I find it hard to believe that I am actually sort of hoping to have the opportunity to vote for Mr. Trump. I don't see anybody else being able to beat the establishment republicans in the primaries.
I would even forgive his childish comments about Fiorina's appearance. I know it shows that at heart he is just a 10 year old bully. Still he seems vastly to be preferred over Clinton or Bush.
This is really surreal for me.
I have always been of the opinion that voting machines are designed to be operated with only one hand, as most voters need the other to hold their nose while they make their selections.
But this is really ridiculous. Could we get Jesse Ventura out of retirement, perhaps?
As the Federal Reserve readies to start choking off the economy, the overwhelming majority stand to suffer as we have yet to recover from the “Great Recession” and the “Labor Participation” rate is at record setting lows!
It’s a question of integrity and accountability in continuing to give us a chance to catch up on the standard of living that our parents enjoyed before we bore the weight of the financial system as it teetered on the edge of oblivion due to some thoughtless decisions by those who are well insulated from poverty.
Please allow us marginally employed a steady good day's wage for a good day's work. Since it is a struggle of part time jobs in attempts to make simple $600 monthly rent payment and additional to put groceries on the table, I guess we are supposed to be convinced that prosperity is here.
One of my contract jobs that recently ended sometimes didn’t even pay for gas needed to deliver the Edible Arrangements, another contract limited my auto dealership test drives to one location visit per year. While payment for my bank secret shopper efforts are undependably invoiced and paid 60 days later unlike my fourth company where I get paid every 2 weeks for trimming hedges.
It could still be worse; last year after scrapping up $500 cash to get my DirecTV satellite certification, I begged and borrowed for 3 months for expense money to pay gas and tolls to do installs before I finally started receiving payments towards my wages instead of the full amount due to me.
And then there is my unpaid truck driving wages due since workers desperate for income must accept risks of non-payment issues. Since Federal, State or Local authorities do not enforce the laws when trucking companies cheat the drivers, paychecks usually fall far short of compensation wages I actually earned.
Complaints of extensive promised but unpaid diverted loads in the Texas oil country fall on deaf ears at the Department of Labor where they focus on “minimum wage issues” to companies who stretch the truth and mislead drivers about allowable axle spreads to leave the drivers personally liable for the thousands in overweight fines merely to be replaced with more of the trusting naive willing to take a chance to put food on their family’s table.
And the local law enforcement who decline to prosecute the fully documented thousands in bad check’s paid to the drivers or the punishment for those refusing to drive CDL risking overweight, poorly maintained death traps and fatigue conditions potentially endangering the unsuspecting public.
Inflation concerns would be better muted and municipal service expense burdens better shared with higher property tax rates on the glut of vacant commercial properties. Fewer vacant properties equals more business and jobs.
It’s a question of integrity and accountability to allow us marginally employed to continue with prospects of a steady good day's wage for a good day's work. Give us a chance to catch up on the standard of living that our parents enjoyed before we bore the weight of the financial system as it teetered on the edge of oblivion due to some thoughtless decisions by those who are well insulated from poverty.
I kid you not, here it is an economic site focused on middle class, the "rest of us", economics and I personally completely forgot about labor day.
*That* is how badly the holiday and labor are forgotten, into the dust with a heap of historical labor photographs when there was a labor movement in the world.
* I used to live in Philly and didn't know that David Cay Johnston was once an investigative reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer. This post he wrote is (as usual) spot on.
A restaurant in San Francisco ("Eatsa") is the first in a restaurant chain with national ambitions: To be almost fully automated.
There are no waiters or even an order taker behind a counter. There is no counter. There are unseen people helping to prepare the food, but there are plans to fully automate that process, too, if it can be done less expensively than employing people.
Automation is transforming every industry. Business owners look to substitute machines for human labor. It happened to blue-collar workers in factories and white-collar workers in banks and even law firms. With self-driving vehicles, it may happen in the taxi and trucking industries. Robots and artificial intelligence machines are expected to transform health care.
First. it should be clearly understood that Unemployment" is a relatively meaningless metric since the "Civilian Labor Force" has now fallen to below 50% of the entire US population. The association between GDP growth and "Compensation of Employees" is clearly far more relevant than the touted associations of economic growth with monetary easing, employment headcounts, or all the rest of the rot bandied about.
There's more of course. The above and several other FRED charts -- far better reflecting the ability of our economic policy makers (and legislators) to keep our nation's citizenry productively employed, are shown on http://www.bobmeijer.com/sitebuildercontent/IEM_D.htm
"Virtual manufacturers" (aka “factoryless goods producers” aka “wholesale traders”) are companies that don't do any actual domestic manufacturing themselves, because they outsourced everything offshore (e.g. Apple, Nike, Cisco, etc.)
Now, U.S. federal agencies (involved in economic data) are proposing to reclassify these “wholesale traders” as “domestic manufacturers.” This means that their sales would be counted as U.S. production and their products that are made offshore and imported into the U. S. for sale would no longer be counted as imports.
i'm using Exhibit 10 in the full pdf for this report, which shows monthly imports & exports in chained 2009 dollars, so presumably all that adjusting with the import/export price indices has already been done to arrive at those figures...i've done it the long way, which is tedious and as you know, often inaccurate...
the caveat here of course is that July is just one month, and these same trade figures would have to be maintained through August & September my GDP estimates to play out...that's still 2 months away
Have you figured out all of the import-export price indexes? That's where my own estimates get toasted is with the changing figures. China I believe just currency manipulated and they are the largest trade deficit.
the labor force participation rate fell from 62.623% in July to 62.552% in August, a new 38 year low, albeit officially statistically unchanged at 62.6%..
according to the full factory orders report, new orders for ships and boats were up 19.5%, which lifted new transport orders to a 5.0% increase...they weren't listed in the advance report, leading to my confusion on the numbers that were listed..
National Employment Law Project (NELP: Sept. 2, 2015)
Occupational Wage Declines Since the Great Recession: Low-Wage Occupations See Largest Real Wage Declines
"Most workers have failed to see improvements in their paychecks. In fact, taking into account cost-of-living increases since the recession officially ended in 2009, wages have actually declined for most U.S. workers. Inflation-adjusted or “real” wages reflect workers’ true purchasing power; as real wages decline, so too does the amount of goods and services workers can buy with those wages. The failure of wages to merely keep pace with the cost of living is not a recent phenomenon. The declines in real wages since the Great Recession continue a decades-long trend of wage stagnation for workers in the United States."
Since the 1970's wages did not stagnate for the vast majority because growth in productivity, income and wealth creation collapsed.
Productivity still managed to rise substantially in recent decades, but essentially none of this productivity growth flowed into the paychecks of typical American workers.
Pay failed to track productivity primarily due to more wage and salary income accumulating at the very top of the pay scale and the shift in the share of overall national income went to owners of capital and away from the pay of employees.
Income generated in an average hour of work in the U.S. economy has not trickled down to raise hourly pay for typical workers.
Since 1973, hourly compensation of the vast majority of American workers has not risen in line with economy-wide productivity. In fact, hourly compensation has almost stopped rising at all.
If the hourly pay of typical American workers had kept pace with productivity growth since the 1970s, then there would have been no rise in income inequality during that period.
The economic evidence indicates that the rising gap between productivity and pay for the vast majority likely has nothing to do with any stagnation in the typical worker’s individual productivity.
* A former member of the Fed was on Fox News the other day and had said "increased productivity" and "tax cuts" were very important for "growth" — and that more growth would best resolve the matter of "wealth redistribution" and "income inequality".
But isn't that called "trickle-down economics" — when a rising tide is supposed to lift all boats? And isn't that what we've had for the past 35 years — all while wages have remained stagnant?
And didn't we have any "growth" during that time when the DOW went from 950 in Sept. 1980 to over 16,000 in Sept. 2015?
From a recent New York Times article "The Neverending Fight to Save Social Security"
Becaused the disability trust fund in projected for a shortfall next year, instead of a reallocation from the old age fund, Republicans are floating the idea of forcing the disability fund to borrow the money it needs from the retirement fund. They seem to think that borrowing is more fiscally responsible than reallocation. It’s not. In fact, borrowing would make the disability situation worse, because without more tax revenue going into the system – the solution Republicans refuse to consider – there would be no way to repay the loan. Taking out a loan with no ability to repay would only dig the hole deeper. And when the hole is deep and dark and getting deeper, you can be sure that Republicans will sound the alarm over the fund’s immense debt, for which draconian benefit cuts are the only answer they can think of.
IN OTHER SOCIAL SECURITY NEWS...
The latest annual report from the Social Security trustees is projecting no COLA for 2016, because the price of oil has fallen so much it’s undercut all the other expenses considered when determining how much seniors get to live on. But it is projecting a big increase in Medicare premiums, which is going to hurt no matter how you look at it. http://www.benefitspro.com/2015/08/14/no-social-security-cola-likely-in-...
From a recent report: "The adjustment for January 1, 2016 is based on the increase in the CPI for the third quarter of 2015 over the third quarter of 2014. As shown in Figure 1, the CPI-W dipped substantially from the 2014 third-quarter average of 234.2 and, although it has turned around, is still below that benchmark ... The 2015 Social Security Trustees Report released last month assumed that there will be no cost of living adjustment (COLA) for recipients of Social Security benefits in 2016 due to this year’s low inflation rate." http://crr.bc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/IB_15-14.pdf
So seniors or those on disability who don’t drive at all (or those who drive very little) and doesn't benefit from cheap oil, won’t get an increase in their COLAs next year.
Government workers are so lucky to have good-paying jobs with great benefits ---and they’re getting a COLA too! --- but still they're complaining!!! (Like the GOP, I’m starting to turn against government workers.)
We need to realize that Reagan increased Social Security taxes 33 years ago in anticipation of today. There is a 2.7 trillion dollar surplus owed Social Security by the Federal Government. This debt is a direct result of Republican tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy and, under Bush II, the middle class as well. Social Security revenues are down because job killing trade treaties are reducing both employment and wages. Corporate America and the uber wealthy have benefited from both. Further the Boskin Commission under Clinton recalculated the way inflation and Social Security adjustments were measured resulting in lower rates that are bogus.
The truth is that both Social Security and Medicare are funded separately from the Federal Government. They were included in the overall Federal budget under Johnson to hide the true cost of the Vietnam War. Virtually the entire deficit is due to everything except Social Security and Medicare. The truth is Republicans are against Social Security because they are deadbeats. The Government shutdowns prove they simply don’t want to pay the bills they themselves have run up. The Social Security income cap must be eliminated and unearned income (rents, dividends, interest, royalties and capital gains going mostly to the wealthy) must be made subject to the Employee portion of both Social Security and Medicare. Social Security payments should be adjusted upward and the inflation calculation returned to reality. In short the truth is the exact opposite of what the Republicans say and the only way that today’s young people will not receive their Social Security is if they allow the Republicans to take it away from them.
Good point about the FICA tax cut, if the concern was for SS and Medicare solvency, why on earth would the revenue stream be cut? made no sense then and even less so now
Another good point about wage stagnation limiting contributions as well There is an excellent article over at Manufacturing and Technology News linking wage stagnation and income inequality to stock buy backs
I find it hard to believe that I am actually sort of hoping to have the opportunity to vote for Mr. Trump. I don't see anybody else being able to beat the establishment republicans in the primaries.
I would even forgive his childish comments about Fiorina's appearance. I know it shows that at heart he is just a 10 year old bully. Still he seems vastly to be preferred over Clinton or Bush.
This is really surreal for me.
I have always been of the opinion that voting machines are designed to be operated with only one hand, as most voters need the other to hold their nose while they make their selections.
But this is really ridiculous. Could we get Jesse Ventura out of retirement, perhaps?
As the Federal Reserve readies to start choking off the economy, the overwhelming majority stand to suffer as we have yet to recover from the “Great Recession” and the “Labor Participation” rate is at record setting lows!
It’s a question of integrity and accountability in continuing to give us a chance to catch up on the standard of living that our parents enjoyed before we bore the weight of the financial system as it teetered on the edge of oblivion due to some thoughtless decisions by those who are well insulated from poverty.
Please allow us marginally employed a steady good day's wage for a good day's work. Since it is a struggle of part time jobs in attempts to make simple $600 monthly rent payment and additional to put groceries on the table, I guess we are supposed to be convinced that prosperity is here.
One of my contract jobs that recently ended sometimes didn’t even pay for gas needed to deliver the Edible Arrangements, another contract limited my auto dealership test drives to one location visit per year. While payment for my bank secret shopper efforts are undependably invoiced and paid 60 days later unlike my fourth company where I get paid every 2 weeks for trimming hedges.
It could still be worse; last year after scrapping up $500 cash to get my DirecTV satellite certification, I begged and borrowed for 3 months for expense money to pay gas and tolls to do installs before I finally started receiving payments towards my wages instead of the full amount due to me.
And then there is my unpaid truck driving wages due since workers desperate for income must accept risks of non-payment issues. Since Federal, State or Local authorities do not enforce the laws when trucking companies cheat the drivers, paychecks usually fall far short of compensation wages I actually earned.
Complaints of extensive promised but unpaid diverted loads in the Texas oil country fall on deaf ears at the Department of Labor where they focus on “minimum wage issues” to companies who stretch the truth and mislead drivers about allowable axle spreads to leave the drivers personally liable for the thousands in overweight fines merely to be replaced with more of the trusting naive willing to take a chance to put food on their family’s table.
And the local law enforcement who decline to prosecute the fully documented thousands in bad check’s paid to the drivers or the punishment for those refusing to drive CDL risking overweight, poorly maintained death traps and fatigue conditions potentially endangering the unsuspecting public.
Inflation concerns would be better muted and municipal service expense burdens better shared with higher property tax rates on the glut of vacant commercial properties. Fewer vacant properties equals more business and jobs.
It’s a question of integrity and accountability to allow us marginally employed to continue with prospects of a steady good day's wage for a good day's work. Give us a chance to catch up on the standard of living that our parents enjoyed before we bore the weight of the financial system as it teetered on the edge of oblivion due to some thoughtless decisions by those who are well insulated from poverty.
I kid you not, here it is an economic site focused on middle class, the "rest of us", economics and I personally completely forgot about labor day.
*That* is how badly the holiday and labor are forgotten, into the dust with a heap of historical labor photographs when there was a labor movement in the world.
"This Labor Day, it's time for the U.S. to catch up with the rest of the world."
http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20150906_This_Labor_Day__it_s_time_...
* I used to live in Philly and didn't know that David Cay Johnston was once an investigative reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer. This post he wrote is (as usual) spot on.
A restaurant in San Francisco ("Eatsa") is the first in a restaurant chain with national ambitions: To be almost fully automated.
There are no waiters or even an order taker behind a counter. There is no counter. There are unseen people helping to prepare the food, but there are plans to fully automate that process, too, if it can be done less expensively than employing people.
Automation is transforming every industry. Business owners look to substitute machines for human labor. It happened to blue-collar workers in factories and white-collar workers in banks and even law firms. With self-driving vehicles, it may happen in the taxi and trucking industries. Robots and artificial intelligence machines are expected to transform health care.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/09/upshot/restaurant-of-the-future-servic...
First. it should be clearly understood that Unemployment" is a relatively meaningless metric since the "Civilian Labor Force" has now fallen to below 50% of the entire US population. The association between GDP growth and "Compensation of Employees" is clearly far more relevant than the touted associations of economic growth with monetary easing, employment headcounts, or all the rest of the rot bandied about.
There's more of course. The above and several other FRED charts -- far better reflecting the ability of our economic policy makers (and legislators) to keep our nation's citizenry productively employed, are shown on http://www.bobmeijer.com/sitebuildercontent/IEM_D.htm
"Virtual manufacturers" (aka “factoryless goods producers” aka “wholesale traders”) are companies that don't do any actual domestic manufacturing themselves, because they outsourced everything offshore (e.g. Apple, Nike, Cisco, etc.)
Now, U.S. federal agencies (involved in economic data) are proposing to reclassify these “wholesale traders” as “domestic manufacturers.” This means that their sales would be counted as U.S. production and their products that are made offshore and imported into the U. S. for sale would no longer be counted as imports.
http://economyincrisis.org/content/why-it-is-important-to-know-where-pro...
Bill McBride has a new post up showing the prime aged work force (24-54) is growing again...and that group is still lagging in labor force participation...
i'm using Exhibit 10 in the full pdf for this report, which shows monthly imports & exports in chained 2009 dollars, so presumably all that adjusting with the import/export price indices has already been done to arrive at those figures...i've done it the long way, which is tedious and as you know, often inaccurate...
the caveat here of course is that July is just one month, and these same trade figures would have to be maintained through August & September my GDP estimates to play out...that's still 2 months away
Have you figured out all of the import-export price indexes? That's where my own estimates get toasted is with the changing figures. China I believe just currency manipulated and they are the largest trade deficit.
I need to go calculate all of the LPR's, this is astounding and cannot possibly be just baby boomers.
the labor force participation rate fell from 62.623% in July to 62.552% in August, a new 38 year low, albeit officially statistically unchanged at 62.6%..
I hate covering the advance report for it's always revised. Why does Wall Street jump on this when they know it won't hold?
according to the full factory orders report, new orders for ships and boats were up 19.5%, which lifted new transport orders to a 5.0% increase...they weren't listed in the advance report, leading to my confusion on the numbers that were listed..
National Employment Law Project (NELP: Sept. 2, 2015)
Occupational Wage Declines Since the Great Recession: Low-Wage Occupations See Largest Real Wage Declines
"Most workers have failed to see improvements in their paychecks. In fact, taking into account cost-of-living increases since the recession officially ended in 2009, wages have actually declined for most U.S. workers. Inflation-adjusted or “real” wages reflect workers’ true purchasing power; as real wages decline, so too does the amount of goods and services workers can buy with those wages. The failure of wages to merely keep pace with the cost of living is not a recent phenomenon. The declines in real wages since the Great Recession continue a decades-long trend of wage stagnation for workers in the United States."
http://www.nelp.org/publication/occupational-wage-declines-since-the-gre...
11-page paper:
http://www.nelp.org/content/uploads/Occupational-Wage-Declines-Since-the...
EPI BRIEFING PAPER (Sept. 2, 2015)
Since the 1970's wages did not stagnate for the vast majority because growth in productivity, income and wealth creation collapsed.
Productivity still managed to rise substantially in recent decades, but essentially none of this productivity growth flowed into the paychecks of typical American workers.
Pay failed to track productivity primarily due to more wage and salary income accumulating at the very top of the pay scale and the shift in the share of overall national income went to owners of capital and away from the pay of employees.
Income generated in an average hour of work in the U.S. economy has not trickled down to raise hourly pay for typical workers.
Since 1973, hourly compensation of the vast majority of American workers has not risen in line with economy-wide productivity. In fact, hourly compensation has almost stopped rising at all.
If the hourly pay of typical American workers had kept pace with productivity growth since the 1970s, then there would have been no rise in income inequality during that period.
The economic evidence indicates that the rising gap between productivity and pay for the vast majority likely has nothing to do with any stagnation in the typical worker’s individual productivity.
http://s1.epi.org/files/2015/understanding-productivity-pay-divergence-f...
* A former member of the Fed was on Fox News the other day and had said "increased productivity" and "tax cuts" were very important for "growth" — and that more growth would best resolve the matter of "wealth redistribution" and "income inequality".
But isn't that called "trickle-down economics" — when a rising tide is supposed to lift all boats? And isn't that what we've had for the past 35 years — all while wages have remained stagnant?
And didn't we have any "growth" during that time when the DOW went from 950 in Sept. 1980 to over 16,000 in Sept. 2015?
From a recent New York Times article "The Neverending Fight to Save Social Security"
Becaused the disability trust fund in projected for a shortfall next year, instead of a reallocation from the old age fund, Republicans are floating the idea of forcing the disability fund to borrow the money it needs from the retirement fund. They seem to think that borrowing is more fiscally responsible than reallocation. It’s not. In fact, borrowing would make the disability situation worse, because without more tax revenue going into the system – the solution Republicans refuse to consider – there would be no way to repay the loan. Taking out a loan with no ability to repay would only dig the hole deeper. And when the hole is deep and dark and getting deeper, you can be sure that Republicans will sound the alarm over the fund’s immense debt, for which draconian benefit cuts are the only answer they can think of.
IN OTHER SOCIAL SECURITY NEWS...
The latest annual report from the Social Security trustees is projecting no COLA for 2016, because the price of oil has fallen so much it’s undercut all the other expenses considered when determining how much seniors get to live on. But it is projecting a big increase in Medicare premiums, which is going to hurt no matter how you look at it.
http://www.benefitspro.com/2015/08/14/no-social-security-cola-likely-in-...
From a recent report: "The adjustment for January 1, 2016 is based on the increase in the CPI for the third quarter of 2015 over the third quarter of 2014. As shown in Figure 1, the CPI-W dipped substantially from the 2014 third-quarter average of 234.2 and, although it has turned around, is still below that benchmark ... The 2015 Social Security Trustees Report released last month assumed that there will be no cost of living adjustment (COLA) for recipients of Social Security benefits in 2016 due to this year’s low inflation rate."
http://crr.bc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/IB_15-14.pdf
So seniors or those on disability who don’t drive at all (or those who drive very little) and doesn't benefit from cheap oil, won’t get an increase in their COLAs next year.
But Federal workers are on track to get 1.3 percent pay hike in January. Several federal employee organizations, with support from some Democrats in Congress, are pushing for a 3.8 percent increase.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2015/08/31/1-3-percen...
But those on disabilities and seniors are getting a finger shoved up their arse – with some facing hikes in Medicare premiums.
Now federal workers have launched a White House petition for a ‘meaningful pay raise’ above the 1.3 percent Obama is giving.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2015/09/01/federal-wo...
Government workers are so lucky to have good-paying jobs with great benefits ---and they’re getting a COLA too! --- but still they're complaining!!! (Like the GOP, I’m starting to turn against government workers.)
Yes.
We need to realize that Reagan increased Social Security taxes 33 years ago in anticipation of today. There is a 2.7 trillion dollar surplus owed Social Security by the Federal Government. This debt is a direct result of Republican tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy and, under Bush II, the middle class as well. Social Security revenues are down because job killing trade treaties are reducing both employment and wages. Corporate America and the uber wealthy have benefited from both. Further the Boskin Commission under Clinton recalculated the way inflation and Social Security adjustments were measured resulting in lower rates that are bogus.
The truth is that both Social Security and Medicare are funded separately from the Federal Government. They were included in the overall Federal budget under Johnson to hide the true cost of the Vietnam War. Virtually the entire deficit is due to everything except Social Security and Medicare. The truth is Republicans are against Social Security because they are deadbeats. The Government shutdowns prove they simply don’t want to pay the bills they themselves have run up. The Social Security income cap must be eliminated and unearned income (rents, dividends, interest, royalties and capital gains going mostly to the wealthy) must be made subject to the Employee portion of both Social Security and Medicare. Social Security payments should be adjusted upward and the inflation calculation returned to reality. In short the truth is the exact opposite of what the Republicans say and the only way that today’s young people will not receive their Social Security is if they allow the Republicans to take it away from them.
Good point about the FICA tax cut, if the concern was for SS and Medicare solvency, why on earth would the revenue stream be cut? made no sense then and even less so now
Another good point about wage stagnation limiting contributions as well There is an excellent article over at Manufacturing and Technology News linking wage stagnation and income inequality to stock buy backs
http://www.manufacturingnews.com/news/2015/Stock-Buybacks-0827151.html
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