The Weariness Index is easy to define. If CPI is an honest (?) price index (i.e. dollars per basket), and MOI is the mean of the inverse hourly wages or of the inverse yearly salary of a full-time worker (i.e. hours per dollar), then WearinessIndex = index(CPI*MOI) = index(CPI/(harmonic mean of wages)). Thus it is an index of mean hours worked to earn the basket.
I estimated this years ago based on very crude data from 1971 to 1986, and it had increased (gotten worse) 13% over that period. The Weariness Index is a universal sum, in the sense that it indexes an approximation to the total of something (the hours worked by everyone to earn their baskets). Thus it is like mean income (everybody's earnings) and CPI (everybody's cost of the basket), but not median income, which is insensitive to something happening to less than 50% of the workers. My index was sensitive to the felt economic disaster of the end of the 1970s.

My comment was more or less wishful thinking (I didn't necessarily mean anything was "true").

This immigration debate has been raging for years, and I haven't seen either party address it in any meaningful way. So what is the answer?

NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” depicted a bourbon summit between President Obama and future Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) where the two get massively drunk.

McConnell warns Obama about his planned executive action on immigration, but when Obama asks whether he has a plan, McConnell insists Republicans will pass immigration reform. The two then burst out laughing at this suggestion.

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2014/11/16/SNL-Envisions-Drunk-McC...

The source of all of this is the SSA, the same link at the top of the post. I believe you can go back years on their site but the result is in HTML, so you must convert.

Also, I calculate much of this from the original data published by SSA, but the two you are looking for are on their site, top link. Let us see your weariness index! I think America is pretty weary!

Would the GOP pass a better and more suitable immigration bill? They're talking about building bigger and better high-tech fences (but only along the southern border). How will this be paid for? By cutting food stamps for the poor?

The bright light in Obama's amnesty program might be if we better used e-verify to bring more workers out of the shadows in the labor market — because employers won't be able to use the threat of deportation to depress wages and engage in wage theft by using "independent contractors".

And if "undocumented workers" became "documented", maybe real unemployment numbers could be better analyzed (after bringing these workers out of the "shadow economy").

These workers might also tend to be Democratic and pro-union as well, and might help organize for better wages — thereby putting upward pressure on everyone's wages overall.

This is only referencing CURRENT non-visa workers, as the guestworker visa programs should be eliminated until the labor market improves (as employers abuse these programs to undercut domestic wages with their false claims of "lacking skills"). H-1B visa workers taking domestic tech jobs should be abolished completely.

As far as farm workers (or other jobs that "Americans don't want to do"), this might also raise their wages as well, and might drive up the cost of food or other services (like the guys that do your landscaping — or the women that clean your homes, cares for your elderly or watches your kids).

If immigration is down and deportations are up, this amnesty program might work to some degree if we better secure our borders and better enforce current immigration laws by punishing employers that illegally use these workers for jobs (e.g. construction, etc.) that can't be offshored to low-wage countries.

The current labor market is over-saturated for many reasons, such as: 1) employers making current workers do more 2) computers, automation and robotics 3) offshoring. A flood of "new labor" might not materialize if they are already working under the table. But yes, NEW guestworker visas should be stopped dead in its tracks until we have REAL full employment and workers are paid better wages.

Also (as an aside) if these workers were permitted to get a driver's license, more could purchase auto insurance, and maybe bring down insurance rates. And if they were "legally" employed with valid Social Security numbers, more taxes might also be collected.

* This comment does not even touch on the "humanitarian" or "moral" aspects of splitting families apart — the "Dreamers", those who came here as children, who might only speak English, have already fully integrated in the country as ordinary Americans (many times, as role citizens), have gone to college, and have served in our military. Does this country tell them all to “go home” when they believe they are already home?

Spiegal (German News) has a great article on how the economies are Zombie, going the way of Japan, increasing income inequality, etc. here.

God, this BUSINESS of making profits off of sick and dying people is disgusting to me. Great post, seems to be everywhere and most people have no idea on what is going on or how to fight it, esp. around death, people are too grief stricken.

simply put, 1.76% of mortgages are still in foreclosure, and a lot of them have been that way for a long time...we really dont have information as to why; the servicers blame court delays, but the pipelines in non-judicial states are almost as long as in judicial states; could be some combination of chain of title and hence right to foreclose being lost in the poorly upkept automated systems, & banks feeling that homes are better cared for with someone living in them than being empty and prey for vandals...

Yes, I suggest a short term capital gains tax of 90% for anything over $1 million a year. Except in the case of option grants where the tax would be 90% on the first dollar of gain. If they don't work for it then they shouldn't keep it. Inflation of assets or simply trading them isn't work.

Atlanta Fed: "As reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, roughly 10 percent more people are working part-time in September 2014 than before the recession. Part-time workers generally earn less per hour than full-time workers, so lower hours and lower per-hour earnings both contribute to their lower incomes ... During the recovery, the median growth rate of full-time workers has been higher than that of part-time workers. In particular, wage declines were more common among part-time workers ... Education matters for wage growth, but the pattern of lower wage growth for part-time workers persists for people with broadly similar educational attainment."
http://macroblog.typepad.com/macroblog/2014/11/wage-growth-of-part-time-...

Economic Policy Institute: "The weak labor market of the last seven years has put enormous downward pressure on wages, and there has been no significant pickup in nominal wage growth in recent years ... This lackluster wage growth is a clear indicator that there’s still considerable slack in the labor market. With so many Americans looking for work — and millions more who would be looking for work if job opportunities were stronger — employers simply don’t have to offer wage increases to get and keep the workers they need.”
http://www.epi.org/blog/economy-adds-jobs-but-we-need-to-raise-americas-...