coure, they're misled into thinking that income taxes are the only real taxes that people pay. But nobody would be dumb enough to fall for that.
Right?
-allen
I have been waiting for this topic to come up on Slashdot for quite some time. I am an H1 B computer programmer and was laid off some time ago.
- Found a bigger, better job at a better company in 4 weeks.
- Had multiple offers to chose from.
Here's more from my recent experience:
- I started getting calls from recruiters within *3-4 hours* of posting my resume.
- I had job offers within a couple of weeks from getting laid-off, but I did not like the work and actually had to dodge those recruiters.
- I am not an extraordinary wiz kid programmer of something. My credentials and career are pretty common. No Ivy League, nothing spectacular in my resume. Of course, this is not how presented myself during the job hunt - I was much more positive in my approach.
- At present I know several companies that are pretty desperately looking for people. Some of them have doubled the referral fee they give to current employees.
- I know many other people who have in the recent months found work in 1-2 months timeframe.
What I hear on this site and in other media and what I actually saw in the job market is very different - I am actually confused. If you have any explanation for this phenomenon, I am very interested to hear it.
I copied this sig.
This is all ya got?
I guess the Limbaugh/Rockwell/Friedman/Rand/AEI script just plays out after awhile, huh?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Anyone who occupies the presidency right now without using some imagination and vision is IMHO a problem. The country has some serious problems and they need to be addressed-not ignored.
Posting something from one of the Nader sites. Sincerely, the only places you will get anything that resembles sincere opinion today is on the far right(i.e. Buchanan/vdare) and the far left(i.e. Nader). I happen to be a Nader supporter and feel that for the progressives to do anything meaningful, they _will_ have to address trade and immigration-as well as a major reform of the tax system(just FYI I like Nader's proposal better than what Bush is pushing at www.fairtax.org)
What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America
The blurb is thus:
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
The housing industry is going to have to figure out how to sell housing for less than $10k?
No - you're going to have to figure out a way to make enough money to pay for a house under current market conditions. Or, if you're confident that it'll happen, wait until the housing market tanks and buy when it falls that low. That goes for cars as well.
Your expectations on market pricing just aren't thought out - after all, what happens to people that bought for $100k? They're supposed to get behind a crappy idea like shoving prices down?
Those same people are the ones creating jobs, and are the same people working beside you. Do you want to explain to them why it's rational that the money they put in should be washed away just so you can have a house?
I'm not a homeowner yet, and have been busting ass to get a mortgage (as you may have as well.) I completely sympathize with you when it comes to home prices - trust me - like I said, I live in the valley where prices *to start* are around $450k.
I want prices down as much as you. At the same time, I also don't think that my happiness in owning a home should be derived by tanking someone else's investment.
As well, if you think that a solution like the one you offered will offset any perceived recession, keep in mind that the equity lost by existing homeowners would destroy not their lives, but also the financial institutions which mortgaged them - and it would create an instant drain on social services.
So I assume you are calling me a Neocon and saying that I suck. Sorry you feel that way. I don't think anyone sucks ... I think they just have different opinions. Some are right, some are wrong, and some of just ill-informed.
... you can't say that the Dept. of Labor numbers are real and then dismiss the more inclusive numbers of the Dept. of Labor.
... and then I got a new one. It took a month, but I was prepared, used savings, and moved on. I don't know anyone here in Atlanta right now that wants to be working and isn't.
As for the labor figures, go to the labor website yourself, look at both sets of figures, realize that the media is quoting the "worse" figures that do not take into account a sizable and growing part of our economy. I have personally done this and think that the media is only telling me half the story. You can't have it both ways
Unemployment Insurance - I can buy that from an insurance agent. Why do I need the government involved?
Social Security - I pay over 12% of my income each year to old people. When I am 65, 12% of the income of the workforce divided by the number of people 65 or older will come no where near the poverty level. When I retire, Social Security will be either meaningless or go. You want to try to save it? So what do we do? Give it to less people? Give the people less money? Take a larger percentage from each worker's paycheck? A combination of the three? How is this a good idea again?
SEC/FDIC/FCC/DOL/Treasury/EPA - we need 'em and I support 'em as long as they serve the people and don't do things just to perpetuate themselves. I mentioned this in my post. Did you read my post?
Sean Hannity - never read his books, have listened to his radio show a few times and do not like his "in your face" style combined with his mind closed to anything not Republican.
Rush Limbaugh - is he still around? Whatever happened to that drug thing? Do people still listen to him?
Fox News - I don't get my news from television. I prefer to read it online from several different sources and form my own opinion.
I lost my job last year
Is it that are taxes are too low or that government spending is too high? I think taxes are still too high and that spending is totally out of control. Let's try reducing spending this time.
As for a strong economy under a Democrat President, I said in my post that it is not the President, it is Congress when it comes to taxes and spending. The '90s was about new innovation and a Congress working to help businesses, particularly small business. It is as fair to give Clinton credit for that as to blame the recession on him since the decline started at the end of his time in office.
What happened to the concept of a nation that sacrifices in a time of war for the betterment of the country? I sold my SUV and have sacrificed. The "nation" you speak of is each individual American making the sacrifice. I think that most of us have become so selfish that this very concept is beyond us. We are not the America of WWII.
As for better care for veteran's who bear the burden of fighting, you are exchanging words with a Gulf War veteran. One thing I do have to say is that I have always been impressed and amazed by the kindness and pride show to our men and women in uniform in our generation. This is one area where we have gotten it right.
So, now that I have answered your objections, let me say that it saddens me that you lump me under a clever little title and deemed me ignorant. I spent 15 years reading, thinking, discussing, and putting into action my beliefs in my daily life. I don't know if you being so far off the mark is a sad commentary on you, me, both of us, or the whole country.
Whatever the case, I respect any person who puts forth time, though and effort in determining a position that the belief because they have made an intelligent decision that it is right. If the try to put their beliefs into action in their daily life, my respect grows to admiriation. That's all I really have to say.
I'm not talking about only the entry level working man. I'm talking about the ownership, the management, everyone. Show me a company with over 25 people that doesn't have a lazy leech sucking the life blood out of the company.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
The labor force participation rate is as a percentage of workforce, not of total population.
Seastead this.
I and my girlfriend were middle class. We are definitely being shoved into the poor class.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
Both my wife & I were hired before we graduated, and we don't even have technical or hard science degrees. Seems pretty good to me.
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
They are rigged against the poor and middle class, because wage earners have no control over what is considered income: It's their wages.
A rich CEO, on the other hand, can jet around the world, stay in the best hotels, eat in the finest restaurants, and not consider those expenses, paid by the company, as income.
What if we took the same approach when a natural disaster happens? I'm sorry but its your fault for living in a house that got the shit kicked out of it by the latest tornado. Have a nice day? Show some compassion for your fellow human beings. Afterall, we're all in this together.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
You missed my point... if all your customers make less than $10K.... all those lovely $450K homes will sit unused. MORE likely... the housing industry will shrink and collapse because they won't be able to adjust to their customer's "new leaner lifestyle". The corporations engaged in destroying the middle class are indirectly going to destroy the housing industry... Of course, if you notice housing developers (like car manufacturers) prefer building a smaller number of high end units --- apparently better profit. Hence the neverending pleas for "affordable housing".
My $10K number was just a grab at our competitor's average salary in India --- THEY don't have to pay so much for transportation/housing, its all scaled down to fit the economy. So if we're going to be "global" (and not wait for India's average cost of living to grow as big as ours) -- we're going to have to figure out how a $10K/yr salary for engineer doesn't mean he lives under a bridge. Besides, we can't ALL flip fries... someone has to be the engineer.
Please don't drink that Kool-Aid. Fair Tax is just a Consumption Tax (aka Flat Tax) under another name. Calling it "Fair" doesn't make it so. Why? Because it taxes poor and middle classes while allowing rich to get richer at a much faster rate. Yes, this is why this topic is so dear to Republicans.
A poor person may need to spend 100% of salary on consumption just to cover basic needs. A middle class person -- 80%. As you get richer, your propensity to save increases and consumption expenses do not grow as fast (in percentage of income terms), so you may spend 50%. After all, there is so much shit you really *need*.
Enable consumption tax of 10%. The poor pays 10% of salary on taxes. Middle class guy -- 8%. Rich -- 5%. This is worse that flat tax, this is *regressive* taxation.
Repeat after me -- keeping progressive income tax and taxing capital gains is the only way to give poor a chance, middle-class protection from getting squeezed, rich from "take over the world" schemes all while turning budget surplus. And yes, a strong middle class is the #1 reason why US enjoyed economic prosperity and democratic society in 20th century.
The models works. Please stop f*cking it up, please! Wish I could make Economics 101 a mandatory course in high school. Maybe then people would vote with their heads instead of emotions.
That would be true if we were just looking at the last two sitting presidents. Look back further and ask about job creation. Hell, ask about correlations between market growth and which party held the white house. Its easy to say that no one can see an obvious mechanism. Pointing to obvious differences in philosophy and goals between the parties only indicates what they would *want* to do, anyway. Still its hard to disregard a strong correlation spanning my lifetime.
Ever read Wealth of Nations? Do you think that we have a ballance of power today between supplysiders and consumers? We no longer have villages of skilled craftsman competing, who weren't able to service more than a county. In order to have a free-market today it is necessary to ballance the power wielded by the large multi-nationals, or reduce them to the small businesses from whence they came. Government intervention is one way. View it as the power of the people of a country taken together as a whole. Regulation is necessary as elimination of corporations just isn't politically feasible.
I understand what you mean. If a US worker is paid $50 an hour and an Indian worker is paid $5 for the same task, the US will lose jobs.
That's partially true. But keep in mind that those jobs only exist as long as we can pay for them. If we were only making $10k a year, I doubt that we'd be buying quite as many things - things that countries like India support. As a result, their industry would shrink.
That's not to say that I like outsourcing - but I also don't believe that we'll ever have a "global" economy. There are so many different factors that go into it - geography, weather, resources, political stability. Thus, while you may end up with some Balkanized economies (like the EU), I don't think you'll ever see a global standard.
As for the fry-flipping, someone does have to be the engineer... have you tasted fries at McDonald's? They could use a good engineering of that cooking process.
I had some sympathy for you until I read THIS bullshit line:
... then you truly deserve to end up dead under a bridge. This is a war, and you've been fired on; so ... SHOOT BACK, YOU STUPID BASTARD!
Wrapping up my sob-story, moving to a new state is out of the question due to personal reasons involving my daughter, so we're stuck here.
Well, then, you're just going to end up dead soon. I hope you enjoy the next 2 years of your life, since that's probably all you have left. Chances are you will get sick during that period and just die.
I hear this whining all the fucking time, and I have to call bullshit on all of it. You don't owe anyone anything if doing so places you in serious jeopardy. What, is the daughter in school? Fuck her preferences; she'll have to make new friends. Is she at some institution? Fuck her needs; you can send video email. Does she need special care? Fuck her; let some underpaid orderly wipe her mouth. (Note: What, don't other states offer care for this kind of thing? Stop making excuses.)
No one is chained to a place which threatens to destroy them. You have to stop being an idiot and recover your pride. You have to remember that you have a will to survive and a desire for self-defense.
I am living one of America's deepest economic hellpits (Toledo OH), and right on schedule the scumbag Capitalists here are making moves to throw me into poverty as they did from 1998 to 2002. Since I stopped pretending that this is not class warfare, I've saved money like a fiend for the last 2.5 years and will use my capital and mobility to fight back, by moving to where the fucking jobs are, leaving Toledo to rot down to the Detroit-humus level of compost.
I know all about mailing, faxing and handing out hundreds of resumes, and not getting 1 response. That's Toledo's economic picture in a nutshell. But Toledo's not going to change, since people are so numbed by various complacent or vicious philosophies. I can only surmise from your testimony that your area is similar.
So get the fuck out before it kills you, you goddamn numbskull. You and your American brethren have worshipped "private property" for a long time, so here you are crucified on it. If you refuse to engage in active Socialism and confiscate the shit of the Capitalists who have impoverished you, and also refuse to leave your local wasteland and go to where the jobs are
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
one of the things I noticed in the media reporting is what they call "rich". The numbers are really low. Sometimes its those earning 100K or more. But most of the time, its 75K or more. I've seen (and unfornately lost my link) an article that stated income on weekly basis that amounted to no more than 50K. Some of this comes from how the census records "rich". I dont agree with it---hence the scare quotes around "rich".
One thing to keep in mind, income doesnt really denote wealth or riches. There are many "rich" dont have a 50K in income as income in defined according to census data. According to the how the numbers are collected, someone earning $0 working but is earning interest on $1 million will not be classified as rich. Likewise, if they dont own a home but rent, they may actually end up in the "poor" category.
BTW, I did include for inflation--hence the (in 2003 dollars) notation. That means adjust for inflation. Idiot.
"Most jobs held by illegal immigrants are not "middle-class" jobs."
Then we agree, that there is no middle-class squeeze, as indicated by the original poster, from illegal immigrants?
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
I'm not Indian but those guys would be religious fundamentalists. They may end up being fascists but so far they are not there...
BTW, India never pointed nukes at USA; they don't have any nukes that can reach USA...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
Watch it! I said nothing about adjusting for inflation - I was asking about equating a $50K income to being rich. I make a hair more than that and don't consider myself anywhere near wealthy!
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
The problem with this country is not the wages. It's the fact that we are being taxed thru the roof and it's going to this invisible tea tax. No one knows where the fuck money is going. We are just paying. As far as I am concerned, they are going straight to terrorists, and we won't even know.
an occaisional high-end craft beer is OK ;-) ... Stone Brewing Beers
I believe Juanita
As I wrote earlier:
I believe Juanita
...and a recovery is when George Bush is out of work.
I know you are not serious when you say this. The president has virtually no control over the economy. The Federal Reserve has the greatest control. After the Feds comes the Legislative branch. The Executive branch does not create the budget and spend money.
Anyone that votes for Bush is a dupe and a fascistic fuckhead. There is NOTHING conservative about this rightwing nutcase.
My opinion can of course be debated, but I see little point in debating what is obvious.
Example: supposedly 95% of the installed user base is using Windows. They are demonstrably ignorant given the overwhelming evidence that Windows is nothing but garbage.
Case closed. Good night. Have a wonderfully hellish life, all of you in the USA! Yes, the rest of the world hates you, sleep well!
Maybe you and the researchers should explain this phemomena to all the white guys I see doing yard work in Florida. The argument itself is a bit difficult, since the measurement has to be taken with a control situation, ie when immigrants are not doing the labor, and then after the immigrants take over the jobs.
In most cases, such as farm workers and food processors, anti-union efforts allowed the wages for these jobs to drop below a rate acceptable to natural citizens. During times of good job growth, people were willing to allow cheap labor in to take jobs with little or no wage growth. Had these industries, and others automated when labor became expensive, there would be more opportunity for middle class workers providing these high tech solutions.
You have to take these factors into account when discussing the effect of immigration on the job market. Cheap labor is bad for the economy, it reduces the need to innovate and hides poor social policy from view. Outsourcing is going to have the same effect.
This is not to say that unions have been perfect, I personally think they dropped the ball in the 80's when they fought automation. On the other hand, unions have caused far less damage overall than nearly any of the capitalist scandals such as the S&L's, Enron, WorldCom or the Bush-Cheney administration. I'd rather have imperfect unions than these multi-headed hydra running amock.
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
in the same thread someone wrote:
Fight Frist Psoting!
Browse Slashdot with 'Newest First'!
And of course those that would die in American bombings are the people who cut off other people's heads? Not likely. What is likely, is that Zarkawi and friends sit in a hideout and laugh while American forces kill innocent people, making America more hated than before.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
My "Idiot" was not to you specifically. I aplogize.
My reply was a reply to all including another poster who didnt catch my comment about "adjusted for inflation" and called me an idiot.
BTW, I tend to agree with you. In fact, I don't think anyone earning 100K is rich either. I dont think our (as in the government's) classification of middle class is correct.
Regardless, as the government statistics state, the middle class is shrinking, but its not do to increases in poverty.
First off, I said Nader's plan was _better_ not perfect. The key aspects of Nader's plan IMHO are:
1) removal of the majority of the middle class
from tax roles(exemption of income under
$100K)
2) Substituting revenue from
pollution taxes
a tax on concentrated wealth(over
$5 Million net worth)
land taxes
increasing of corporate taxes
The reaso I think those taxes with work is for the most part Nader is aiming to tax either negative extrenalities or economic rent(monopoly rent or land rent). Even Milton Friedman admits
that taxes on rent tend to be among the "least bad" taxes. If I were advising nader, I would tend to advise me to go easy on increasing income taxes, capital gains and estate taxes. I think he'll get more income from a land tax than he's expecting--particularly if that tax were focused on increases in real estate values that occur because of the changes in tax law.
The tax proposal at www.fairtax.org is economically fairly similar to what we have now-with the big exceptions that
1) it tends to ecourage savings
2) the overall cost of collection is much lower
than the federal income tax(i.e. tax lawyers
don't get as much pork).
Basically I _can_ believe that fairtax.org's proposal is somewhat better than what we have now-though i think it will result in more concentration of wealth than the folks at Cato are predicting. The Nader proposal would I think have even a more dramatic effect-and could be improved even more if it lowered the administrative overhead for major corporations a bit.
It's far too complicated an issue to really discuss fairly in this venue.
However, jobs are not the answer for a sustainable economy.
What is needed is a broadly spread pattern of ownership for the economy to thrive. In other words, the world needs more capitalists and less concentrated capitalism.
Let me just ask you this one question. Which do you think is better for the economy as a whole: 1 person earning $40 billion, or 10,000 people each earning $4 million?
There are policies in all areas of gov't both national and transnational that can lead to a broader participation and growth of the "ownership class" without stripping present capitalist owners of currently accumulated wealth.
We need leaders both in the U.S. and abroad who have the vision and the foresight to enact such policies. You will not find many such leaders among the current crop of Democrats and Republicans. They are conspicuously absent among the two top contenders for the office of President of the United States and their advisors.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
Of those jobs, what was the average wage? How many of those jobs would no native-born people accept?
Some jobs are even created by immigrants, and would not exist if those immigrants did not come here.
The United States has had immigrants coming in throughout its history, and the economy has had ups and downs anyway.
Again, why blame immigrants for this problem?
While we're at it, let's keep ignoring average wages relative to hours worked, and somehow not notice whether the quality of jobs being created is anywhere nearly as good as those we have lost in the past few years.
Inflation isn't a very good measure here. You really need to look at _disposable_ income(one measure if after housing, insurance, taxes and transportation). You can make folks "rich" by this measure by simply moving them from Wyoming to Los Angeles and keeping income constant (in real dollars).
$49,999 doesn't go very far in Silicon Valley-but goes a quite a bit further in Wyoming.
Another major factor here: you need to look at the value of certain goods/services that are made at home. If you look at my article, there is a link to a review of "The Two Income Trap". In 1967, there was a larger portion of women staying at home with kids.
If members of couple both go to work and don't have-and move to a high rent district their economic well being may be worse-even if their income is greater. Their income is greater,but so are their expenses(i.e. higher rent, more meals out) plus they may be exposed to more crime, stress and lack of opportunity to raise a family.
RJB
But Bush is a Republican whose party loudly advocates free trade (in between doing favors for their friends), so he deserves to be bashed for blatant protectist moves.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
In a truly high risk environment, you'll expect to see a distribution of "winners" that is different than what we are seeing. That is why taxes on concentration of wealth can work-they can be taxes on economic rent rather than on simple returns that reflect risk.
Now, I would agree there is a chance of throwing the baby out with the bath water. However, with Nader's proposal by eliminating taxes on income under $100K/year he has the potential to heavily reward small entrepreneurs-who tend to be serious risk takers.
Nader's statement simply calls for taxing both capital gains _and_ other income the same--but he's also moving significantly away from the idea that income should be taxed towards taxation of concentration of wealth, pollution, negative externalities and land/real estate.
I'd personally like to see the limit for income taxation raised well beyond the $100K figure-and I think that if properly structured land taxes, taxes on monopoly power and pollution taxes could do that. In the end, very few people would even need to file tax returns _and_ social programs could be maintained or even expanded a bit.
I don't think what you are identifying with is capitalism-it sounds more like welfare for the rich.
I couldn't help but notice that you quote CBS and NYT sources (IHT is NYT-owned). These have their own agenda when it comes to technology and immigration. Your news stories of Japanese nursing homes is going through these filters.
I guess we're seeing the bitter dregs of the Internet now. Well, why don't you wait until you have a point to make before you post? Then you won't feel so powerless and inane.
There is some truth to what you say. Outside of the idea of corporate loyalty, I think there's an issue going on here with the definition of profits here. The average person thinks about profit-making moves as being a situation where, overall, the company winds up making more money. However, in today's CEO-driven world, it's also an option to profit by making moves that in the short-term show reduced costs and therefore produce bonuses and raised stock prices. Yes, in a couple of years, your company may be hurt from having retired the older, more experienced workers and replacing them with younger people, but for a few years, you don't have to pay the higher wages due for seniority and, well, experience. And so the CEO leaves for another job, resume glowing with another situation where he was shown to reduce costs and thereby raise prices. Never mind that the company may have trouble later and that people are out jobs...
Please debunk to me what is "wrong" with situations like your example: people over 60 getting fired just because the company doesn't need them any more?
Is it the fact that the company doesn't need him but the poor fellow still needs them because he is scared of potential difficulties of finding a different job?
*wry grin* Nothing technically "wrong" with it, at least under current job philosophy. People take it as a given that most companies don't hold much loyalty to their employees anymore. And, honestly, the younger generation is thereby showing less loyalty to the companies, taking jobs for shorter terms and moving on, taking skill sets with them. It can make for a very agile and versatile skill set. The problem, I think, comes when you have people who started on the old system, and who have spent 20+ years of their life doing one thing, becoming very good at it. *shrug* And honestly, they probably are "scared of the potential difficulties" because they have spent their lives learning to be perfect employees for the one company and now they're adrift again in a job market flooded with new college graduates willing to work for subsistence wages. Complicating the matter, someone who has been working that long for one company may not even be able to use half of their skillset because it involves proprietary information.
Why isn't it realized by people that the job market is nothing more than a big match-making service where people or businesses go and try to find out who fits whose needs at the moment?
You know, I honestly think you've hit the nail on the head here. The job market highly resembles the state of marriage these days. There was a time when people settled down with a spouse, loved and lived with them until the end of their days. There was a loyalty, a sense that they were together for better or for worse. Now, well, how many people do you know who are on their second or third marriage? Or, for that matter, aren't even bothering getting married because they're not interested in permanence? Similarly, companies no longer feel loyalty to their workers to support them. And therefore, the current generation is tending more towards contracting, part time jobs.
Please shed some light on this "moral" issue for me, as I truly am frustrated with the kind of vagueness that people here often use to hide the reality that they simply can't justify something because it "feels right/wrong".
^_^ Honestly, I pull
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
It's true, look at the textbook definition of socialism. Hell, that's a statement straight out of econ 101.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.