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US Economy Added 178,000 Jobs in November; Unemployment Rate Drops To 4.6 Percent (washingtonpost.com)
The U.S. economy added 178,000 jobs in November, while the unemployment rate fell to 4.6 percent from 4.9 percent the previous month, according to new government data released (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternate source) Friday morning. From a report on the Washington Post: Economists surveyed by Bloomberg News had expected U.S. employers to create 180,000 new jobs last month -- roughly in line with the average number added in the first 11 months of the year. The first release after a contentious election in which the candidates disputed the health and direction of the economy, the data showed a job market that is continuing to steadily strengthen from the recession. The unemployment rate fell to levels not seen since August 2007, before a bubble in the U.S. housing market began to burst. The fall was driven partly by the creation of new jobs, and partly by people retiring and otherwise leaving the labor force. The labor force participation rate ticked down to 62.7 percent. Average hourly earnings declined by 3 cents to $25.89. The decrease pared back large gains seen in October, but over the year average hourly earnings are still up 2.5 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said.
At least Trump wasn't mentioned. It seems EVERY article these days has to have Trump put in it.
That can't be right, my parents said we've lost millions of jobs under Obama. Surely I should listen to them and not facts, right?
A few months around June-July, there were hundreds of posts for Linux admin positions where I live. In less than a week in July/August, that number dropped by more than half. By September, the best you could find were the Hindi speakers offering "five years of Windows Server 2012, 7 years of Apple Swift 3" type drivel, as well as the Kumar contract or contract-to-fire reqs.
As it stands now, if one looks at indeed or a job site, there is almost nothing out there compared to how it was six months ago.
the GOP saved us from the Anti-Christ Obama, who was sure to appoint himself President-for-Life, and who, unchecked, would have stripped religion, freedom, free enterprise, free speech, free beer, whiteness, and fast food from our great land. Obviously this good news has to do with our optimism about President Trump, who has vowed to preserve our most sacred traditions and Make America Great Again, Like It Used To Be, Before Obama Took All The Jobs, you know?
have you ever seen steve jobs molesting this child while reading a magazine?
is finally over.
Dear America,
Brace yourself, this might be the last story before "Despite Trump" begins to be added to every positive story by the bitter left wing.
Sincerely,
The UK, despite Brexit.
It is a noisy metric. It usually adjusted in the opposite direction of political expedience about 2-3 months after announced. The big hacker there is CA.
It is a bad metric - there are a hundred ways to look at unemployment, and the rate of new people who can get unemployment insurance is exactly at odds with the #1 and #2 employers in the US: Wal-mart and temp-agencies.
It would be nice if actual math and actual science could come first, and politics would be driven by them instead of junk like this.
If you tried to run a real-world production process using this crappy of a metric, you would go out of business, much like the US is putting itself out of being a super-power in the global economy.
-engr
...is lower now than at any time since Jimmy Carter was President.
"Unemployment is low!"
"What about all of those people who have been out of work for over a year, and stopped looking?"
"They don't exist. Shut up."
The unemployment rate fell to levels not seen since August 2007, before a bubble in the U.S. housing market began to burst. The fall was driven partly by the creation of new jobs, and partly by people retiring and otherwise leaving the labor force. The labor force participation rate ticked down to 62.7 percent.
So uh, inflation is still a thing (at a fairly steady rate) and retirement plans have imploded and people have less savings than ever, so they should be having to work longer, right? Unless those people are actually dropping dead, a reduction in the labor force participation rate at this time equals an increase in the actual unemployment rate, as defined by the number of people seeking employment. People who are partially employed and either going farther into debt or neglecting their health because they can't afford deductibles and/or time off (or both) are not only a growing segment of the population but also not represented in the unemployment rate.
Last I checked, a million new jobs hadn't made any improvement in the number of people seeking work. This is really the only relevant statistic of this bunch, and it's not presented here. Hmmmmmm.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
These are not the hallmarks of a thriving economy. The US economy is in a sickly state, with too many part time jobs with no benefits. We need to stop shooting ourselves in the foot. The fact that the numbers look like an improvement is a bit like a doctor telling a patient wife that he's not sick any more. He's dead. The US needs to get healthy before it dies.
Anyone who thinks this is a healthy job market is a fool.
Yes, I know anecdotes are simply anecdotes, but I still hear far too many people complaining about underemployment. We have too many college grads working as baristas and bartenders - and we have far too many STEM people competing against a flood of H1B visa holders.
The U3 number is far too simplistic to show the real difficulties in the job market.
Clearly paying $7 million so that a company can fire 1100 people is really working!
THANKS, Obama :P
Anyone whose bothered to read a comment section on this type of news knows that these indicators are borderline MEANINGLESS by themselves. It isn't helpful to add jobs at Walmart, Chipotle or Starbucks. Our economy is a big fucking joke orchestrates by the stupid and corrupt.
The hope is that Trump will honor his pledge for infrastructure spending and Congress has been making noises that they are on board - both sides of the isle are on board.
The hope is that will boost the economy. The kink is rising interest rates and the window for really cheap borrowing is closing. Never the less, if Trump gets his way, we'll be seeing some pickup.
and working for cash, scrounging
When Bush was president 200,000 new jobs was considered anemic as it didn't cover the rise in working age adults.
Now, with a greater population 187k is considered great. A sign that the economy is truly booming.
Wait a year, when Trump is president, and anything under 200,000k will be considered anemic again.
Remember we've always been at war with Eastasia.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
I notice you produce not even a link to your 'strong evidence'. Apparently you don't think it is all that strong?
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
I wonder what this''ll do for Trump's expectations. We have a bit of a paradox at the moment - he gets away with the a lot of stuff we would never let any other person say, and we accept his lack of policy, on the basis that he's inexperienced, or not a normal politician. However, at the very same time, people seem to have rather unreal standards for him - not only is he supposed to be everything that a normal president is supposed to be, classy and in tune with what's happening, but he's supposed to exceed on every metric - bring outstanding improvements to the economy, make the United States a world power (without diplomacy), and construct vast infrastructure improvements while curb stomping taxes for everyone. I honestly wonder what'll happen with his supporters when these two collide - many of them do seem to genuinely expect him to pull this off, and if he fails, they don't have anybody else to blame. 2020 might be a rather interesting election year...
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
As usual, the number doesn't count the 'statistically employed' - people who've been out of work for long and have given up looking for work as a result
Freaking Obama hoarding the jobs until the end just so he can make the GOP look bad. SEE SEE!!!!! His Alien brain control device from Area 51 is unfair!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
As usual, the number doesn't count the 'statistically employed' - people who've been out of work for long and have given up looking for work as a result
As it never has. So you're interested in comparing apples to oranges now?
The u-6 unemployment rate, which as also dropped steadily for the last seven years, has always counted 'discouraged worker' among others marinially attached to the workforce. However, I'm guessing that you already knew that.
As usual, the number doesn't count the 'statistically employed' - people who've been out of work for long and have given up looking for work as a result
It's a sign of the robustness of the economy that it can support so many able-bodies people who have given up performing useful labor.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
If it is a liberal shithole, why do so many Libertarians and Conservatives frequent it, and make so much noise?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The labor force participation rate ticked down to 62.7 percent.
Come on man, it's right in the summary. But "statistically employed" isn't the term you are looking for, you are thinking of "Labor Underutilization"
If you don't care to actually google something, read this, it seems like a pretty reasonable explanation of what that number means and gives a whole bunch of other numbers and trends that are actually a more useful gauge of unemployment. link I have no idea if the source is reputable, but the charts are sourced from CBO numbers, so I assume it's accurate.
Go read his accounts, the ones he filed during tax challenges. He doesn't just lie on his election form, he lies to his creditors and banks. scheme.
1. If he had money anywhere in his company, he'd lend within Trump corp. HE HAS NO MONEY. Even his house has a mortgage bigger than the price he bought it for.
2. The returns he generates on these properties are far below the mortgage rate. e.g. we know 40 Wall Street prices from a tax dispute. He lied about its revenue and earnings. It's only just in profit at 3 million, on 160 million loans = 3/160 = 1.9%, His mortgage 5.7%.
3. If he could lend himself the money he would! It would be 3 times more profitable than real estate.
4. He lies to creditors. Look at the Deutsche Bank loan of $125 million secured against his Florida golf resort: Trump National Doral.
It is only worth $96 million dollars, so he's told them the same fake earnings number he put in the election document, because otherwise they wouldn't lend him
130% if the asset value, at the cheap rate of Libor +1.75% unless they throught it had income to cover the loan.
5. You can estimate Trump National Doral based on Hilton Resorts, and its about 40 million *REVENUE*, not $132 *INCOME* as he's claiming.
He is lying about the size of investments, claiming $300 million into Scotland (the books show half that), and $200 million into the Post Office building in Washington (the contract shows $40 million).
He gets co-investors to fund their half of the $300 million or $200 million, and they are actually funding all of it, and more. The rest is skimmed off to make mortgage payments in the loss making parts.
He broke. Bankrupt. The books are lies, and cross checking shows you it. The prize for Trump is he can grant his children immunity.
GOP, go hire investigative accounts and take a look yourself.
Emphasis on "fixed". They just drop people off the unemployment rolls and claim they aren't unemployed any more. Yeah, lots of 20-somethings living with their parents are so rich they decided to retire. That's the ticket!
Fact is that we are hovering around Great Depression levels of unemployment. Half the households in the US are on food stamps. There are no soup lines because now they have fancy state debit cards they can use instead.
The fact is that Obama has been a disaster for the economy. He should have appointed a hawk to lead the Fed and have them raise rates (if depositors set rates like they are supposed to in a free market, interest rates would probably be 20-30% right now).
I can't wait for Trump's inauguration. If he keeps cooking the books like Obama has done, all the liberals will start noticing it and scream bloody murder. If he forces honest accounting, the numbers will come out terrible and they will scream bloody murder about how Trump has destroyed the economy. The salt is going to be epic either way.
The economy dd not add 178,000 jobs. It lost 178,000 fewer jobs than it added. But the economy does NOT run on jobss, it runs on money. The added jobs were low pay, starting pay, minimum wage jobs, while the jobs lost included high pay, long term jobs. But pay is not dollars per hour, it is total hours times dollars per hour, which dropped. More people got their hours reduced below the min hours worked to get benefits (take-home pay cut). And who cares about the U2 unemployment figure? It means nothing. U6 is more meaningful, and it dropped to 9.3%. But the reality is total number of workers no longer in the work force, which is 95,055,000. Really, 50% unemployment?
wake up and hold your nose
The qualifier "many" in this case would only make sense to a liberal.
You mean like how he gave Carrier $7M in tax breaks and now they're building a factory for the 1300 jobs they shipped south of the border?
That kind of great?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Gee, jobs/salaries/cost of living has NEVER been discussed on here before.
But, yes, Obama cut unemployment in half, while the working population increased by 20 million people.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
I can speak to any story on AGW, where every pseudo-skeptic poster shows up en masse to attack climatologists, so yes, the Libertarians and Conservatives here are a significant fraction of the posters. Perhaps the next time a story like that comes out, I'll do a hand count after a day or so and we'll see if this is indeed a "liberal shithole", or as I suspect, a pretty evenly divided shithole.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Exactly.
http://portalseven.com/employm...
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
What about the 1300 souls that are now looking for work? Hay you guys, how's that Trumpiness working for you?
http://portalseven.com/employm...
What is U6 unemployment rate ?
The U6 unemployment rate counts not only people without work seeking full-time employment (the more familiar U-3 rate), but also counts "marginally attached workers and those working part-time for economic reasons." Note that some of these part-time workers counted as employed by U-3 could be working as little as an hour a week. And the "marginally attached workers" include those who have gotten discouraged and stopped looking, but still want to work. The age considered for this calculation is 16 years and over
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
HAha. The numbers are made up anyway.
It;s always a good laugh when there is a week with a holiday and the week after the Obama administration will go "This is awesome! Unemployment claims dropped 20 percent!!!! At this rate unemployment will be erased to zero in no time at all. This is proof that our policies are working well."
Well, duh. If you remove a day from the five days you have 20% fewer days in that week to file for unemployment. The week after the holiday will show an increase back to the "norm" plus a little bit more because of the unemployed from the previous week spilling into the week after.
Also, they always make adjustments/corrections to previous months later and it's usually adjustment DOWN. It never gets news coverage and whatever spin had been put on that month doesn't apply anymore, but if the mainstream news never mentions it then it essentially never happened.
OF COURSE with a Republican in the White House the rules are different because the news industry is populated by Democrats. News and Democrats are on the same "team", ya know. The news will ALWAYS report when previous months get adjusted downwards.
That's sometime immediately after January 20th.
It's all LIES! LIES I TELL YOU! UNEMPLOYMENT IS AT 45%! I SAW IT ON FACEBOOK SO IT MUST BE TRUE!
Only White President Trump can do anything good for White America like save 800 jobs (300 of which were not moving anyway while still allowing 1300 to go to Mexico) and all for a Photo-Op and $7 million in Indiana State Tax incentives (which Trump could not promise anyway, only Gov. Pence did that) and promises of no federal tariffs imposed for the jobs that do move, and a continued $4.6 billion in Government Contracts for the parent company, United Technologies.
But Hey! You got to cheer in a Nuremberg Rally!
America! Fuck Yeah!
That's true. It's actually a 2,600 job net change. -1300 for US, +1300 for Mexico. +$7m for carrier in tax breaks, -$2m for Carrier to build factory in MX.
USA! USA! USA!
Lock her up! Wait, what?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
On, come on, let's get a serious economics discussion started.
Labor Underutilization.
Opportunity costs.
The difference between more people working and fewer people working.
The impact of government assistance v. government subsidies.
Bring it on! Since I read The Wealth of Nations I've been spoiling to be schooled on modern economics and why Truman disdained them so. We are often disappointed when we learn how things actually work.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
As Trump would say: Wrong. In every sentence.
Also, U6 includes those you think dropped. Guess what? Still lower.
http://portalseven.com/employm...
Trump has already shown how he's going to destroy the economy: Give companies $7M in tax breaks to ship thousands of jobs out of the country. Excellent plan. That will do it.
Just asking...
Better than my saving $2500 a year on health insurance that instead doubled and made my deductible $6000.
We always used to support 50% of the adult population who used to work at home and not be counted (housewives). Now we are only supporting 33% of the adult population. . On the other hand a lot of the caregiving which was given at home earlier is now given via take out food, day care, laundry and cleaning services. Now that these are provided by 3rd parties they count in employment whereas earlier these were invisible so they may make up a part of the 16% rise in labor participation.
Of course the supported/caregiving population now contains both housewives and househusbands but in general salaries have gone down so that it requires 2 salaries to live while earlier one was enough and children have to make do with daycare instead of a dedicated caregiver.
I dont believe its a good thing. While I support women having careers salaries shoud be high enough to raise a family so that both parents dont have to work - one either the mother or the father should be able to stay at home.
**Life is too short to be serious**
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/... The Unemployment statistics conveniently ignore people who have given up looking for work.
Sort of like what the unemployment figure does. A six figure factory job counts the same as a part time waiter or bartender.
Wait, those jobs were all scheduled for Mexico. Trump negotiated about half to stay in the US. What's the problem here? 1,000 jobs times about $40,000 each employees salary is $40 million dollars that the company is spending on payroll that will be added to the economy (because those with jobs will spend that money). It "cost" the government of Indiana $7 million to keep $40 million of salary in their state. What's the problem with that? Would it be better to send all the jobs to Mexico and the state gets $0? In fact the state would get negative dollars since those people would lose their jobs and end up on welfare/unemployment/underemployment. I think its a win-win. Trump gets his credit, those 1,000 people keep their job, and the economy does have to absorb 2600 lost jobs and wages. If you ask those 1,000 people who keep their job, I bet that all say its a win. Not one of them would say "fuck it i'd rather Clinton in the WH and no job". Have to give credit where credit is due. You don't have to like Trump but you have to see this as a win. Its not a perfect arrangement, but the other option is what? ALL the jobs moved to Mexico. That's not a win.
In case anyone is interested in the real unemployment numbers, look at John Williams' Shadowstats shadowstats.com
Specifically http://www.shadowstats.com/art...
"Counting All Discouraged/Displaced Workers, May 2016 Unemployment Rose to About 23.0%".
Why the big discrepancy? Because, just like the inflation figures and other government statistics, the unemployment numbers have been redefined and massaged to get them into an "acceptable" range. Williams explains the trick:
"To be counted among the U.S. government’s headline unemployed (U.3), an individual has to have looked actively for work within the four weeks prior to the unemployment survey conducted for the Bureau of Labor Statistic (BLS)".
So, essentially, what the BLS called the "unemployed" are people who are between jobs. If it takes a person more than a month to find a new job - or if they cannot prove that they have been actively looking - that person ceases to exist as far as the BLS unemployment statistics are concerned.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Right on, mate. The first poster apparently is not aware of the various types of unemployment rates. Namely the U6 which explains a bigger overall picture of the economy. I think the U6 unemployment rate is hovering just below ten percent.
@ the first poster:
TEN PHU@KING PERCENT
Actually, only 800 jobs are staying.
And if Hillary did the *exact* same deal, she would have been ripped for weeks on tax breaks and 1300 jobs going to Mexico.
But Trump, who apparently likes government to pick winners (while complaining when Obama did same), crows about it all day long.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Obama takes office - debt at $11 Trillion
Obama leaves office - debt at $20 Trillion
During Obama's 8 years debt increased by about as much as EVERY OTHER PRESIDENT IN HISTORY combined.
Lets repeat that... Obama's debt increased by about as much as every other president in history combined.
What is this crap about "But Bush"? Obama increased the debt the same amount as Bush PLUS the 42 presidents before him COMBINED.
As for your link, you will notice the deficit began to reduce when GOP took control of Congress.
Waaahh - people disagree with my self-righteous and enlightened ideologies - they must be HATEFUL CONSERVATIVES that overrun this site with their filth but I, in my noble cause, will fight on and continue to play the victim! (modded 5 insightful)
If you're looking for reputable statistics on economics, FRED has fantastic data and a very nice graphing system. Here's the employment/population ratio, for example.
I can speak to any story on AGW, where every pseudo-skeptic poster shows up en masse to attack climatologists, so yes, the Libertarians and Conservatives here are a significant fraction of the posters.
I'm pretty sure half the problems are:
* so many of the people on slashdot are STEM educated, and realize correlation is not causation, which damages the narrative
* the people speaking in favor of GW tend not to be accredited climatologists with PhDs
* the people speaking in favor of GW portray it as having solely AGW origins, rather than humans as a contributing factor
* presuming (as I do) that GW is real, but not solely attributable to AGW, no one is willing to give a percentage breakdown on cause
It doesn't help that there is a strong following of conspiracy theories on slashdot, and the disclosure of the emails talking about investigators specifically squelching debate reeks of conspiracy.
It doesn't help that the GW == (AGW & GW) proponents tend to be rabidly antinuclear, and can't solve some of the basic technical problems -- most of which, BTW, could be resolved by placing the panels in orbit, rather than on rooftops.
It doesn't help that a lot of us think "So what? We'll just science the shit out of it".
You don't really have to be a libertarian or a conservative or a "pseudo-skeptic" (whatever the hell that is) to jump down the throat of an AGW proponent who's not an accredited climatologist. In fact, in this forum, it's kind of considered your civic duty, like serving on a jury, or going out to vote.
The average wage of the jobs being discussed is $35,000. That's $1,000 per year to Indiana, $5300 to the Federal SSI/FICA per year, and about $3,000 per year for Federal income tax. So a total of $9300 to various Governments in taxation on that income. What did it cost to keep those $1,100 jobs? $640 per job, per year. So here's where it comes down:
1. Jobs go away. Governments lose $9,300 per year per job in direct taxation, additional losses due to less economic activity (1,100 income streams significantly depleted), and a large increase in expenses due to unemployment claims.
2. Government lets Carrier keep more of its own money. Jobs do not go away. Government retains $8,600 per year per job in direct taxation, the addtional revenue due to the maintained economic activity, and zero unemployment expenses.
Assuming just a 20% gain from the economic activity of the wages, and $15,000 expense for unemployment per job, this translates into a 10 year net gain of $171 million, as compared to a $198 million net loss. All for a $7 million investment. I guess $370 million difference is irrelevant though because Trump.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Which is why you want to look at the Labor Force Participation RATE - it's a percentage, not an absolute. That has steadily decreased. Fewer people are working, but those who have not completely given up (and thus are no longer considered from an unemployment rate standpoint) are finally finding jobs.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
During Obama's term, 20 million more people have been added to the labor force.
And U6, which includes those who are 'no longer considered' has gone down a lot under Obama as well.
It's not that hard to look up..
http://portalseven.com/employm...
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
No one was crying about the different opinions, just pointing out that the site has a broad range of opinions. Microsoft hate may be the only constant ;-)
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
The parent has been modded up, yet every number in it is wrong or irrelevant because the parent poster thinks that Obama was inaugurated in January 2008, when in fact, it was an entire year later.
2008 was a year when the economy really tanked. All of parent's figures reflect the very bad last year of Bush Jr's term.
It should be modded down, not up.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Don't worry - Trump and the new swamp he's building will turn that 4.6% unemployment number into at least 14.6% unemployment before he's through. He campaigned on lies and promises he can't keep, and Pence is no better having destroyed the economy of Indiana in pursuit of religious ideology.
So what you're saying is that a lot of people who have no expertise in a given field believe that they're unrelated qualifications make them an expert.
There's a name for that, it's called a "fallacious appeal to authority", and as you make pretty clear unintentionally, having a higher education does not confer some special ability to make declarations on a field for which you have no particular expertise.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
As usual, the number doesn't count the 'statistically employed' - people who've been out of work for long and have given up looking for work as a result
I have a relative in his 30. His wife is a computer programmer and makes good money. He hasn't worked for years. He stays home and smokes weed all day and is perfectly happy. Are you saying we should be counting him as unemployed?
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
There are 95 million able-bodied people that want to work but have given up. Look at U6 instead of U3. U6 is near an all time high thanks to illegals and opportunistic transnationals, both enabled by Obama, undercutting the markets. The rest of us get to pay the cost in benefits. Hopefully Trump will fix this.
That math works only until other companies start extorting the government to keep from moving jobs out, and they've already been doing that.
You don't really have to be a libertarian or a conservative or a "pseudo-skeptic" (whatever the hell that is) to jump down the throat of an AGW proponent who's not an accredited climatologist.
You don't have to be an accredited climatologist to have a credible opinion on the topic. Just as long as your opinion conforms to the research of nearly all accredited climatologists. It is people who believe this consensus is wrong, and who don't have their own climatology PhD or some other similar knowledge level, who deserve to have their opinions fought and ultimately ignored.
You do bring up poorly constructed arguments held by many AGW defenders, mostly because they aren't all extremely educated on the matter. But those are all very minor infractions, as long as the overall narrative of humans needing to do far more to combat climate change is the theme of their argument. The only time these minor arguments even come up is when a climate change denier (or someone being a devil's advocate) is being pedantic.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Just a lot of fiddling with the numbers. "Everything is fine".
So what you're saying is that a lot of people who have no expertise in a given field believe that they're unrelated qualifications make them an expert.
No, what I'm saying is that their ability to think critically qualifies them generally to make judgements as to whether *your* qualifiecations in unrelated fields make *you* an expert.
And you have been found wanting.
In stark contrast, Obama bailed out GM, kept all 1.5 million jobs, got them to pay back the loans. With interest.
But yay for Carrier not shipping ALL their jobs to Mexico and providing a blueprint for every other company to milk the 'conservative' new government. Can Apple get a $1T tax break?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
800, actually, as 300 jobs were never scheduled or planned to leave.
Besides, all of the authority was at the state-level. Mike Pence could have done it without Trump, if he wanted, the same as say, Tennessee negotiated with VW for a factory in Chattanooga.
Still, these aren't adding jobs, they existed anyway. They aren't increasing anything. What has Trump or Mike Pence done to incease employment or economic activity?
But apparently we don't care about crony capitalism now. Can we hope for the air conditioners and furnaces to be ore efficient, at least? Let people keep more of their own money.
Of course, it probably would be more cost effective to spend 7 million fixing up people's homes.
Heck, spend that money on IR cameras and drones to let people know where they could fix things.
You mean like how he gave Carrier $7M in tax breaks and now they're building a factory for the 1300 jobs they shipped south of the border?
President-elect Trump was quite clear:
Companies are not going to leave the United States anymore without consequences. Not gonna happen. It's not gonna happen.
So if you think you're going to skedaddle without the government offering you money to stay, you have another think coming. Consequences.
Maybe I should threaten to leave.
Can I get just a $500k tax break? I'm not proud, I'd stay for that
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
But I also think it's important to include the value of the jobs that have been created. And for that, I turn to these metrics:
Median household income, which tells us that Americans have not been earning any more money than they had been earning a decade ago.
GDP per capita, which tells us that the value of what the average American has been producing has been rising steadily (adjusted for inflation) since 2009.
So, unemployment is nearly half what it was when Obama took office, but people aren't earning any more, despite them producing more. Begs the question...who's pocketing all that extra money?
No, what you're saying is that people with no expertise in a field feel that they have an ability to critique a rather specialized field they have no expertise in.
It's a fallacious appeal to authority, full stop.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Actually, it has. The way unemployment is calculated was changed in the 1990's.
* presuming (as I do) that GW is real, but not solely attributable to AGW, no one is willing to give a percentage breakdown on cause
OT, but I'll have a go. Generally what we have over the last century or so is a secular warming trend (from greenhouse gasses) with fluctuations from various other factors including volcanoes, aerosols, solar output, internal variability, etc. That secular warming trend is strong enough now that studies find most, (or possibly more than all)) of the warming over the last 50 years can be attributed to greenhouse gasses. See for example Tett et al. 2000, Meehl et al. 2004, Stone et al. 2007, Lean and Rind 2008, Huber and Knutti 2011, Gillett et al. 2012, Wigley and Santer 2012, and Jones et al. 2013.
Jeez, dude. Same comment, few lines up.
Do you repeat yourself much?
https://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=9948373&cid=53408279
Do you repeat yourself much?
Your model assumes that those who would lose their jobs do not find other jobs, or do not move to do so.
Just curious what others think.
Obama picked winners, but failed at it.
It's too hard to debate when you bring actual statistics into the mix. Please stop.
So, you're ok with it? Even if they get enough in tax breaks to build a factory in Mexico for all the jobs they're shipping off? Are you ok with conservative government interfering in business?
Or do you just hate Obama because something something Fox News has the best "facts"?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
You do have to have some command of the research, and so far as I can see the vast majority of pseudo-skeptics here have no such knowledge, and most just simply regurgitate things they've read on denier sites. As I observed many years ago with debating Creationists, you have some extraordinarily arrogant people who think they're objections, often based on ignorance of both the theories and the data, somehow constitute a complete rebuttal of the science. You see this often with solar output and cloud cover claims, with people here thinking, out of what I can only see as completely misguided delusions of grandeur, that they've considered something that two or three generations of climatologists have not.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"Average hourly earnings declined by 3 cents to $25.89."
Tells me nothing of importance in the context of this article. The MEDIAN hour earnings would be a telling sign because the average person earned FAR below $25.89 per hour.
And from I read. Over 50% of workers in America earned less than $30,000 last year. A full third of the workers earned less than a 40 hour week minimum wage job would have provided.
The US Economy adding jobs with slave wages iwn't fixing anything, they aren't even a band-aid and actually makes things worse. The US Economy adding jobs with living wages helps things while minor at best with adding jobs with middle class to upper middle class wages are actually something to be proud of.
Saying you turned a plane crash into a car crash of an economy, while better, isn't near enough.
I dispute those numbers.
There has been a very real growth in nominal median household income, while people claim that real household income is flat even as far back as pre-1970.
Meanwhile, we see in the long term reductions in the percent of that income spent on food and clothing, as well as a 31% increase in spending on shelter while the median size of shelter increases by 56% and the household size (persons) decreased by 15%. That means spending 84% as much on shelter (and 71% per area per person, but that's irrelevant except to say that we're not cramming lots of people into cramped little spaces).
Even since 2005, the food expenditure was 13% and it's now under 12% (personally, it's 3.9% for me, and I eat out a lot--frequently spending $15 for one meal, but not nearly on every meal). Across the past decades, people have been enabled to put more money into savings, buy more and better healthcare, and spend much of their money on entertainment and other discretionary spending.
That doesn't even get into what accounts for "equivalent goods and services" these days.
Dual-core desktops hit the market in 2005. That's quite a shock compared to 66MHz 486DX or 200MHz Pentium Pro chips that cost $200. Never mind the constantly-falling price of RAM, hard disk, and SSD. PCs, costing thousands of dollars in the early 90s, were $350 commodity items in the mid-2000s.
Cell phones of 1983 cost $4,000 for the phone and $55/month for the service, plus 42 cents per minute voice. Two hours per week would net you $250/month service. That's a $9,000 phone and $550/month service today. Somewhere along the line, we got consumer cell phones with $100/month service; then we had $250 flip phones, $40/month service, and text and video messaging; and now we have heterogeneous hex-core smartphones with 2GB RAM for $350, backed by $60/month service with high-speed data (although I pay $35/month to Ting instead).
An ISDN 128K line in 1998 cost $35/month and required a $250 modem. Today I get 200Mbps Comcast service over an $80 modem--it's $54,687 worth of ISDN lines all tied together for $83. Do you remember DSL talking about their wicked-fast "three megs" in 2005? I have 70 of those.
Even cars only standardized transistor radio and air conditioning in the 1950s. Now we have antilock brakes, traction control, EFI, complex suspension systems, air bags, vehicle dynamics that prevent rolling and skidding, sensors and cameras to assist in lane control and parking, and all other manner of highly-complex systems with many moving parts. Somehow, we don't pay a bigger chunk of our income for these things: cars cost about the same proportion of our income, but come loaded. This will remain true when we all have self-driving vehicles.
Your argument is essentially that somebody else has told you that we're producing more, we're not earning more, and our buying power is not increasing. My argument is that the percentage of the median income being spent on goods like food, clothing, and shelter square-footage has gone down; people have spent more on luxury, leisure, savings, and medical care; and that the common goods and services we consume have rolled in more stuff we couldn't have afforded years and decades ago, essentially taking the same portion of our money and giving us more stuff in exchange.
Reality suggests buying power has increased. A lot. People like me--at $75,000 income--are pocketing all the extra money. I bought a house and paid off the mortgage in 3 years. I'm getting ready to buy a car, but I have a couple debts I want to clear out first (adding payments on top of other payments is stupid). I bought myself a $7,000 piano for the house. I put $18,000 into my 401(k) and $3,385 into my HSA this year
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In stark contrast, the bailout was a handout of taxpayer money. Carrier got tax breaks. Which just goes to show that yes, American citizens and companies are indeed overtaxed and lowering taxes is sorely needed.
Also Politico rates Obama's claim that we were paid back everything plus interest as "mostly false": http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jan/22/barack-obama/obama-says-automakers-have-paid-back-all-loans-it-/
The taxpayers lost $9.3 billion on the deal.
One other bit of unaccounted for info.
Carrier was threatened with getting federal contracts pulled if they left.
So if they did leave, those jobs would have stayed. Maybe not in Indiana, but certainly would not have left the US.
So, your numbers are essentially meaningless.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
See, I said GM paid back all their loans. Not TARP as a whole, which is what you're referring to.
And they did:
http://www.factcheck.org/2010/...
"Yes, it’s true that GM paid back its loan from the Treasury Department, in full, ahead of schedule."
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Why do I care, as a non-american nerd, about the USA's semi-fake employment figures? What does that have to do with anything?
Does this editor just spam political news on Slashdot?
In stark contrast, Obama bailed out GM, kept all 1.5 million jobs
And ripped off all of the GM stock holders by stealing their shares and giving them to union cronies in a blatant quid pro quo. Yes, wonderful.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Also, odd that Pence has said that the government shouldn't pick winners & losers:
https://twitter.com/speechboy7...
But he & Trump are doing exactly that.
Are they lying, unethical, or just scummy? Or actually closet Democrats?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
I was enjoying your perspective and your argument, up to the insult at the end. Too bad you had to discredit yourself with it.
Yes, many goods and services have gotten cheaper, though you omit the fact that others, including post-secondary education and health care costs, have risen sharply relative to inflation. And I generally accept your argument that purchasing power has steadily increased. Your summary of my argument was partially incorrect; I never said purchasing power has gone down.
I also don't understand why you think the clause "Someone else has told me" is important enough to bold it. These are economic figures from established agencies for which I have reasoned a valid point: If the value of production goes up this country, why doesn't median income? What people are able to do with the money they earn is irrelevant to the discussion, and only distracts from it.
You are just one drop of water in the ocean of our economy, and using yourself as an example to assert the strength of our national economy is not a valid metric. While you and I* may be doing well enough financially, many people aren't. It's those people that elected Trump to the presidency, and it's those people that currently have the strongest and most determined voice in our country. They're not earning $75,000. They're begging for jobs that would earn them even half that, but those jobs are disappearing. They don't want handouts. They just want a good day's salary for a hard day's labor. There are many reasons for why that's unobtainable, though one of them is that consumers like you and me have demanded with our dollars that prices for goods and services get cheaper, which have driven many of these production jobs overseas to cheaper labor markers.
* Congratulations on your good fortune. I'm earning $65,000 a year and also diverting a lot of money to debt elimination, including student loans, hospital bills for a child, and car payments. No "hot tubs and hookers", as you put it. I don't actually recall complaining in my post that I'm spending all my money and wishing I had more. I'm rather comfortable where I'm at; more would allow me to pay debts faster, save more, and enjoy more, but it's nothing that I envy.
Was GM forced to take the deal? No
Were they given loans in exchange for stock? Yes
Is that stealing? No
Is that a normal business transaction? Yes
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
I want to begin a new party: the STATISTICS party. We have no emotions, we have no views, and we have no values, just cold hard indisputable and dispassionate facts. Anyone want to join me? Seriously, I'm just so tired of these derpy politicians in D.C. who don't believe in data unless it supports their stupid arbitrary opinions and who base all their decisions on emotions. We need more dispassionate people in charge. On matters of fact, base decisions on fact. On matters of ethics/morals, stay away because nowhere does it say the Government has the power to legislate morality. Let people figure out what's right for themselves.
orange haired overload.
where are the IT jobs ???, I have been outsourced over four times in the past 6 years.
I know it's true that you do, but I still find it hard to grasp that people like you exist. You'll believe and repeat everything you hear from your favorite talking heads with no regard for how much it defies logic. How is an interest bearing loan repaid in full a taxpayer handout while a tax break which is to say, they get to put fewer dollars into the government coffers, not a handout?
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Consequences can be both negative and positive. Trump just didn't say which direction he was going with that...
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
It's all about the Fed pumping trillion$ into the economy year after year.
Have you performed a calculation and comparison of what kind of income would be required to live at the standards of the 50's and 60's in the modern age? Until you normalize standards of living you really cannot perform an honest comparison. Hint: the bourgeoisie of the 50's and 60's would more closely fall in alongside those in many of the modern developing nations.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Because liberals have been losing all the talking points since the internet exploded, so there's dissent even in their own enclaves.
Both parties are big government. I can't wait to see how the reps will pay for it though.
They never do.
The funniest/saddest part is this:
'Tax & spend' is much more fiscally conservative than 'just spend'.
Yet Republicans claim to be fiscally conservative. They close their eyes when the R gov't spends & spends. Like it did under Bush Sr, Bush Jr, and Reagan.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
The number of people considered "not in the labor force" increased by nearly 450,000 in November. The total is now at a record high of 95 million.
http://www.bls.gov/news.releas...
The "unemployment rate" that the politicians, economists and media like to talk about is bullshit. It doesn't really mean a hell of a lot when the government can arbitrarily adjust the size of the "labor force" to produce whatever fraction they want. It's not like 450,000 people just decided to retire in November. People fall into this category when their unemployment benefits run out, but they're still unemployed.
IMO, the most relevant metric for assessing the employment situation of the U.S. economy is the employment to population ratio.
http://www.bls.gov/news.releas...
I say it's the most relevant because it can't be so easily manipulated like the other "unemployment rate". Also because the working people, in one way or another, have to support themselves as well as all the non-working people. Of course there are a few who are living on retirement savings, but if they're old enough, they're getting their SS checks too, so they're still being supported in part by working people. That ratio is 59.7% at the moment, which is barely one percentage point above the lows it hit in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown. The whole "economic recovery" and the "unemployment rate" which has gone from 8-9% down to 4.9% is an illusion. The real economy and real employment situation still suck.
Actually, I think an even more interesting metric would throw kids into the equation. They need to be supported too. In that case, we've got a country where ~152 million people are supporting 320 million people, so the unemployment rate is really 52.5%
and here I expected Trumptards to give him credit...
Credible economists (not on TV) said for quite a while the Obama stimulus was not large enough and followed the "lost decade" where Japan did almost the same things. Obama did restore the economy poorly (which is still better than nothing.) Before one blames him as if he was a dictator, you have to realize that the GOP prevented it from being what it should have been and that Obama's poor negotiation skills always had him beginning with a compromise as a starting point. He really wouldn't get a burger without tomato because he'd start by giving up the buns and still end up having to remove the tomato himself. Combine that with an unprecedented opposition with no rational explanation outside of racism or disguised corruption.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
several local news channels say 1100 jobs are staying. The HVAC guys where I work say Carrier stuff is garbage. The wife says they were going to pay the Mexicans $3/hr with no benefits which was also on the local news.
$.02
while people claim that real household income is flat even as far back as pre-1970.
It's not; you need to look at total compensation per hour worked.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Do you employ thousands of people? Cool! What do you manufacture?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
https://projects.propublica.or...
"Below is a list of all companies that failed to repay their bailout money. These transactions are final and will never result in a profit for taxpayers."
BAILOUT FUNDS OUTGOING BAILOUT FUNDS, INCOMING /Net Outstanding Disbursed Returned Dividends + Interest Warrants Other Proceeds
Name Type State Profi
General Motors Auto Company MI -$11,393,681,666 $50,744,648,329 $38,656,806,062 $694,160,600 $0 $0
CIT Group Bank (Public) NY -$2,286,312,500 $2,330,000,000 $0 $43,687,500 $0 $0
Chrysler Auto Company MI -$1,212,849,005 $10,748,284,222 $7,256,590,642 $1,171,263,942 $0 $1,107,580,633
GM received over $50B, and still owes $11B. Chrysler received over $10B and still owes over $1B. I suppose "still owes" is not exactly accurate, as the numbers largely reflect the loss the government took on the equity instruments they forced on the companies and the government has closed the books. It is true that GM paid back the loans with interest, but that was not the full extent of the monies that were extended to GM.
GM and Chrysler bailouts tossed bankruptcy regulations out the window, screwed over primary bond-holders, but saved the union jobs at outrageous expense while setting dangerous precedents.
GM killed the Pontiac brand as a result. I liked Pontiac, even if the some of the best ones were rebranded Holden's shipped over from Australia.
Even looking at take-home pay would blow that argument out of the water. The fact that we can buy more and better things than we could years or decades ago is an increase in real income.
Nobody wants to admit income is actually hard to measure, and that wage income doesn't tell you about buying power because the entire point of technical progress is to make the same things with less labor, and thus to employ the same wage-compensated hours to make more things and more-complex things. It sounds easy when I describe it in terms of wooden chairs versus chairs with cushions, but what happens when we get to talking about cars with fluid couplings versus cars with torsen differentials?
One day, we will have the same cars with self-driving modules in them. Look at Tesla: the self-driving hardware is already in the cars; you pay $2,000 for a software update. Building a car with a self-driving module versus building it without isn't flatly the cost of the module; it's also the cost of labor to make two different assemblies, and logistics to determine how many to supply of each. Those labor and logistics costs are so high in some cases that many cars with a heated seat option actually ship all seats heated, and simply don't install a heating port or connector on the seat itself--that way it gets built the same, and they simply skip a step. How do you gauge how much buying power you've gained now that a car with heated seats or a self-driving software program costs trivially-more than one without, when those things come with all cars and you only pay for the permission to use them?
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Inevitably the "solutions" for AGW are just socialist economics mixed with SJW punishments that, generally, by their own admission will do little or nothing to actually stop the causes of AGW or ameliorate the existing problems. Rich countries should unilaterally tax themselves to give money to poor countries. The West "owes" the world for its pollution. That sort of thing.
It doesn't help with prominent AGW proponents openly declare that it's not about the environment anymore.
For example, former United Nations climate official Ottmar Edenhofer:
"One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with the environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole," said Edenhofer, who co-chaired the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group on Mitigation of Climate Change from 2008 to 2015.
"We redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy," said Edenhofer.
Earlier, he also said that "the next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the world’s resources will be negotiated."
Any number of others in that domain with similar comments.
And already Trump is doing more than Obama.
The definition of "unemployed" has been twisted and morphed to the point that it is meaningless. Having given up all hope in looking for work doesn't mean you are no longer a member of the unemployed class. Yet, the BLS has somehow done the mental gymnastics to arrive at that conclusion.
There are MILLIONS of people who would like to be working, but don't even bother looking for work because they know they won't find any or won't be hired because of their gender, skin color, or other superficial traits. These people are UNEMPLOYED, yet the BLS ignores them in the statistics.
The REAL unemployment rate right now is coming in at 9.9%, which is an outrage.
It wasn't stolen from GM, it was stolen from the investors who owned the stock. Which you know. There wasn't anything "normal" about that transaction. Especially the part where it wasn't really a transaction at all, but a government-enforced transfer of wealth from private investors and retirement funds into the hands of a politicized labor union. Which you know.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
U3 never has included them.
However, U6 always has included those workers. Here's U6. It's also down.
The people from 2008-2016 that still have yet to find work still exist in large numbers.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
When you make it so that after somebody has spent a year looking for a job (might be 6 months now, actually) and then give up is no longer considered unemployed (you need to be both in the labor market AND unemployed AND actively looking for a job to qualify as officially "unemployed"), your unemployment statustics become utterly meaningless. Now if you look at the "labor market participation rate", which is at it's lowest point in many decades (if not ever), an entirely different picture presents itself...
Congress and Obama administration managed to spend (in $ millions) more than $28.7T:
2009 3,517,677
2010 3,457,079
2011 3,603,056
2012 3,536,951
2013 3,454,647
2014 3,506,114
2015 3,688,292
2016 3,951,307 (estimated)
Or about $3.5T per year, while taking in about much less, leading to deficit spending of:
2009 -1,412,688
2010 -1,294,373
2011 -1,299,590
2012 -1,086,963
2013 -679,544
2014 -484,627
2015 -438,406
2016 -615,805
Years after the "crisis" is over and we're still spending about $0.5T more than we take in.
On the day Obama administration took office (with the various Congresses he oversaw), the total national debt was $10,626,877,048,913.08 ($10.6T). As of 11/30/2016 it stands at $19,948,064,697,245.75 ($19.9T).
http://treasurydirect.gov/NP/d...
Excuse me, but the summary seems to be incorrect. You have demonstrated that everything that happens is due to Trump, but you seem to have omitted that point in this article.
Please make the correction.
(or stop blaming him when something unfavorable, and beyond his control, happens between now and inauguration day)
captcha: womanly
Because its a republican doing the handing?
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Where, in India, Mexico, the PRC or maybe Vietnam?
No, what you're saying is that people with no expertise in a field feel that they have an ability to critique a rather specialized field they have no expertise in.
It's a fallacious appeal to authority, full stop.
You are claiming authority without evidence when you argue, but when they argue under the same circumstances, you claim fallacy.
You are engaging in a variant of the false equivalence fallacy called the false inequivallence fallacy.
You right, because you're right, and they're wrong, because they disagree with you, even though you are not an acknowledged expert, nor are you citing sources who are acknowledged experts. Full stop.
Kay. Guess the investors should have just kept the stocks then. Right?
Simple errors. You ignore intangibles. Mostly stress and time.
Stress. Family time. Parenting time. Vacation time. Time not on-call. (All those electronics you tout mainly serve to tether people to work and other responsibilities, as opposed to providing greater quality of life.
These comparisons can be made for nearly all intangible facets of life with great similarity of result.
40 years of women in the workforce fueled by feminism = declining standard of living when all factors are taken into consideration.
Lie or not, you are still off-base.
I have two master's degrees. No full-time work for over eight years. No part time work for over three. Simple: I gave up, because the cost-benefit of looking for work is ridiculous.
I was laughed out of job interviews - at over fifty and with aging degrees (over five years old tech degrees) it was simply not worth any more investment in time or money to look for work or retrain (again). I was told to spend five years on a Phd (for 50K a year adjunct teaching - maybe) or 4+ years to get a K-12 teaching degree and certificate. Simply not worth the risk of all that time and money. Most likely outcome - I am nearly 60 and worn out, and with additional crushing debt.
Nobody on the US left (Democrats and minor parties) or in the center (ie most Republicans) is willing to understand that there are millions of us structurally despondent workers. (including all the skilled and semi-skilled blue collars in a similar situation to us college educated detrius) We simply don't believe anymore that there is a job market for us because, between outsourcing and illegal use of imported workers, our nearly decade-old experience is that it is pointless to even think about looking for work.
THIS is why Trump won. White votes matter.
You don't live in US, no experience with the real job market on the ground.
Almost all jobs that have replaced good, well-paying jobs SUCK. And are taken up by desperate poor and imported illegal workers.
Everyone actually looking for work or working in the lower 90% of jobs knows this. Some ignore it for ideological reasons. but more and more don't. Until the Democrats address this massive structural problem they will keep losing.
I manufactured 3 consumers. I provided jobs for the people I paid.
We are ALL job creators, because that's how a trade economy works. I perform a service and get tokens that I then give you for your service. When you put all the tokens in the hands of those with all the other tokens, you're relying on their desire to risk those tokens to create even more tokens to outweigh the desire to just keep the damn tokens.
We tried this once. Suppose it's time to see it again. I just hope this brave new age of incomplete or misinformation doesn't paint a fake picture of the results.
You're saying that the value of a job isn't as important of the purchasing power created from its wages. And as I said, I generally agree that we have more purchasing power. You don't need to justify that point any further or defend it with an Economics 101 lesson. (While I'm not an economist, I am a mathematician, who, as such, is inclined to tell you that "you and ten people" is eleven people total, though your math indicates a labor pool of ten. Try not to fail mathematics when you argue mathematics.) Arguing about purchasing power being up when median income isn't is like a patient telling his doctor that he's not worried about his cholesterol levels because he exercises everyday and feels fit. In both cases, there are indications that things aren't as healthy as they seem.
I disagree that purchasing power alone, apart from job value, is the only metric worth evaluating. And you already gave the reason why: The existence of capital induces demand for products, which induces a demand for labor. Median income measures the strength salaries have to pay for products and services, which induces job creation. It matters significantly. So when lower-wage jobs replace higher-pay jobs*, when existing jobs producing the same product pay less to laborers, and when jobs move to overseas markets where labor is cheaper, less demand for labor is induced. Less demand for labor creates less demand for work, restricting access to capital among laborers, which restricts their access to goods and services, decreasing quality of life. All this happens, even if our purchasing power has risen relative to median income.
Also, I found your labor force statistics fascinating. Honestly. Though I'd like to know their source.
Finally, I don't disagree people want security, but they want it through a job. People find value in work. If you don't believe me, visit with some blue-collar workers, and listen to Mike Rowe's take on it.
* For example, manufacturing jobs are down, while Leisure and Hospitality jobs are up. It doesn't take an economist to tell you that they don't pay the same. And this is happening in labor pools across the country.
Hint the 2 most expensive things in the US are rent and health insurance. Other costs like food and cars are actually cheaper than many developing nations. Both the high rent and the high cost of medical care are artificial scarcities created due to Environmental and Medical lobbies. USA has a lot of natural resources and well educated folks. Life should be a paradise in the US instead of being a constant struggle.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Unemployment is at lowest since 2007 (mention the number). Labor force participation decreased to 62.7 (mention a different number). Labor force participation is lowest in 40 years (don't mention this number because it makes the unemployment rate meaningless). That's labor force participation percentage -- not absolute number. So you it's not effected by retirements due to aging population. It's the number of people of working age not looking for work and not attending school or job training.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
They used the government's money to pay it back! Paid in full, my ass. Google it yourself.
What if the underground economy is actually burgeoning? We've long equated (or nearly equated) unlawful behavior with unethical behavior, but in most countries around the world where business is heavily regulated, such notions don't exist. Sure there is a strong propaganda to maintain such belief, but what if it's actually crumbling? What if the underground economy is not just selling drugs, gambling, prostitution anymore? What's if it's now manufacturing? Even if we were to discount the driving of business underground due to regulation, there is also a pressure for regular businesses to go underground to avoid litigation risks (which are, by far, the single most damaging risks any business can suffer)?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Wrong:
U.S. government says it lost $11.2 billion on GM bailout: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-gm-treasury-idUSBREA3T0MR20140430
Right. If you own stock, you own it. If it becomes nearly worthless, you own nearly worthless stock. You can choose to sell it or walk away from it ... but no, you don't get it taken from you by the Obama administration who then props it up with government loans so it's once again worth something and then have it handed over to political supporters as a prize.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
> How is an interest bearing loan repaid in full
The US Government lost $11.2 billion: http://time.com/82953/general-motors-bailout-cost-taxpayers-11-2-billion/
> a taxpayer handout
Because the government handed out taxpayer money as a loan when other banks would not. That's a handout. Oh and the government lost $11.2bn from the deal.
> while a tax break which is to say, they get to put fewer dollars into the government coffers, not a handout?
A tax break isn't a handout, it's a tax break. If you drop a dollar bill and someone quickly picks it up, and then decides it wasn't a good idea, are they giving you a handout or are they just letting you keep what was yours to begin with?
even our "left" is essentially right-of-center, see Obama/Billary.
I'm buying a home soon. It'll be a little over 1000 sq/ft because that's what I can afford.
I have 2 cars in my family and will have a third soon (for my kid). This is not by choice. Without a car I need to live where I work. The increased cost of that is several times more than a car, so I put up with a shitty commute. My kid is in college. In 2 years she starts clinicals and they're spread all over town. No car, no clinicals, no degree. I will work harder to have things I don't want so someone can get rich selling them to me.
I can't afford a stay at home mom to cook. So I eat a lot of cheap take out. It tastes bad and it's bad for me, but after two 50 hour weeks nobody in my household is making a good home cooked meal.
I suppose I have a big honking TV though. And it was cheap ($200 bucks). So I'll give you that. Whoop de fucking do. I can drown my sorrows in cheap electronics made by slave labor in China. Thanks.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
What did the average 1950's apartment look like? What kind of medical maladies could 1950's medicine treat/cure?
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
I have lived in 6 countries including 2 developing countries. Believe me the apartments were much better than the current Silicon Valley one and were 1/6th the price.
Also everything that can be cured in the US can be cured in India and you will not have to declare bankruptcy to pay for it either. Medical technology travels very well. The same medicines, same scanning equipment, same robotic arms are used in India as well in US but medical care is 20 times more expensive in the US. (Other fields things are more expensive like Cars and gas cost a lot more in India.)
**Life is too short to be serious**
Of course he should be counted as unemployed. He's not working - he's unemployed. The manipulation of statistics to help the administration in power has been going on for far too long. Obama has actually been (to my knowledge) pretty good about this - not manipulating things to his advantage. Clinton was awful. U6 is only as low as it is today due to "adjustments" he had BLS make in 1994.
Labor Force Participation Rate in the United States decreased to 62.70 percent in November from 62.80 percent in October of 2016. This isn't retirees, but working age adults who could work. The total number of working age people not working is at an all time high. Those people not participating in the work force aren't counted as being unemployed, so when people stop looking, the unemployment rate drops. Doesn't sound as good when you know the facts, does it?
I will be unemployed after the 15th again. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Workforce participation numbers have gone down because of baby boomers retiring and stubbornly refusing to not die instantly. That metric goes up and down over the course of history correlated directly to birth booms from about (wait for it) 65 years earlier.
So you don't realize this because you are (a) fucking retarded and (b) a liar, but you are blaming Obama for the post WW2 baby boom.
GM lost $11 billion for the US Government. Hardly a "win". And that was direct cash just given out, not a reduction in taxes paid to the State. And there were about 243,000 employees at GM at the time, not 1.5 million. You really do like lying a lot, don't you?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Again - it's the participation RATE. That's a percentage. I know it's hard to understand - but if there are 100 workers, and 90 have jobs, then the unemployment rate is 10%. If we add 20 more people to the mix, and still have 90 jobs, we have a 25% unemployment rate. If 20 of the 30 that were unemployed are now off of unemployment, and we still have 90 jobs, we now have an unemployment rate of 10% again - but we actually have 20 also no longer "counted". So we have 30 people without jobs, but only "officially" have 10 without jobs. That's why the labor force participation rate matters - not just the unemployment rate.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
It wasn't taken. It was exchanged. If they didn't like it, they shouldn't have faked a bankruptcy just so they could pressure the government into bailing them out and letting them reorganize under government auspices that let them screw everybody they had a contract with.
Don't blame Obama because the auto industry convinced America it was essential, and don't blame Obama for GM's and Chrysler's corrupt executives. He couldn't just shoot them.
The 1.5 million refers to jobs across the auto industry. In case you don't understand car factories, they don't make all the parts in-house, but purchase many of them from third-party suppliers like Borg-Warner, Cummins and Honeywell.
And yes, that would all have been quite disruptive, and you'd have blamed Obama for it even as you oppose his actions now.
You may think nobody has noticed your bullshit level, but they have.
Cool, so we can say more than 1,100 jobs were saved with the maintaining and expanding of the Carrier factory in Indiana as well, then! So now we can say that Trump has already saved 6,800 jobs (using the same ratio of direct-to-indirect jobs saved as for the GM calculation). So around $100 per year per job saved - that's a massive return on investment!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
That would be good news, if those numbers excluded seasonal holiday hires. November numbers are misleading. Considering moat of the hires are temporary holiday jobs.