This sounds like the best plan to me. I am 27 going on 28 in July 2011. I and some family and other people I talked to have been screwed by banks (two banks myself). The first bank was stealing money through phony overdraft fees on regular bank accounts without any discrimination between weather the customer they stole from was rich or poor, both were beginning to loose money. I as a teen at the time supposedly owed them, but I never paid the crooks as they had already stolen $200.00 from me. Heart breaking for a working low-income teen, but when I talked about it to random people around town, I found some richer people were missing amounts like $2,000-$3,000 on phony overdraft fees. I should have blown a whistle or someone should have. The second bank did it and got busted, everyone who banked there including me got a check for the missing money or it was applied to the outstanding balance.The problem is that I will never get restitution from the first bank, because banks are only required to repay back five years and that happened more than five years ago. I will never trust another bank again.
This is to everyone, I really do not care if someone does not even have an undergraduate degree, some of this stuff one can understand, I fully expect people to try to learn it. If someone can balance their check book and knows even basic algebra, that should be enough. Pause, stare at a graph, stare at a number then stare at the graph again, then read the surrounding text.
The point is to focus on the data, the statistics, the theory, the numbers.
Like this, no, this is not some "grand conspiracy" by people at the BLS, mandated to "lie to you". They are simply numbers people for the most part.
The problem is the methods themselves and as I point out, that is partly Congress's job as well as the Secretary of Labor, who IS political and will lie to you...
The point being, this post is to talk about the topic at hand, which is this month's unemployment report.
If one did and tried to learn this stuff, then and only then would one see the government economists and regular people are not "out to get you", more we need refinements and improvements in data collection and methodology.
First, I'ld like to say that I'm far from being an expect on economics. In addition, I don't have a four year degree that would qualify me to question those that are experts and experienced. But, I was blessed with good ol' fashioned common sense, which does qualify me to question the obvious BS and propaganda put out to the public by our government. After all, when was the last time our government was completely honest with us?
Now, Back on topic.
You asked, "Where are the jobs?"
(1) Do we manufacture every part and component of every product assembled/produced in the U.S.A.?
(2) Do businesses hire more employees during peak demand, or simply increase the days and hours of those already on their payrolls?
(3) Is it possible that our economy could produce more without adding workers?
(4) Are we to assume that any increases in domestic output, automatically equates to more workers on payrolls?
Consideration has to be given to the fact that increases in payrolls are only jobs replacing a small portion of the jobs lost. Any increases at this time does not address the growing distance between jobs available and jobs needed. During good times and bad times, it's normal to see fluctuations in both domestic output and the employment rate. It's easy to get lost and sidetracked when concentrating on everything between point "A" and point "Z". Where point "A" represents the root causes, and point "Z" represents present circumstances and situations ( results ). Everything in between points "A" and "Z" represents effects and temporary fluctuations.
Should we be impressed and excited because unemployment went from 9.4% down to 9.0%? Should we be impressed and excited because we see an increase in GDP? The obvious answer to both questions is no. Why? Because fluctuations are normal, and doesn't indicate a trend over many months. Another way to look at it is whether we're actually producing more and importing less, or merely producing more with more man-hours working more days per week, yet still importing the same or more. The problem is one of not having a constant to work with. Almost every component concerning domestic output and employment is a variable.
The jobs remain where they've been for several decades now. We've exported our jobs to cheap foreign labor. We're not going to re-open the steel mills, the textile mills, the electronic assembly plants, nor are we going to bring back the furniture, farm equipment, tool, toy, hardware, or any other industry lost through unfair, unjust, and one-sided foreign trade agreements.
Out-sourcing jobs offshore enhances the bottom line on the P&L sheets of businesses, thus the continuing practice. Since out-sourcing basically goes unpenalized, and unrestricted, why hire American workers?
Where would new jobs come from? We're not creating new industries, nor are we developing technology that would require a huge amount of manpower to run and maintain. And, we're certainly not doing anything to bring lost industries back to this country.
Again, until "A" changes dramatically, "Z" will remain the same, or get worse. Everything in between will fluctuate and give a false sense that things are improving; i.e. employment and GDP. The truth is that we're not gaining on the jobs front, nor are we gaining on the amount produced for domestic consumption. It'll be a long long time before we wean ourselves from cheap foreign imports. As it stands now, we don't have the catalyst to narrow the gap between the growing demand for living wage jobs and living wage opportunities.
Of course, we could always drastically reduce our standard of living in order to compete with cheap sweatshop child labor in foreign countries. Remember, "Global Economy" means equalization to the lowest level. We're presently living under "forced economics" via our import and energy dependency. It's all magic, smoke and mirrors, that's presently producing favorable economic numbers. The truth is down on Main Street America.
Well, I'm reading the "Event" now and Bernanke should be blasted for ignoring oil and food commodities increasing. He's out of his mind not to be concerned, there is a lot of evidence and analysis that oil shocks precipitate recessions. Not a good thing and the correlations are pretty strong.
So, here comes Krugman, this is redux. We did a whole lot of analysis during the oil bubble spike in 2008...Krguman argues there must be supply somewhere,
myself, I lean towards our friends, derivatives again and speculators...
the main argument is commodities must follow the laws of physical supply and demand because at some time someone must take possession of the physical commodity, therefore increases in futures and commodities must be simply a demand problem.
Because about the time oil dropped, we got Financial Armageddon, so the entire oil commodities speculative bubble was speculators or actual demand, really never got resolved.
That said, there sure is a lot of evidence that our lovely derivatives traders and speculators were at work, including a Krugman back up....a bunch of oil tankers holding loads way out to sea...parked. Someone took a snapshot.
So, this entire blame Bernanke QE2 freak out, honest I'm not so sure, but there is no doubt spikes in commodities were going on in 2008, before TARP, before M2 on rocket fuel and before QE2...
That said, ignoring oil, i.e. energy and food is truly not in reality and accordingly the bloggers and blasters should be out paddling him with their words today. Bad Bernanke! Bad!
To all you commie "greed haters". Was Mao "greedy" when he killed 60 million country men? Was Stalin "greedy" when he killed his 30 million (low estimate)?
The greatest atrocities in history are always committed by the "regulators".
And by the way Ayn Rand believed freedom and the gold standard.
Apparently these concepts are beyond your ability to process.
Sticking with the topic at hand, the real question is Where are the Jobs?
We had 3.2% GDP growth in Q4 2010, we see massive trade deficits, we have soaring productivity, so somewhere in these numbers are a host of jobs offshore outsourced. I'm sorry it's just gotta be there, you cannot create economic activity with dead people.
You know it's there, but proving it is a whole other ball game, so maybe I should start another statistical exercise to locate those missing jobs which would enable a 3.2% GDP growth.
You cannot compare not in the labor force from December 2010 to January 2011, that number is invalid due to the one time yearly noninstitional civilian population adjustment that represents 12 months or more of data errors.
You cannot compare employed or unemployed from December 2010 to January 2011 due to the above reason. From the BLS chart, you can see, all is derived from the noninstitional civilian population number. Therefore, totals that are not rates include the population adjustment and dramatically skew the numbers between these two months.
I know this is very confusing and as implied in the above post, this is absurd to only put in a population adjustment representing 12 months or more in the last month's data point, it should at minimum be adjusted by month and at maximum, well, first, they need more than 60k households, 2nd, they need to update to 2010 faster, 3rd, instead of this decade long antiquated Census run, they need an alternative measure introduced that can estimate population changes per month on data from a variety of other sources...finally they plain need to include immigration status! I believe Congress, not the BLS, controls the purse strings, minimum for new raw data collection methods on population.
If I make a mistake, I sure hope some economist or statistician who is an expert does an anonymous drive-by comment to point it out...and all of you government people, I promise to never reveal your IP address if you're too chicken to say something. ;0
But I do try to be accurate. If I made a mistake and find out about it, I will edit and update a post to correct it immediately.
I hate the idea of adding more noise to the stream.
That said, the MTGM just pointed to an ASTOUNDING mistake by the Associated Press, here.....
I think Delong does "why can't we have a better press corps" almost every day..but what do ya want when they try to offshore outsource Journalists who probably majored in writing or communications and odds on probably do not even have an associates in econ or any mathematics past that 3 hr credit class in Algebra or whatever it is.
I am not an economist, EP is my source of illumination on such matters, but even a novice can see the facts do not jive with the narrative. I've been at my current job 13yrs. and have been on reduced hrs for 2yrs (32wk/$15hr, ty GOD ), literally since Obama's inauguration day (the owner is conservative and we're in Texas) I only hope Sonny is correct in saying, " that same fear factor could force politicians to actually act on behalf of the Middle Class and the poor." It wasn't supposed to be like this.
but income inequality has been documented to start with the Reagan policies and Clinton, well, one has NAFTA in 1993 but no, I didn't correlate exactly to which policy had what effect. Carter also enacted some policies that could contribute to income inequality but at least for myself, I did not match up, exactly, 'tax cut x' is directly responsible for GINI coefficient increase y. if someone did, I'd love to read that research!
You add some good commentary, I hope you get an account, where all of your comments are tracked so we can more easily follow the discussion.
You're right, Quintiles scale. On the other hand, if one takes even the top 1%, it doesn't capture these off the stratosphere numbers. Also, maybe in America it's exponential but try running that in say Sweden or Finland. ;)
The problem with quintiles is one needs to get below 1% to really see the uber-rich and what's going on. It's similar to CEO pay, some of it is so exponential, instead of quintiles, ya almost have to look at the percentage changes per corporation, per title.
I mean this never ending "1%" includes a lot of regular people because the "uber rich" club is so exclusive it's comes down to the hundreds out of 155M (or whatever it is currently) income earners.
Therefore I think Johnston's peek into these top 74 is valuable.
well said -
it is after all the Chinese currency manipulation and the resulting effective exporting of unemployment to the US economy (helped by sycophant and ehtically-challenged US offshorers, TBTF wall st banks, and a political climate for the highest-bidder) that has led to the need for efforts like QE2 to try to reduce unemployment
re: the spike in food prices, per Paul Krugman, “the data suggest that the key cause is terrible weather leading to bad harvests, especially in the former Soviet Union.”……that there’s been “……a huge global harvest failure.”
Q4 GDP was not inventories at all, in fact it detracted significantly, it was the deceleration in trade and one could argue that is due to a weaker dollar and even further argue that QE2 had something to do with it.
GDP has price deflators in it, that's what real GDP means and is the number reported and used, in other words, real GDP is already adjusted for inflation. That is the 3.2% number and it's not 3%. Here is the report overview, look for yourself.
Then, commodity bubbles, remember those? We only had some in 2008 called oil, which were heavily influenced by speculators and we have the never ending claim supply must be there, when a picture of a bunch of parked tankers hidden out at sea emerged. Ben wasn't around, there was no such thing as QE2 at that time.
I'm not jumping on this boat until I've taken a look overall at commodities. That said, a weaker dollar should affect U.S. commodities, esp. imports, not exports or food to Egypt, unless of course we have our flash trading speculators again and oil, which is tied to food, is trading in U.S. dollars.
Sorry, I'm not pal of Ben but let's please be accurate and dig around first before blaming Ben Bernanke on food shortages and revolutions.
I didn't bother to read the paper, so forgive me if this is addressed therein.
That makes a great deal of sense, actually. Incomes tend to be distributed exponentially, meaning that income distributions within the top 5% are about as unequal as incomes are in the whole population. So, if you have a lot of people leave the group making $50 M because everyone's income goes down, you'd see exactly this. Say you have these 3 people: A makes $51M, B makes 54M, and C makes $70M. The average is $58M. Everyone loses 10% of their income, so A makes $46M (drops out), B makes $49M (drops out) and C makes $63M. C is the only one left, so the "average" goes up from $58M to $68M, or up by 17%. This statistic you cite doesn't really tell you what you think it does. This is why people use quintiles, not firm cut-offs like $50M, to calculate these things.
This is probably missing the conversation, but Reason.com linked to this page in an article written Feb. 3 by Josh Brokaw.
I found the discussion of this paper by Robert Frank, one of the authors, fascinating in the 11/15/10 episode of EconTalk, but I think it's interesting that at the end of the episode, he seemed very excited that his prescription for policy changes had received the blessings of Milton Friedman. I'm not convinced Mr. Frank himself is a "populist" exactly, despite the nature of his findings.
In any case, I'm not sure I see your point about he presidential changes. It seems the upturn in GINI index started in 1969, early enough in the Nixon administration that it could be a result of Johnson's policies, and 1980 doesn't seem to show any change in slope or character of the index. The biggest variation in the character of the index in the period shown seems to be in 1993 or 1994, in the Clinton administration. It seems strange to me that such a large, one-time event might appear so late in the Reagan/Bush administrations and not be a result of actions by Clinton.
After reading volumes of information and expert opinions on our recessionary economic state, it appears that the answers and solutions are varied across the political front, as well as in the corporate and Wall Street circles of influence. In Washington, both the executive and legislative branches of government are, for the most part, at odds concerning the correct course of action needed to revive an economy spiraling downward, and mired in astronomical debt. With political futures hanging by a thin thread, many in Washington are tiptoeing around core and root causes for the economic mess presently being felt all across this nation.
Certainly it can't be a big mystery as to the "why and how" we have arrived at this stage, nor can it be a big mystery concerning those responsible for leading us down the path of economic ruin. It's a given that our present situation didn't happen overnight, but rather a process that spanned several decades. Some believe that the process actually began over a half century ago, shortly after the end of the second world war. One of the truisms in life, is that you can't turn back the hands of time and change the past. But, we can determine, to an extent, the path that'll lead us into the future.
Although many factors have contributed to our economic collapse, the top candidates are surely those concerning greed, power, egotism, the drive to climb the political ladder at all cost, and corruption. Since politics and politicians control the events that shape this nation and her well-being, the afore mentioned curses have been our downfall. It is doubtful that "politics as usual" can be changed in time to save what's left our our economic well-being, and restore our economic independence. Political "one-upsmanship" and egos are standing in the way of socioeconomic progress, and keeping us from enjoying the fruits of our labor. It is without a doubt, that it's the "fear factor" that prevents those with the responsibility to act on behave of the citizenry, from doing so. It is the fear of losing wealth, power, influence, political status, and the prestige that comes will the afore mentioned.
The political climate in Washington doesn't allow stabilization and growth of the Middle Class, nor does it allow those living in poverty to better their socioeconomic status. The Middle Class is shrinking, with more falling into the ranks of the poor, than those ascenting to wealth. This gives the impression that The Washington Brotherhood is "pro" Wall Street and "anti" Main Street. The "bailouts" over the past two plus years certainly didn't bailout Main Street. While Main Street is surviving by living off of government assistance programs and unemployment checks, Corporate America is booming and showing record profits. While squeezing the economic life out of the little guys, the big guys are getting wealthier and wealthier. The above mentioned "fear factor" erases all ethical and moral reasoning in the minds of professional politicians, and replaces it with "self".
Now for the good news; that same fear factor could force politicians to actually act on behave of the Middle Class and the poor. Don't misunderstand here, if they do act favorably towards the working class, it certainly won't be because they've had a change of heart. It'll be because the situation and circumstances leave them little choice. They fully understand, and are aware of the importance "jobs" play in the grand scheme of sound economics. They have to create an economic environment that not only generates tax revenue, but also one that greatly decreases the dependency on government assistance programs and unemployment checks. In other words, they must take in more and spend less. The way to do this, is by providing opportunities that will allow citizens a means, whereby they can be self-supporting.
Many suggestions on how to accomplish this have been placed on the table. Among the many, is spending hundreds of $Billons on infrastructure projects, and investing in alternative energy technology. Both would greatly boost employment, as well as being very beneficial to the environment and overall economy. But, would/could these two alone, solve our multitude of economic issues? Given the magnitude and scope of our present economic woes, it's doubtful that these alone, would generate the results needed to put our economy back on solid ground. So then, where would these self-supporting opportunities come from?
Firstly, we have a rapidly growing population, and graduate many high school and college seniors each year. These newly grads become part of our growing workforce. Secondly, senior citizens are working longer into their retirement years. Ideally, employment opportunities would closely equate to the number of workers that make up our workforce. But, since we're now an import and energy dependent economy, and no longer produce the majority of what we use and consume, we have more workers than jobs available. This imbalance grows like a cancer, and the results is bascially what we're seeing today in our economy.
For these reasons, the fear factor will push Washington towards rethinking our foreign trade agreements and policies. This is bascially being forced on them by the failure of all other attempts to employ our rapidly growing workforce. Noone in Washington has a magic wand, and rhetoric doesn't produce living wage opportunities. The fear of rejection by the general public has already caused some to change their rhetoric to a more pro Main Street tone. If positive change does come, it won't be voluntary, but will instead come via fear of rejection. Our present economic status will force change in Congress, as well as in the White House.
I reference those in the outsourcing post. I'm becoming more exact in the accounting methods, scope of data but this is driving me nuts. We know China is killing us, the trade deficit is killing us, U.S. multinationals moved to China, millions of jobs lost, 5.6 million manufacturing jobs lost this decade, a decline in total STEM jobs, India body shops growing in profits and numbers, where their #1 customer is the U.S., yet extrapolating out from these metrics which is offshore outsourcing is a major exercise, if you can do it at all and claim it's valid.
Prodcutivity is in a way an indirect measure, notice output is real GDP for the nonfarm business.
This sounds like the best plan to me. I am 27 going on 28 in July 2011. I and some family and other people I talked to have been screwed by banks (two banks myself). The first bank was stealing money through phony overdraft fees on regular bank accounts without any discrimination between weather the customer they stole from was rich or poor, both were beginning to loose money. I as a teen at the time supposedly owed them, but I never paid the crooks as they had already stolen $200.00 from me. Heart breaking for a working low-income teen, but when I talked about it to random people around town, I found some richer people were missing amounts like $2,000-$3,000 on phony overdraft fees. I should have blown a whistle or someone should have. The second bank did it and got busted, everyone who banked there including me got a check for the missing money or it was applied to the outstanding balance.The problem is that I will never get restitution from the first bank, because banks are only required to repay back five years and that happened more than five years ago. I will never trust another bank again.
This is to everyone, I really do not care if someone does not even have an undergraduate degree, some of this stuff one can understand, I fully expect people to try to learn it. If someone can balance their check book and knows even basic algebra, that should be enough. Pause, stare at a graph, stare at a number then stare at the graph again, then read the surrounding text.
The point is to focus on the data, the statistics, the theory, the numbers.
Like this, no, this is not some "grand conspiracy" by people at the BLS, mandated to "lie to you". They are simply numbers people for the most part.
The problem is the methods themselves and as I point out, that is partly Congress's job as well as the Secretary of Labor, who IS political and will lie to you...
The point being, this post is to talk about the topic at hand, which is this month's unemployment report.
If one did and tried to learn this stuff, then and only then would one see the government economists and regular people are not "out to get you", more we need refinements and improvements in data collection and methodology.
I think youll love it!
Robert,
First, I'ld like to say that I'm far from being an expect on economics. In addition, I don't have a four year degree that would qualify me to question those that are experts and experienced. But, I was blessed with good ol' fashioned common sense, which does qualify me to question the obvious BS and propaganda put out to the public by our government. After all, when was the last time our government was completely honest with us?
Now, Back on topic.
You asked, "Where are the jobs?"
(1) Do we manufacture every part and component of every product assembled/produced in the U.S.A.?
(2) Do businesses hire more employees during peak demand, or simply increase the days and hours of those already on their payrolls?
(3) Is it possible that our economy could produce more without adding workers?
(4) Are we to assume that any increases in domestic output, automatically equates to more workers on payrolls?
Consideration has to be given to the fact that increases in payrolls are only jobs replacing a small portion of the jobs lost. Any increases at this time does not address the growing distance between jobs available and jobs needed. During good times and bad times, it's normal to see fluctuations in both domestic output and the employment rate. It's easy to get lost and sidetracked when concentrating on everything between point "A" and point "Z". Where point "A" represents the root causes, and point "Z" represents present circumstances and situations ( results ). Everything in between points "A" and "Z" represents effects and temporary fluctuations.
Should we be impressed and excited because unemployment went from 9.4% down to 9.0%? Should we be impressed and excited because we see an increase in GDP? The obvious answer to both questions is no. Why? Because fluctuations are normal, and doesn't indicate a trend over many months. Another way to look at it is whether we're actually producing more and importing less, or merely producing more with more man-hours working more days per week, yet still importing the same or more. The problem is one of not having a constant to work with. Almost every component concerning domestic output and employment is a variable.
The jobs remain where they've been for several decades now. We've exported our jobs to cheap foreign labor. We're not going to re-open the steel mills, the textile mills, the electronic assembly plants, nor are we going to bring back the furniture, farm equipment, tool, toy, hardware, or any other industry lost through unfair, unjust, and one-sided foreign trade agreements.
Out-sourcing jobs offshore enhances the bottom line on the P&L sheets of businesses, thus the continuing practice. Since out-sourcing basically goes unpenalized, and unrestricted, why hire American workers?
Where would new jobs come from? We're not creating new industries, nor are we developing technology that would require a huge amount of manpower to run and maintain. And, we're certainly not doing anything to bring lost industries back to this country.
Again, until "A" changes dramatically, "Z" will remain the same, or get worse. Everything in between will fluctuate and give a false sense that things are improving; i.e. employment and GDP. The truth is that we're not gaining on the jobs front, nor are we gaining on the amount produced for domestic consumption. It'll be a long long time before we wean ourselves from cheap foreign imports. As it stands now, we don't have the catalyst to narrow the gap between the growing demand for living wage jobs and living wage opportunities.
Of course, we could always drastically reduce our standard of living in order to compete with cheap sweatshop child labor in foreign countries. Remember, "Global Economy" means equalization to the lowest level. We're presently living under "forced economics" via our import and energy dependency. It's all magic, smoke and mirrors, that's presently producing favorable economic numbers. The truth is down on Main Street America.
Well, I'm reading the "Event" now and Bernanke should be blasted for ignoring oil and food commodities increasing. He's out of his mind not to be concerned, there is a lot of evidence and analysis that oil shocks precipitate recessions. Not a good thing and the correlations are pretty strong.
So, here comes Krugman, this is redux. We did a whole lot of analysis during the oil bubble spike in 2008...Krguman argues there must be supply somewhere,
myself, I lean towards our friends, derivatives again and speculators...
the main argument is commodities must follow the laws of physical supply and demand because at some time someone must take possession of the physical commodity, therefore increases in futures and commodities must be simply a demand problem.
Because about the time oil dropped, we got Financial Armageddon, so the entire oil commodities speculative bubble was speculators or actual demand, really never got resolved.
That said, there sure is a lot of evidence that our lovely derivatives traders and speculators were at work, including a Krugman back up....a bunch of oil tankers holding loads way out to sea...parked. Someone took a snapshot.
So, this entire blame Bernanke QE2 freak out, honest I'm not so sure, but there is no doubt spikes in commodities were going on in 2008, before TARP, before M2 on rocket fuel and before QE2...
That said, ignoring oil, i.e. energy and food is truly not in reality and accordingly the bloggers and blasters should be out paddling him with their words today. Bad Bernanke! Bad!
To all you commie "greed haters". Was Mao "greedy" when he killed 60 million country men? Was Stalin "greedy" when he killed his 30 million (low estimate)?
The greatest atrocities in history are always committed by the "regulators".
And by the way Ayn Rand believed freedom and the gold standard.
Apparently these concepts are beyond your ability to process.
Sticking with the topic at hand, the real question is Where are the Jobs?
We had 3.2% GDP growth in Q4 2010, we see massive trade deficits, we have soaring productivity, so somewhere in these numbers are a host of jobs offshore outsourced. I'm sorry it's just gotta be there, you cannot create economic activity with dead people.
You know it's there, but proving it is a whole other ball game, so maybe I should start another statistical exercise to locate those missing jobs which would enable a 3.2% GDP growth.
You cannot compare not in the labor force from December 2010 to January 2011, that number is invalid due to the one time yearly noninstitional civilian population adjustment that represents 12 months or more of data errors.
You cannot compare employed or unemployed from December 2010 to January 2011 due to the above reason. From the BLS chart, you can see, all is derived from the noninstitional civilian population number. Therefore, totals that are not rates include the population adjustment and dramatically skew the numbers between these two months.
I know this is very confusing and as implied in the above post, this is absurd to only put in a population adjustment representing 12 months or more in the last month's data point, it should at minimum be adjusted by month and at maximum, well, first, they need more than 60k households, 2nd, they need to update to 2010 faster, 3rd, instead of this decade long antiquated Census run, they need an alternative measure introduced that can estimate population changes per month on data from a variety of other sources...finally they plain need to include immigration status! I believe Congress, not the BLS, controls the purse strings, minimum for new raw data collection methods on population.
If I make a mistake, I sure hope some economist or statistician who is an expert does an anonymous drive-by comment to point it out...and all of you government people, I promise to never reveal your IP address if you're too chicken to say something. ;0
But I do try to be accurate. If I made a mistake and find out about it, I will edit and update a post to correct it immediately.
I hate the idea of adding more noise to the stream.
That said, the MTGM just pointed to an ASTOUNDING mistake by the Associated Press, here.....
I think Delong does "why can't we have a better press corps" almost every day..but what do ya want when they try to offshore outsource Journalists who probably majored in writing or communications and odds on probably do not even have an associates in econ or any mathematics past that 3 hr credit class in Algebra or whatever it is.
I am not an economist, EP is my source of illumination on such matters, but even a novice can see the facts do not jive with the narrative. I've been at my current job 13yrs. and have been on reduced hrs for 2yrs (32wk/$15hr, ty GOD ), literally since Obama's inauguration day (the owner is conservative and we're in Texas) I only hope Sonny is correct in saying, " that same fear factor could force politicians to actually act on behalf of the Middle Class and the poor." It wasn't supposed to be like this.
but income inequality has been documented to start with the Reagan policies and Clinton, well, one has NAFTA in 1993 but no, I didn't correlate exactly to which policy had what effect. Carter also enacted some policies that could contribute to income inequality but at least for myself, I did not match up, exactly, 'tax cut x' is directly responsible for GINI coefficient increase y. if someone did, I'd love to read that research!
You add some good commentary, I hope you get an account, where all of your comments are tracked so we can more easily follow the discussion.
You're right, Quintiles scale. On the other hand, if one takes even the top 1%, it doesn't capture these off the stratosphere numbers. Also, maybe in America it's exponential but try running that in say Sweden or Finland. ;)
I dug into it more this post.
The problem with quintiles is one needs to get below 1% to really see the uber-rich and what's going on. It's similar to CEO pay, some of it is so exponential, instead of quintiles, ya almost have to look at the percentage changes per corporation, per title.
I mean this never ending "1%" includes a lot of regular people because the "uber rich" club is so exclusive it's comes down to the hundreds out of 155M (or whatever it is currently) income earners.
Therefore I think Johnston's peek into these top 74 is valuable.
well said -
it is after all the Chinese currency manipulation and the resulting effective exporting of unemployment to the US economy (helped by sycophant and ehtically-challenged US offshorers, TBTF wall st banks, and a political climate for the highest-bidder) that has led to the need for efforts like QE2 to try to reduce unemployment
re: the spike in food prices, per Paul Krugman, “the data suggest that the key cause is terrible weather leading to bad harvests, especially in the former Soviet Union.”……that there’s been “……a huge global harvest failure.”
Q4 GDP was not inventories at all, in fact it detracted significantly, it was the deceleration in trade and one could argue that is due to a weaker dollar and even further argue that QE2 had something to do with it.
GDP has price deflators in it, that's what real GDP means and is the number reported and used, in other words, real GDP is already adjusted for inflation. That is the 3.2% number and it's not 3%. Here is the report overview, look for yourself.
Then, commodity bubbles, remember those? We only had some in 2008 called oil, which were heavily influenced by speculators and we have the never ending claim supply must be there, when a picture of a bunch of parked tankers hidden out at sea emerged. Ben wasn't around, there was no such thing as QE2 at that time.
I'm not jumping on this boat until I've taken a look overall at commodities. That said, a weaker dollar should affect U.S. commodities, esp. imports, not exports or food to Egypt, unless of course we have our flash trading speculators again and oil, which is tied to food, is trading in U.S. dollars.
Sorry, I'm not pal of Ben but let's please be accurate and dig around first before blaming Ben Bernanke on food shortages and revolutions.
I didn't bother to read the paper, so forgive me if this is addressed therein.
That makes a great deal of sense, actually. Incomes tend to be distributed exponentially, meaning that income distributions within the top 5% are about as unequal as incomes are in the whole population. So, if you have a lot of people leave the group making $50 M because everyone's income goes down, you'd see exactly this. Say you have these 3 people: A makes $51M, B makes 54M, and C makes $70M. The average is $58M. Everyone loses 10% of their income, so A makes $46M (drops out), B makes $49M (drops out) and C makes $63M. C is the only one left, so the "average" goes up from $58M to $68M, or up by 17%. This statistic you cite doesn't really tell you what you think it does. This is why people use quintiles, not firm cut-offs like $50M, to calculate these things.
This is probably missing the conversation, but Reason.com linked to this page in an article written Feb. 3 by Josh Brokaw.
I found the discussion of this paper by Robert Frank, one of the authors, fascinating in the 11/15/10 episode of EconTalk, but I think it's interesting that at the end of the episode, he seemed very excited that his prescription for policy changes had received the blessings of Milton Friedman. I'm not convinced Mr. Frank himself is a "populist" exactly, despite the nature of his findings.
In any case, I'm not sure I see your point about he presidential changes. It seems the upturn in GINI index started in 1969, early enough in the Nixon administration that it could be a result of Johnson's policies, and 1980 doesn't seem to show any change in slope or character of the index. The biggest variation in the character of the index in the period shown seems to be in 1993 or 1994, in the Clinton administration. It seems strange to me that such a large, one-time event might appear so late in the Reagan/Bush administrations and not be a result of actions by Clinton.
After reading volumes of information and expert opinions on our recessionary economic state, it appears that the answers and solutions are varied across the political front, as well as in the corporate and Wall Street circles of influence. In Washington, both the executive and legislative branches of government are, for the most part, at odds concerning the correct course of action needed to revive an economy spiraling downward, and mired in astronomical debt. With political futures hanging by a thin thread, many in Washington are tiptoeing around core and root causes for the economic mess presently being felt all across this nation.
Certainly it can't be a big mystery as to the "why and how" we have arrived at this stage, nor can it be a big mystery concerning those responsible for leading us down the path of economic ruin. It's a given that our present situation didn't happen overnight, but rather a process that spanned several decades. Some believe that the process actually began over a half century ago, shortly after the end of the second world war. One of the truisms in life, is that you can't turn back the hands of time and change the past. But, we can determine, to an extent, the path that'll lead us into the future.
Although many factors have contributed to our economic collapse, the top candidates are surely those concerning greed, power, egotism, the drive to climb the political ladder at all cost, and corruption. Since politics and politicians control the events that shape this nation and her well-being, the afore mentioned curses have been our downfall. It is doubtful that "politics as usual" can be changed in time to save what's left our our economic well-being, and restore our economic independence. Political "one-upsmanship" and egos are standing in the way of socioeconomic progress, and keeping us from enjoying the fruits of our labor. It is without a doubt, that it's the "fear factor" that prevents those with the responsibility to act on behave of the citizenry, from doing so. It is the fear of losing wealth, power, influence, political status, and the prestige that comes will the afore mentioned.
The political climate in Washington doesn't allow stabilization and growth of the Middle Class, nor does it allow those living in poverty to better their socioeconomic status. The Middle Class is shrinking, with more falling into the ranks of the poor, than those ascenting to wealth. This gives the impression that The Washington Brotherhood is "pro" Wall Street and "anti" Main Street. The "bailouts" over the past two plus years certainly didn't bailout Main Street. While Main Street is surviving by living off of government assistance programs and unemployment checks, Corporate America is booming and showing record profits. While squeezing the economic life out of the little guys, the big guys are getting wealthier and wealthier. The above mentioned "fear factor" erases all ethical and moral reasoning in the minds of professional politicians, and replaces it with "self".
Now for the good news; that same fear factor could force politicians to actually act on behave of the Middle Class and the poor. Don't misunderstand here, if they do act favorably towards the working class, it certainly won't be because they've had a change of heart. It'll be because the situation and circumstances leave them little choice. They fully understand, and are aware of the importance "jobs" play in the grand scheme of sound economics. They have to create an economic environment that not only generates tax revenue, but also one that greatly decreases the dependency on government assistance programs and unemployment checks. In other words, they must take in more and spend less. The way to do this, is by providing opportunities that will allow citizens a means, whereby they can be self-supporting.
Many suggestions on how to accomplish this have been placed on the table. Among the many, is spending hundreds of $Billons on infrastructure projects, and investing in alternative energy technology. Both would greatly boost employment, as well as being very beneficial to the environment and overall economy. But, would/could these two alone, solve our multitude of economic issues? Given the magnitude and scope of our present economic woes, it's doubtful that these alone, would generate the results needed to put our economy back on solid ground. So then, where would these self-supporting opportunities come from?
Firstly, we have a rapidly growing population, and graduate many high school and college seniors each year. These newly grads become part of our growing workforce. Secondly, senior citizens are working longer into their retirement years. Ideally, employment opportunities would closely equate to the number of workers that make up our workforce. But, since we're now an import and energy dependent economy, and no longer produce the majority of what we use and consume, we have more workers than jobs available. This imbalance grows like a cancer, and the results is bascially what we're seeing today in our economy.
For these reasons, the fear factor will push Washington towards rethinking our foreign trade agreements and policies. This is bascially being forced on them by the failure of all other attempts to employ our rapidly growing workforce. Noone in Washington has a magic wand, and rhetoric doesn't produce living wage opportunities. The fear of rejection by the general public has already caused some to change their rhetoric to a more pro Main Street tone. If positive change does come, it won't be voluntary, but will instead come via fear of rejection. Our present economic status will force change in Congress, as well as in the White House.
and commentary. Where is unemployed Waldo? Or, is unemployed Waldo everyman/woman?
Who is that guy John Galt and why does he want us all unemployed?
I reference those in the outsourcing post. I'm becoming more exact in the accounting methods, scope of data but this is driving me nuts. We know China is killing us, the trade deficit is killing us, U.S. multinationals moved to China, millions of jobs lost, 5.6 million manufacturing jobs lost this decade, a decline in total STEM jobs, India body shops growing in profits and numbers, where their #1 customer is the U.S., yet extrapolating out from these metrics which is offshore outsourcing is a major exercise, if you can do it at all and claim it's valid.
Prodcutivity is in a way an indirect measure, notice output is real GDP for the nonfarm business.
Weren't these stats inflated by using the productivity of the overseas labor that work was sourced to as if it was US labor?
I'm pretty sure I read that here.
Nothing hurt the US more than NAFTA and the transfer of jobs to Mexico.
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