This assessment says it all. What is doesn't do is offer a solution to how we get out of this mess. The stock market is doing well but main street still suffers and most Americans are much worse off than before the crisis. The rich have been made whole again at the expense of the middle class and the new working poor. I don't believe either party offers anything than more of the same. We continue to love free markets and free trade even as it destroys us.
Michael, I read your article, and found that much of it had a snide tone. You call Objectivism a cult, but nothing could be further from the truth. Objectivism is a philosophy, and no one forces anyone to subscribe to its principles, and no one demands certain behaviour out of those who do.
You refer to Objecitivism as a "Greed is Good philosophy". I believe you may be conflating what you believe is Ayn Rand's concept of selfishness (the notion that one should act in one's own self-interest), with the idea that "greed is good". It depends on what you mean by greed. Does greed, in your opinion, mean the desire for everything that benefits the self (without reference to what constitutes a rational benefit), at the expense of others? If so, that quite common view is actually not what Ayn Rand would define as greed, nor would it be compatible with her philosophy. I believe Ayn Rand would define greed as the rational desire to obtain as many values as one can obtain. In that context, greed IS, in fact, good. It is GOOD to want to gain values, because values, by their nature, are important to the furtherance of one's life/career/personal happiness. But a value isn't something that harms someone else, or initiates the use of force against someone else. So, in that context, the desire by a businessman to succeed at his business, does not also mean a desire for the other guy who is in business to go out of business. It's just a desire on his part to sell as much of his product or service as possible. That's greed. But the desire to put someone else who is a competitor out of business, for reasons other than the belief that you have a better product or service at a more reasonable price, isn't a rational desire.
You must understand, that values, according to Ayn Rand, must pertain to reality, because reality is the only context within which one can understand that which they value--that which they seek to gain or to keep.
My suggestion to you, since you are clearly a highly intelligent man, is to not just read The Virtue of Selfishness--the book which is a collection of articles which fleshes out Ayn Rand's theory of ethics, but to read a book by Ayn Rand's protege Leonard Piekoff, entitled Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. In this book, there is a full breakdown of AR's philosophy from the basic level of epistemology, to the highest level, aesthetics. One cannot just read a few articles by Ayn Rand and presume to understand her philosophy.
"In their mythology, only Worthy Individuals are allowed to succeed in life,"
Not at all true. Everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed in life, and success depends on what their standards and values are. If one holds their values in the context of reality (i.e. has rational values), then success means something different to them than someone to whom values have no rational basis.
On the other hand, the more cynical scenario would see, in time, yet another despot replace Mubarak. Let's hope not but given 30+ years of rigged elections and pseudo-democracy one is not left with a huge amount of optimism.
Krugman ran PMI against annualized GDP and created a nice messy scatter plot and posted it. The ISM ain't lying on the correlation it seems. Krugman's post on PMI.
It's assuredly not 150,000, but the number is depending really on increasing working age population growth and there is an additional problem, in that the labor participation rate isn't exactly telling you how many people really need a job, because they have given up and are not counted.
I'll make a point next Friday to calculate out what the current "jobs needed just to keep up" number based on civilian population growth with current participate rate.
I have some of these calculations in there but the above link goes through some of the definitions so you can see where this guesstimate is coming from and it changes depending on which economist you listen to who wants to ignore the people now in desperation, destitution and poverty, who really can work and should be working. Some of the numbers are impossible, such as how many guest workers or illegals there are in the U.S. workforce....
and what is the increase, i.e. I don't think most Americans believe we should be creating jobs for those folks while our folks are going into poverty and economic destitution.
When I hear that we added 110,000 jobs last month say. Is this jobs added minus people entering the workforce and folks who lost their jobs or just jobs added? When Bush was in office the number of 300,000 jobs added per month was given (not by EP) just to keep up with people entering the work force, now I've heard that number needed as 150,000. Which is it? Either way we would still be years (likely never) getting back to full employment.
The problem is the entire system is rigged, an inside job, backed with huge corporate and special interest money. I mean I wonder "who" is behind Obama's "China ambassador"
Presidential run probe...
Did SCOTUS just say foreign nations can advertise in political elections/proceedings in the U.S.?
We cannot seem to get good people, even into the primaries never mind into the main parties and the system is so rigged, a third party has zero chance.
That's why this site, we try to keep "economic fiction" off of the site and I'm a huge stickler in posts to be accurate (comments anything goes).
We cannot get out there what even basic metrics mean, such as GDP or even get out there how little "Stimulative" effect tax cuts have...
so how the hell are we going to get real economics, based on real statistics and theory, to architect a trade policy that is actually in the national interest?
"On the political front, we must stop re-electing professional politicians to office. In addition, we must become more active on the political scene between election cycles. Our voice and vote are all we have to fight the anti-America corrupt Washington Brotherhood. It's also obvious that we must unite as one America, and end the harmful and fruitless political division that favors one party over the other. In reality, there's no difference between the two parties, and both parties have had a hand in our economic decline over the past sixty plus years."
So sick of hearing this tired, facile "analysis" - professional politicians have always existed and will always exist. The key is to just keep pressure on them to follow through on their promises. Peron was perhaps the quintessential career politician and yet he actually made things better for the masses, simply because they pressured him. Give up on the idea of some noble, objective technocrat - slacking off from your duties is endemic to human nature, and the key is to just use citizen mobilization to pressure people into keeping their word. We need leaders.
And the whole "harmful and fruitless political division" thing is just stupid, too. While the average citizen A probably has some common ground with the average citizen B, people do have very different ideas about what gov't is, should be and should not be. America is a fairly heterogeneous nation, politically speaking, and ignoring that is part of the problem, not the solution (the solution being to handle more things at the community level.)
This kind of centrist wonkery is just not productive or interesting or critical enough. Parroting David Brooks/Tom Friedman/some other pseudo-libertarian garbage is no different than parroting a corrupt politician.
please do. While this site is popular, the server costs alone are not covered and we assuredly could use better advertisers than what pops up in adsense.
...that this site features an ad by Goldline, Glenn Beck's gravy train, to help shore up its bottom line? When it comes to websites and blogs, even so-called progressive sites like this, there are no ideological lines. We rail about Goldline and how they're a bunch of swindlers yet happily acxept their advertising money. No, no hypocrisy here, folks.
Thank you for this labor data. I've been looking for it and I missed it.
This is to my mind is the absolutely most important and ignored statistic in all the economic ‘so-called’ news. In short, the standard of living of the American working class families is dropping precipitously and there is no end what-so-ever in sight.
There is, of course, very good reason why this type of data is not very much in the news. The implications for the 20 to 40 year old population are profound. And, the implications for the society as a whole are historic. In short, Egypt could happen here!
Wipro and Infosys, notorious Indian body shops are pulling their people out of Eygpt.
So, the fact that these Indian body shops offering I.T. are even in Eygpt tells me these companies are beyond wage arbitrage, they literally are making sure they only employ Indians for jobs in a host of countries.
People in Eygpt are not uneducated, so, I suspect there are plenty of people there who could handle I.T., and probably software development.
I just couldn't believe that considering how Eygptians need jobs and the population is high, wages are very low.
If anyone is unfamiliar, these two companies bring over foreign guest workers, get billion dollar contracts that result in massive layoffs of Americans and don't save that much money either.
The Special Inspector General for TARP took the program over the coals, as you pointed out when his most recent report came out. The report and the findings were barely covered by the media. This presentation shows why such coverage was important and why the citizen portion of the bailouts has been such a failure.
Yet Geithner is off at Davos lecturing the worlds plutocracy, those afraid to meet anywhere other than an isolated Swiss village.
We need total regime change. Our leaders are miserable failures, not fit to claim that they represent anyone other than those who pay most handsomely for their services.
Anyone who says that there is shortage of Computer Engineers in this country is a liar. These guest worker programs exist to import cheap slave labor, and to push down the wages of those Americans who survive.
Good discussion on this important, under-reported issue. Here is an article on the direct result of offshoring our prime jobs.
75% of jobs created so far in the recovery have been low-wage jobs
http://money.cnn.com/2011/01/31/news/economy/low_wage_job_growth/index.htm
(CNNMoney) "Growth has been concentrated in mid-wage and lower-wage industries. By contrast, higher-wage industries showed weak growth and even net losses," said Annette Bernhardt, policy co-director for the National Employment Project. She said that growth has been far more unbalanced than during previous job recoveries.
Bernhardt's analysis of the first seven months of 2010 found that 76% of jobs created were in low- to mid-wage industries -- those earning between $8.92 to $15 an hour, well below the national average hourly wage of $22.60.
But the biggest problem is continued job losses in higher-wage industries severely hit by the bursting of the housing bubble -- construction and financial services. Recoveries in those sectors helped lead the economy out of earlier downturns, but they're still suffering more than a year and a half after the official end of the Great Recession.
High-wage sectors -- made up of jobs that pay between $17.43 and $31 an hour -- accounted for nearly half the jobs lost during the recession, but have produced only 5% of the new jobs since hiring resumed, Bernhardt's study showed.
Even in some of the higher-wage industries that are hiring, it's lower-wage occupations within the sector where the jobs are being added, according to William Rodgers, chief economist for the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University.
Case in point: Professional and business services sectors gained a healthy 366,000 jobs in 2010. Workers in that sector earned $27.23 an hour, on average, in 2010. But almost all of the new jobs -- 308,000 -- came in temporary help services, where the average hourly wage was only $15 an hour.
And those temporary jobs accounted for nearly one in four jobs created by all types of businesses last year.
…the Bureau of Labor Statistics has made some worrisome projections about the pay for jobs likely to be created.
The BLS's most recent job growth forecast, published back in November 2009 and projecting the job market from 2008 through 2018, identified 30 different occupations expected to experience the best growth.
The good news is that the occupation expected to add the most jobs over those 10 years -- registered nurse -- is considered "very high wage." But the six occupations with the largest gains are all classified as either "low wage" or "very low wage." Among those jobs are home health aides, retail sales people and food preparation -- including fast food workers.
Overall, 55% of the jobs growth forecasted in the 30 fastest-growing occupations identified by BLS, are considered to be low- or very low-wage......
This assessment says it all. What is doesn't do is offer a solution to how we get out of this mess. The stock market is doing well but main street still suffers and most Americans are much worse off than before the crisis. The rich have been made whole again at the expense of the middle class and the new working poor. I don't believe either party offers anything than more of the same. We continue to love free markets and free trade even as it destroys us.
Michael, I read your article, and found that much of it had a snide tone. You call Objectivism a cult, but nothing could be further from the truth. Objectivism is a philosophy, and no one forces anyone to subscribe to its principles, and no one demands certain behaviour out of those who do.
You refer to Objecitivism as a "Greed is Good philosophy". I believe you may be conflating what you believe is Ayn Rand's concept of selfishness (the notion that one should act in one's own self-interest), with the idea that "greed is good". It depends on what you mean by greed. Does greed, in your opinion, mean the desire for everything that benefits the self (without reference to what constitutes a rational benefit), at the expense of others? If so, that quite common view is actually not what Ayn Rand would define as greed, nor would it be compatible with her philosophy. I believe Ayn Rand would define greed as the rational desire to obtain as many values as one can obtain. In that context, greed IS, in fact, good. It is GOOD to want to gain values, because values, by their nature, are important to the furtherance of one's life/career/personal happiness. But a value isn't something that harms someone else, or initiates the use of force against someone else. So, in that context, the desire by a businessman to succeed at his business, does not also mean a desire for the other guy who is in business to go out of business. It's just a desire on his part to sell as much of his product or service as possible. That's greed. But the desire to put someone else who is a competitor out of business, for reasons other than the belief that you have a better product or service at a more reasonable price, isn't a rational desire.
You must understand, that values, according to Ayn Rand, must pertain to reality, because reality is the only context within which one can understand that which they value--that which they seek to gain or to keep.
My suggestion to you, since you are clearly a highly intelligent man, is to not just read The Virtue of Selfishness--the book which is a collection of articles which fleshes out Ayn Rand's theory of ethics, but to read a book by Ayn Rand's protege Leonard Piekoff, entitled Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. In this book, there is a full breakdown of AR's philosophy from the basic level of epistemology, to the highest level, aesthetics. One cannot just read a few articles by Ayn Rand and presume to understand her philosophy.
"In their mythology, only Worthy Individuals are allowed to succeed in life,"
Not at all true. Everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed in life, and success depends on what their standards and values are. If one holds their values in the context of reality (i.e. has rational values), then success means something different to them than someone to whom values have no rational basis.
On the other hand, the more cynical scenario would see, in time, yet another despot replace Mubarak. Let's hope not but given 30+ years of rigged elections and pseudo-democracy one is not left with a huge amount of optimism.
Krugman ran PMI against annualized GDP and created a nice messy scatter plot and posted it. The ISM ain't lying on the correlation it seems.
Krugman's post on PMI.
The January numbers are out Friday, which is the monthly BLS unemployment report, where the official unemployment rate comes from.
Here is the EP overview of that report.
It's assuredly not 150,000, but the number is depending really on increasing working age population growth and there is an additional problem, in that the labor participation rate isn't exactly telling you how many people really need a job, because they have given up and are not counted.
I'll make a point next Friday to calculate out what the current "jobs needed just to keep up" number based on civilian population growth with current participate rate.
I have some of these calculations in there but the above link goes through some of the definitions so you can see where this guesstimate is coming from and it changes depending on which economist you listen to who wants to ignore the people now in desperation, destitution and poverty, who really can work and should be working. Some of the numbers are impossible, such as how many guest workers or illegals there are in the U.S. workforce....
and what is the increase, i.e. I don't think most Americans believe we should be creating jobs for those folks while our folks are going into poverty and economic destitution.
When I hear that we added 110,000 jobs last month say. Is this jobs added minus people entering the workforce and folks who lost their jobs or just jobs added? When Bush was in office the number of 300,000 jobs added per month was given (not by EP) just to keep up with people entering the work force, now I've heard that number needed as 150,000. Which is it? Either way we would still be years (likely never) getting back to full employment.
The fact remains two Congressmen presented the legislation. That alone is scary enough.
The problem is the entire system is rigged, an inside job, backed with huge corporate and special interest money. I mean I wonder "who" is behind Obama's "China ambassador"
Presidential run probe...
Did SCOTUS just say foreign nations can advertise in political elections/proceedings in the U.S.?
We cannot seem to get good people, even into the primaries never mind into the main parties and the system is so rigged, a third party has zero chance.
That's why this site, we try to keep "economic fiction" off of the site and I'm a huge stickler in posts to be accurate (comments anything goes).
We cannot get out there what even basic metrics mean, such as GDP or even get out there how little "Stimulative" effect tax cuts have...
so how the hell are we going to get real economics, based on real statistics and theory, to architect a trade policy that is actually in the national interest?
So, so corrupt!
"On the political front, we must stop re-electing professional politicians to office. In addition, we must become more active on the political scene between election cycles. Our voice and vote are all we have to fight the anti-America corrupt Washington Brotherhood. It's also obvious that we must unite as one America, and end the harmful and fruitless political division that favors one party over the other. In reality, there's no difference between the two parties, and both parties have had a hand in our economic decline over the past sixty plus years."
So sick of hearing this tired, facile "analysis" - professional politicians have always existed and will always exist. The key is to just keep pressure on them to follow through on their promises. Peron was perhaps the quintessential career politician and yet he actually made things better for the masses, simply because they pressured him. Give up on the idea of some noble, objective technocrat - slacking off from your duties is endemic to human nature, and the key is to just use citizen mobilization to pressure people into keeping their word. We need leaders.
And the whole "harmful and fruitless political division" thing is just stupid, too. While the average citizen A probably has some common ground with the average citizen B, people do have very different ideas about what gov't is, should be and should not be. America is a fairly heterogeneous nation, politically speaking, and ignoring that is part of the problem, not the solution (the solution being to handle more things at the community level.)
This kind of centrist wonkery is just not productive or interesting or critical enough. Parroting David Brooks/Tom Friedman/some other pseudo-libertarian garbage is no different than parroting a corrupt politician.
please do. While this site is popular, the server costs alone are not covered and we assuredly could use better advertisers than what pops up in adsense.
...that this site features an ad by Goldline, Glenn Beck's gravy train, to help shore up its bottom line? When it comes to websites and blogs, even so-called progressive sites like this, there are no ideological lines. We rail about Goldline and how they're a bunch of swindlers yet happily acxept their advertising money. No, no hypocrisy here, folks.
Thank you for this labor data. I've been looking for it and I missed it.
This is to my mind is the absolutely most important and ignored statistic in all the economic ‘so-called’ news. In short, the standard of living of the American working class families is dropping precipitously and there is no end what-so-ever in sight.
There is, of course, very good reason why this type of data is not very much in the news. The implications for the 20 to 40 year old population are profound. And, the implications for the society as a whole are historic. In short, Egypt could happen here!
Wipro and Infosys, notorious Indian body shops are pulling their people out of Eygpt.
So, the fact that these Indian body shops offering I.T. are even in Eygpt tells me these companies are beyond wage arbitrage, they literally are making sure they only employ Indians for jobs in a host of countries.
People in Eygpt are not uneducated, so, I suspect there are plenty of people there who could handle I.T., and probably software development.
I just couldn't believe that considering how Eygptians need jobs and the population is high, wages are very low.
If anyone is unfamiliar, these two companies bring over foreign guest workers, get billion dollar contracts that result in massive layoffs of Americans and don't save that much money either.
The Special Inspector General for TARP took the program over the coals, as you pointed out when his most recent report came out. The report and the findings were barely covered by the media. This presentation shows why such coverage was important and why the citizen portion of the bailouts has been such a failure.
Yet Geithner is off at Davos lecturing the worlds plutocracy, those afraid to meet anywhere other than an isolated Swiss village.
We need total regime change. Our leaders are miserable failures, not fit to claim that they represent anyone other than those who pay most handsomely for their services.
242,000 homes totalling $24 billions? The average foreclosed home is worth less than $100,000?
Did my math go wrong somewhere?
Anyone who says that there is shortage of Computer Engineers in this country is a liar. These guest worker programs exist to import cheap slave labor, and to push down the wages of those Americans who survive.
I saw the tear gas canisters said made in America on them. Apparently, so did the egyptian planes.
Good discussion on this important, under-reported issue. Here is an article on the direct result of offshoring our prime jobs.
75% of jobs created so far in the recovery have been low-wage jobs
http://money.cnn.com/2011/01/31/news/economy/low_wage_job_growth/index.htm
(CNNMoney) "Growth has been concentrated in mid-wage and lower-wage industries. By contrast, higher-wage industries showed weak growth and even net losses," said Annette Bernhardt, policy co-director for the National Employment Project. She said that growth has been far more unbalanced than during previous job recoveries.
Bernhardt's analysis of the first seven months of 2010 found that 76% of jobs created were in low- to mid-wage industries -- those earning between $8.92 to $15 an hour, well below the national average hourly wage of $22.60.
But the biggest problem is continued job losses in higher-wage industries severely hit by the bursting of the housing bubble -- construction and financial services. Recoveries in those sectors helped lead the economy out of earlier downturns, but they're still suffering more than a year and a half after the official end of the Great Recession.
High-wage sectors -- made up of jobs that pay between $17.43 and $31 an hour -- accounted for nearly half the jobs lost during the recession, but have produced only 5% of the new jobs since hiring resumed, Bernhardt's study showed.
Even in some of the higher-wage industries that are hiring, it's lower-wage occupations within the sector where the jobs are being added, according to William Rodgers, chief economist for the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University.
Case in point: Professional and business services sectors gained a healthy 366,000 jobs in 2010. Workers in that sector earned $27.23 an hour, on average, in 2010. But almost all of the new jobs -- 308,000 -- came in temporary help services, where the average hourly wage was only $15 an hour.
And those temporary jobs accounted for nearly one in four jobs created by all types of businesses last year.
…the Bureau of Labor Statistics has made some worrisome projections about the pay for jobs likely to be created.
The BLS's most recent job growth forecast, published back in November 2009 and projecting the job market from 2008 through 2018, identified 30 different occupations expected to experience the best growth.
The good news is that the occupation expected to add the most jobs over those 10 years -- registered nurse -- is considered "very high wage." But the six occupations with the largest gains are all classified as either "low wage" or "very low wage." Among those jobs are home health aides, retail sales people and food preparation -- including fast food workers.
Overall, 55% of the jobs growth forecasted in the 30 fastest-growing occupations identified by BLS, are considered to be low- or very low-wage......
HAMP, the "help" for homeowners program is such a joke, I don't feel like writing up the latest statistics from the Treasury.
Bloomberg does an ok overview with the headline, 1 in 5 mortgages default again after modification.
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