Economy added 255,000 jobs in July

Get those grannies back in the factories!

It's fun to watch you all show how clueless you are and how mislead by RW propaganda day after day.

 

YOU are the one who is using a stat that includes only 80% of workers who contribute to GDP and excludes 20% of workers who contribute to GDP, why should I have to explain YOUR actions?
If I must, the cynic in me would say because you desperately need a negative stat to attack Obama, and indirectly Clinton, with.
Am I wrong?

 

Nonfarm payrolls is a number generated by the business survey. I'm not positive why it excludes farm workers but I believe it relates to the fluctuation of farm workers.

It is a more accurate reading of the job situation and so is the de facto figure used when tracking how the economy is doing in terms of producing jobs (adjusting for seasonal variation).

Last month, the business survey showed there were 144.4 million jobs.

You can find business survey data here: http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cesbtab1.htm

Total employment is measured by a different survey, the household survey. It tends to be a little broader. The household survey figures tend to vary more, it's not uncommon to see the total employment figure, for example, bounce around by a few hundred thousand. That is why it is not used to track the month to month employment situation.

Total employment under the household survey is 151.5 million.

Household survey figures are here: http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpsatab1.htm The household survey is where we get data on unemployment, the labor force, and things like that.

 

Then let's start by being honest about our productivity. If an uneducated, unskilled worker can solve a problem for less over there, than our educated, skilled people can solve over here... the problem isn't with letting our people buy things at that lower cost. It's that our people are not ambitious enough to take on the problems that guy over there cannot solve. Other countries have tried building economic walls, to keep their people from using less costly solutions to their problems. It didn't work in Pyongyang, Berlin, or Moscow. It just drove up the price of everything and killed innovation and real advances in productivity—making things worse.

You are right. Our wages and our economy suck right now. And neither party is offering any real solutions. They can't. No one can give us something that makes us more productive. Real change has to come from within. People have to stop trying to negotiate a way to get paid more for offering old solutions and start building new ones. When we do, those better solutions will allow us to more rapidly pour value into our economy—which will be measured by the better compensation we demand for those solutions. Solutions the guy in North Korea, Mexico, or Greece cannot offer—meaning that open border doesn't hurt us, it gives us more customers.

America cannot be afraid of competition. We don't hide behind walls. We were first first in flight, revolutionized the steel industry, created the aluminum industry, lead the way in electronics, started the computer revolution, made the biotech industry, we built the internet. That's how America became the number one economy in the world. That kind of courage, innovation and industry produces a strong economy. It's the only thing that does.



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You're assuming that lower number of workers increases the demand for more workers. That doesn't necessarily follow. If you have more people working, they spend money which creates more demand for more workers.

The trick, especially after a recession, is to create the demand for more workers and get more people working.

Unfortunately, our middle class has been gutted by three decades of "trickle down economics, and with the obstructionist Republicans blocking jobs bills, eliminating hundreds of thousands of jobs, and forcing austerity, we've gotten the opposite of the demand we need.

 

so let me get this straight. Your saying that in a recession where we have like 100 people 50 people working 50 not the solution is to bring in another 50 people from another to employ at lower wages? Who then proceed to send the money abroad for remittances.

Would it not be better to keep the supply at 100 and employ all of them who then proceed to spend the money inside the economy?

As long as there are people out of the workforce and unemployed it is better to employ them first rather than inflate the workforce.

For keysian economics to work they actually have to spend a majority of the money inside the economy.

 

once the solution is offered here theres nothing stopping the other countries from attracting the business who made that solution to their shores.

 

There never has been. Yet people chose to start here, remain here, and succeeded here for a very long time. Businesses and countries are just collections of people.

There are many things the people in America have done or can do better than anyone else in the world. Identify those strengths, cultivate them, and promote them to industries where that value is key to a businesses success.

You don't win races by stopping others from competing with you. You do it by out performing them.



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You know that all sounds good, and I bought the arguments, shook my head sadly at all the poor folks that warned that forcing Americans to compete with the 3rd world for jobs would crush wage growth but the world that I see today looks a hell of a lot closer to what Ross Perot described than what Bill Clinton and George HW Bush described.

Same with Permenant Trade Status with China that Bill Clinton chortled over in 1999. Yeah, Bill Clinton got rich, the 1% got even richer, but we got crushed. I think 17 years and 25 years is plenty of time to judge a change and this one has hurt us badly.

Some thoughts:

* We have a zillion laws that protect labor and the environment and we just can't compete with countries that do not and pay their folks $5 a day. To say that means the American worker just is not willing to work hard enough or smart enough I think avoids the issue.

* We really don't need anyone else. We are one of the few countries that has great laws, abundant labor and natural resources, energy, the whole works. If we see mutually beneficial opportunities to trade with other countries we can, but we are under no obligation to, and certainly we are under no obligation to screw ourselves in the process.

* I'm fine with renegotiating any or all of our international agreements. I think we have made some dumb ones and certainly ones that while they may benefit those at the top of the heap, they are putting the crimp on the rank and file.

* My head agrees with all your points, my eyes say "it didn't work."

 

Well only if disposable income is increased in the aggregate. More people working for less money wouldn't necessarily produce that.

We don't seem to being a good job of that. Under Obama we have taken in $20T in taxes and gone through $29T in spending I heard the other day. The only think I can figure is that the multiplier has gone negative.

And the velocity of M1. What is up with that?

That looks like partisan horse (*)(*)(*)(*), a sure waste of everyone's time. Seriously, while the Federal Debt has increased by $9T, how in the world can you use the word "austerity" with a straight face?

If spending $9T more than we took in didn't create demand, what is the answer? $11T $20T? And when that doesn't work, how will our kids and grand-kids service the debt? I think we need to step back and consider that we may have erred in our diagnosis and attempted solutions. We may have missed something important and all this debt is real money and real obligations. There is nothing wrong with stepping back, out of the partisan bickering, because I suspect both sides are missing something critical and taking a fresh look at our entire approach.

 

The WH, BLS, everyone uses non-farm payroll and has for generations. Why blow up at me? I told you I checked and was unable to figure out why. You might as well blow up at me for the use of a 28 day month for February 3 out every 4 years.

 

No actually they use the Household Survey for employment and unemployment data, not the Establishment survey you used.

 

It didn't work, because we didn't do it. In 1955, the skills of a fry cook brought new value to our economy. They made food more accessible and built a new industry. And that guy made a good living. Twenty years later, that solution was less valuable but still useful. Twenty years later, kids in high school could do the job. Now we can literally get it done without people—robotic ovens and iPads solve the problems of the McJobs.

And it is no longer reasonable for people to expect a living wage for something that we do not need a human being to do. The folks demanding living wages for McJobs did not advance their contributions but do expect to take more out of the economy than the 1955 guy did. If people want to live in an economy that provides 2016 solutions, they need to contribute to 2016 solutions.

If we cannot compete with other countries, we will fall behind their lifestyles. Our failure to compete is why the U.S. stopped being the number one world economy in 2012. It's why we fell another notch in 2014. If a solution American's want or need costs $5 provided from North Korea and $50 provided from Colorado—asking American's to pay 10x as much means we will get one tenth the value for what we do produce. We should not compete in producing that solution, we should compete in producing solutions where America has a competitive advantage.

There are industries where we can win the gold. U.S. companies like Modern Meadow and Impossible Foods are looking at zero-labor models to produce new foods, leather and other raw materials—through bio-fabrication and genetic design. Mexico and North Korea cannot compete with our people when we use robotics and customer contributions to compete with human labor for the $5 an hour part of the business model. U.S. factories incorporating self-assembling geometries and large scale 3-D printing have tremendous advantages over off shore production. Indian and German programmers or lawyers can race us to the bottom of the wage scale, but if our people use expert systems for contract construction and self-assembling code for programming they will hit zero and our people will still profitably out produce them.

Yes, this means our people need to do more than run errands and do what they're told 9-5. Those are $5 an hour jobs now, they won't even have that value when Roomba incorporates Seri. Our people need to take ownership of their contribution, their productivity. But if you want better solutions than they had in 1955, you have to build them. And if you don't... go Amish. It's your choice.



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What's behind this? Why has median household income been falling for 17 years while the number of foreign born workers in the US has been going through the roof?

A couple of problems:

* That wage differential absolutely puts downward pressure on US wages.

* It does whether import the goods or import the workers.

* It results in supply chains stretched all over the world, requiring military commitments, all over the world to keep the waterways open. And at our dismal GDP growth and flat and falling wages, I just don't think we can afford it any longer.

* There is no reason why we can't renegotiate these deals one at a time. How come if you want more mutually beneficial even-handed trade deal, you are immediately smeared as an isolationist? Who falls for such silly black and white thinking?

Are you fkn serious? Either I agree with you or I need go buy a buggy from Amos Yoder?

 

The skills that haven't changed in 20 years are more common now or competing with better ones, and therefore less valuable today. Dirt has arguably more important properties than diamonds, but if you need or want something that takes more to attain—you pay more to attain it. You pay more for diamonds. Until they become as common as dirt and the price drops.

We used to pay more for needed skills that were more difficult to get 17 years ago. That those solutions are more common means they are now less valuable. Wages for those solutions are not dropping because of increased pressure. They are dropping because the pressure to solve those problems is lessened by greater availability of solutions for them. That's progress.

Negotiate whatever deal you want. But if that deal simply makes it more expensive for our people to get those $5 diamonds, you haven't helped our people. The wall you put up, just makes it more expensive for people to get what they need or want. And yes, people who want walls between economies want to be isolated—by definition.

I am serious. If you wall off our economy, so our people do not have to produce and cannot access more efficient means of production... well it doesn't matter if you agree with me or not. The people walled off will be Amos Yoder. And yes, they will have to settle for a 2016 buggy as the world on the other side of their wall marches ahead without them.



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Actually with the flood of outsourcing and influxes of foreign labor, tech wages haven't even kept pace with inflation.

Only if the supply is constrained.

Exactly. When the labor market is flooded, whether accessed through outsourcing or by directly importing the workers, Wages. Drop.

Exactly.

Why do I want walls on my house? Why do we have fenced yards? We want to maintain a set of conditions within the secured area that differs from that beyond. There is nothing unusual or wrong about a nation maintaining:

* Greater labor protections.
* Cleaner environment.
* Higher vaccination rates
* Preventing human trafficking and security risks over behind secure borders.

I saw an interesting piece by Peggy Noonan:
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How Global Elites Forsake Their Countrymen
Those in power see people at the bottom as aliens whose bizarre emotions they must try to manage.
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These progressive internationalists, convinced they are experts have set the world on fire -- and see the real challenge to be managing the passions of their unaccomplished underlings -- you know, the folks that actually do everything in the country the "experts" want to dedicate to their internationalist pipe-dreams.
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This is about distance, and detachment, and a kind of historic decoupling between the top and the bottom in the West that did not, in more moderate recent times, exist.
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She discusses Angela Merkel -- who will not be directly affected by mass immigration into Germany -- busily virtue signally by allowing mass immigration into Germany, and because of our interconnected agreements, into the entire West.
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Nothing in their lives will get worse. The challenge of integrating different cultures, negotiating daily tensions, dealing with crime and extremism and fearfulness on the street--that was put on those with comparatively little, whom I’ve called the unprotected. They were left to struggle, not gradually and over the years but suddenly and in an air of ongoing crisis that shows no signs of ending--because nobody cares about them enough to stop it.
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In fact, if you don't promptly get on board, the subtle slights start and progressively increase in volume.
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The powerful show no particular sign of worrying about any of this. When the working and middle class pushed back in shocked indignation, the people on top called them “xenophobic,” “narrow-minded,” “racist.” The detached, who made the decisions and bore none of the costs, got to be called “humanist,” “compassionate,” and “hero of human rights.”
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And that about captures it. Read through your gentle lecturing of me on my failure to intellectually grasp your "superior" grasp of economics while you blow right past our dismal GDP and falling real wages which you breezily dismiss as "us" just not adequately applying ourselves to the diligence and motivation!
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The larger point is that this is something we are seeing all over, the top detaching itself from the bottom, feeling little loyalty to it or affiliation with it. It is a theme I see working its way throughout the West’s power centers. At its heart it is not only a detachment from, but a lack of interest in, the lives of your countrymen, of those who are not at the table, and who understand that they’ve been abandoned by their leaders’ selfishness and mad virtue-signalling.
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The French Monarchy was similarly insulated until their world exploded. Listening earlier and not casually dismissing real hardship as a lack of innovation and effort would have served them much better that their smug self-assuredness that they saw the situation more clearly.
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From what I’ve seen of those in power throughout business and politics now, the people of your country are not your countrymen, they’re aliens whose bizarre emotions you must attempt occasionally to anticipate and manage.
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Yup. They might as well live on a different planet.

When Whittaker Chambers reviewed Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged he was appalled by Rand's absolute insistence that she owed nothing -- not even sympathy -- to her struggling fellow countrymen, Chambers observed that Rand's prescription for the poor seemed to be nothing but "To a gas chamber, go."

If you have no economic usefulness to us; now do your duty and trudge off like a lame and old elephant. Find a nice field of bones to lie down and die in. Or in your formulation: You'll just have to develop new skills and work weekends!

We are seeing more and more of this hard-edged "Go (*)(*)(*)(*) yourself" Transnationalist "Progressivism" emanating from the Internationalist Business-Government Class on both the Left and the Right, and it is a system that serves them well. Current American workers are to be given no advantage over incoming foreign challengers, why it will make them soft! We need a merit-based and based on whoever will work the cheapest!

But these same set of clowns feel perfectly entitled to expect US servicemen to defend them from threats foreign and domestic and maintain their international shipping lanes and provide the taxes to maintain it. Why, it's the "Patriotic" thing to do! But if they owe us nothing, why are we so obligated? Why are US corporations protected with ridiculous Farm Subsidy programs, price supports, even Boeing gets is own Import/Export bank to ensure that the US taxpayer is on the hook to guarantee loans foreign nations use to buy their products! No wonder they don't want to renegotiate anything, they are sitting on a rigged game that suits them fine and leaves us exposed to vagaries of the international disorder.

US working stiffs should get no legal advantages over foreign challengers, but of course the Transnationalists get subsidies and the intervention of the State Department backed up by the US military.

You seem to want the benefits of American power to flow to one group while also denying that Americans should hold other Americans in a special place in their heart, above all other people, taking care of our own first. Yet the Internationalists and the Transnationalists cover each others asses just fine. We saw the massive bailouts of GM, Ford, The Banks and watched our own real incomes drop. Now flooded with foreign workers, you sniff that we should just "apply ourselves more diligently! The Stiff upper lip! You can do it you try harder!"

You seem to have a much stronger commitment to the transnational progressives, this Citizen of the World nonsense that any real sense of loyalty or obligation to your fellow countrymen. Well, I don't think we are sold on your concepts. And nice job blowing right past my graphs showing that we have had 17 years of falling incomes while a small group who is peddling this open borders and free access to our markets by the world has made out very well.

Well, let me put it simply, I think we are getting screwed, and the folks peddling this crap are doing very very well, And as long as the game is working for them, why should they listen to the folks that are putting up with it, paying for it, and getting poorer every year?​

 

Life isn't a game and this is not your house. It's our house.

No one is requiring you to produce anything in this country. Although it is reasonable to ask you to produce something. If that something is less valuable than what the guy next door is producing, again your choice.

Where you and I disagree is you seem to be of the opinion that it is reasonable for you to pass a law saying I have to choose to buy your something instead of his. Because otherwise you would have nothing to contribute to our partnership.

I don't think that's a good enough reason. I don't think you should get that law. If you do, I think the continuing spiral of replacing real contributions with laws requiring people to pay diamond prices for handfuls of earth will reduce this house to a dirt shack. And then it will be your house.




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Actually we contribute immensely to the translationist open border progressives, which they are happy to take, even while they trade from the guy who does not and so undercuts, me, and this is the best part, I'm supposed to continue to willingly fund his ability to do so!.

They are the ones who wants to only take while claiming to remain un-obligated, not me.

And as I'm sure is coming ever more clear, we have had enough.

No more bull (*)(*)(*)(*).



Of course they like this rotten deal they are doing great!​

 

It's better to constrain people? Our partnership could be flooded with diamonds, but you want to deny people $5 diamonds... keep the price always expensive so the folks selling dirt never progress to solving a new problem.

And when our partners like the Wright brothers, Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs... when they reach for one more thing or a better filament... create more value than the guy selling dirt can match... we pass a new law raising the price of dirt again.




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Am I not constrained to fund the schools, the heathcare, the social safety network that protects the flood of outside labor that undercuts my wages?

Am I not constrained to fund the global military that protects the business interests of the Internationalist operating from the US and keeps open the global shipping lanes that provide their supply lines?

But suddenly when I suggest they are obligated to the fellow Americans that are underwriting their operation, then suddenly you all are whining about "constraints?"

And you're damned right. I want fairness in return.

 

You contribute from the partnership... no doubt.

If you contributed immensely to the economy, your contribution was valued when folks took that contribution out of the economy. You and they agreed on it's value and you got credit for that contribution in dollars. You got paid for your contribution.

If someone doesn't want to take your contribution out of the economy, it's because they don't agree with what you think it's worth. Find someone who does, or reconsider your estimate. It's kind of silly for your to claim folks are happy to take your contribution while also claiming you need to oblige them to take your offer.



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You want to oblige people to contribute to your wages... the way they are obliged to contribute to our schools?

Yes, laws are constraints. I don't agree with all the laws—certainly not all the tax laws. And don't get me started on the problems with Obamacare. But there is a difference between us getting together and collecting a tax to pay for a shared resource or expense... and claiming we should collect a tax just to constrain people to buy from you.

If you want charity, be honest about it. If you absolutely cannot find a way to offer value the economy wants, there are resources (Obamacare is one). You won't starve. But asking us to pay a special tax so we can funnel that charity to you in a way that protects your pride, so you can pretend to be making a valued contribution. That's not reasonable.




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I was at the Carnival, I heard the promises:

Clinton and Congress paved the way for China to enter WTO and we were all going to do so great!

Well, The Clintons did, the Internationalists did, Congress did, but us? We got screwed.

1999 and Clinton promises:

"We do nothing," Bill Clinton declared with a straight face. "They have to lower tariffs. They open up telecommunications for investment. They allow us to sell cars made in America in China at much lower tariffs. They allow us to put our own distributorships there. They allow us to put our own parts there. We don't have to transfer technology or do joint manufacturing in China any more. This a hundred-to-nothing deal for America when it comes to the economic consequences."

Instead the trade deficit with China surged nearly 200 percent. The United States has lost more than one-third of all its manufacturing jobs -- 5.6 million. U.S. wages have declined. The US suffered a financial meltdown. And our Federal Debt has doubled twice. Once under the president that followed Clinton, and again by the president that followed Bush.

Granting PNTR to China would "increase U.S. jobs and reduce our trade deficit," Clinton promised soothingly. But in May 2000 there were 110.7 million private sector jobs and in May 2016 there are 121.8 million today. An increase of 0.7M/yr. While our population increased by 2.5 million a year over the same period. So no jobs explosion, no wage explosion and job growth has lagged population growth for 16 years. No enough jobs, the jobs pay less. Like I said, I heard the promises, I have seen the results.

We got screwed.



The U.S. trade deficit in goods has skyrocketed and is presently increasing at a rate that is considered to be unsustainable.

Clinton said the deal with China would "greatly increase the opportunities to open professional services such as law firms, management consulting, accountants and environmental services." That didn't happen. Dubya solemnly saying that PNTR would "narrow our trade deficit with China."

Robert Kapp, president of the U.S.-China Business Council, said the agreement would open the Chinese market to U.S. exports and would be "the biggest single step we can take to reduce America's growing trade deficit with China. With American tariffs near zero and non-tariff barriers few and far between, we're not talking about a 'gift' for China in PNTR, we're talking about bringing home the bacon."

How can you not recognize that this all turned out to be bull (*)(*)(*)(*)?

"It is primarily U.S. exporters who will benefit" the Cato Institute happily gurgled: the "silliest argument against PNTR is that Chinese imports would overwhelm U.S. industry. In fact, American workers are far more productive than their Chinese counterparts. Moreover, Beijing's manufacturing exports to the United States remain small, about half the level of those from Mexico. PNTR would create far more export opportunities for American than Chinese concerns."

That's essentially indistinguishable from the crap you are pedaling.

Clinton assured the American public that there were strong measures in the agreement "to strengthen guarantees of fair trade and to address practices that distort trade and investment." And that's maybe true, but if those measures exist, they have not been effectively deployed by the Federal government.

Clinton's U.S. Trade Representative said that if the United States "turned down a set of one-way concessions made by China, we will make a very dark statement about our ability to develop a stable and mutually beneficial relationship with the world's largest country....China's accession to the WTO is a clear win. China's trade concessions are one-way and enforceable."

While Clinton and The Conga Line of clowns were telling us that. The Chinese Government gleefully told the People's Daily, their national newspaper that the deal would "actively spur foreign capital to flow into high and new technological industries and encourage transnational corporations to come to China to set up R&D centers and regional headquarters."

And that's what happened.

The world trading system created by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1947 excluded countries like China for a very good reason. Members of GATT agreed on basic principles of democracy and free markets and they excluded communist countries because they thought such countries would sabotage GATT's effectiveness. The United States and its allies generally extended GATT membership to countries that they were intent on anchoring to the alliance of democratic and free-market nations.

China does not believe that, never has and never will. They saw WTO as a vehicle to do what they want to do and get access to other people's markets, we opened the gate and they drove right in.

When you royally FU, it is critical that you admit it. Otherwise you can't learn from the lesson you already paid for.

Anyway, I'm not joining in your lunacy. Clinton screwed up, Dubya screwed up. GATT worked just fine with the system in place before Clinton screwed it up, and why we have clowns pretending it would be Smoot Hawley to go back to the free trade agreements that worked just fine under: Roosevelt, Truman, JFK, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Papa Bush, especially when we are staring right at the train wreck... well... WTF?

 

If i'm constrained to provide a social safety net, fund environmental regulation and labor law and health care, no. I do not want to freely fund foreign labor that undercuts my wages.

If I am constrained to fund the global military that protects the global interests by ensuring their global supply lines are able to operate freely, no. I don't want them importing cheap labor to undercut my wages and when they move mfg overseas I want them to pay the same taxes when they sell here as the folks that stay here and manufacture hear and pay the wage levels that produce the disposable income these vampires want to suck out.

That's not what I'm saying, though we do have tariffs, about 12,000 of them in place, right now. Yet every time a tariff is mentioned we get the shocked virgin act. What's up with that? There are a thousand ways a fairer deal could be arranged. One of my favorites, and I'm still mulling it over, would be to go to a National Sales tax rather than our current payroll and income tax.

Currently all of our tax cost is baked into the final price of everything we produce. So when we ship it to another market, it's in that price and that extra cost puts upward pressure on the price and so downward pressure on the sales.

Going the other way, goods show up on our shores, unencumbered by those costs and so are "cheaper". Our manufacturers see that, ship their mfg over the border and bring the "cheaper" goods back to sell.

With a national sales tax base, our goods sold in foreign markets are cheaper because they do not include US federal taxes, meanwhile, foreign goods purchased here, are taxed at the same rate as US goods, so it's perfectly fair.

Or we could simply go back to Pre-Clinton GATT and keep the bulk of our international trade with like minded nations that share our view of the freedom of the Human Spirit, Free Markets and the duty to provide healthy fruitful lives for our work forces. It worked great from FDR through Papa Bush, I see no reason not to consider a return to it.

FU. Learn to read and actually interact with your interlocutor rather than mindlessly throwing talking points you memorized off someone else's blog.

You want real exchange of thoughts and ideas, then do some thinking. Parrots are a dime a dozen and I'm only willing to waste so much time with them.

 

Lots of people screwed up and if someone promised you a future that didn't appear, take it up with them. I didn't make you that promise.




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