Economic reality check

Discussion in 'Economics & Trade' started by Pro_Line_FL, Mar 6, 2019.

  1. danielpalos

    danielpalos Banned

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    tax cut economics are worthless if they don't balance the budget.
     
  2. Giftedone

    Giftedone Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The funny thing about the intellectual property issue is that the Chinese now want intellectual property protection. They already stole most everything there was to steal - built up their economy and technical capacity over the past 20 years - and now are a major innovator. As such - they want protections for that innovation.

    Obviously the Chinese are going to get what they can for agreeing to something they already agree with .. why not ? "the art of the deal".

    In addition to what you state - much of this is about access to Chinese markets as well .. and lastly - much of this is about Political gamesmanship.

    Much of the Trade deficit blithering is just that. A big part of the deficit is on the basis of consumer electronics. If you take the Iphone - the value add from China is something like 3-5% of the cost of the Iphone. Things like the screen (which comes from Korea) and the Chips - which come from Japan are a far bigger percentage of the cost of the Iphone. Because the components are put together in China -- "Its China .. Its China".

    This is nonsense. China is getting very little out of the cost of a 1000 dollar Iphone. Apple is making the profit - not China. It is not China's fault that Apple is laundering the profits outside of the US - and nor is Trump going to change the tax law that allows multi national corporations to do this.
     
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  3. danielpalos

    danielpalos Banned

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    i believe we should be excising the cost difference of our first world Firms leaving for merely Cheap labor. Excising the cost of Labor to US parity, helps Labor in the US and is not detrimental to Labor in foreign nations.
     
  4. Mircea

    Mircea Well-Known Member

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    Those are "seasonally adjusted" numbers, and thus not the actual hard data.

    The actual hard data for the Current Population Survey is here:

    [​IMG]

    The actual hard data for the Current Employment Survey, which is based on payroll data and in my opinion more accurate is here:

    [​IMG]

    As everyone can plainly see, there were far more jobs created than the statistically manipulated 20,000 reported.

    The hard data is manipulated using the X-13ARIMA-SEATS software program, which you may find and download for free from the US Census Bureau web-site.

    The use of weighting factors allows the hard data to be skewed any way you want. Depending on the weighting factors, you can make the hard data say 500,000 jobs were created or show a loss of 330,000 jobs.

    If you look at Social Security's payroll data for February, you'll find SSA collected $62,552,000,000 in January and $69,095,954,523 in February.

    The difference in FICA revenues collected for January and February is $6,543,954,523.

    We'll all wait while the rest of you who disbelieve explain how 20,000 new workers can possibly generate $6 Billion in FICA taxes.

    Would you like some help?

    If an additional $6,543,954,523 in FICA taxes were collected, then at 12.4% (employer and employee contribution) that means a total payroll of $52,773,826,798, right?

    So, your claim is 20,000 people each earned $2,638,691 for the month of February.

    That works out to wages of $15,223/hour.

    Those are some damn good wages.

    I thought wages were stagnant?

    What's wrong with that?

    You're an advanced mature 4th Level Economy. There is neither logic nor any Law of Economics that says a 4th Level Economy should be producing at 8% to 12.5% per quarter.
     
  5. AFM

    AFM Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    In a year when the Fed illogically raised interest rates 3 times and was pulling $60B per month out of reserves 2.9% isn’t bad.
     
  6. ronv

    ronv Well-Known Member

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    I'm not sure where your numbers came from, but I'm also pretty sure we didn't add 1.2 million jobs in February. They are to low for total labor force, so maybe a link is in order.
     
  7. Mircea

    Mircea Well-Known Member

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    If you're not sure, it's because you don't understand Economics.

    And, they are not "to [sic] low for total labor force."

    The data for the first chart shows the number of Americans employed, in both the private and government sectors.

    The number of employed Americans is different than the "total labor force" so either you don't have a freaking clue what you're talking about, or you're intentionally deceiving readers.

    There is no such thing as the "total labor force."

    There is such a thing as the Civilian Labor Force Level.

    The Civilian Labor Force Level is all employed Americans, plus all unemployed Americans, and for February that number is 162,793,000 Americans. Subtracting the Employment Level from the Civilian Labor Force Level gives us the number of unemployed:

    162,793,000
    156,167,000
    ----------------
    6,626,000 unemployed Americans.

    The second chart shows only private sector jobs, not those employed by governments, and states 418,000 jobs were created February, not 20,000 "seasonally adjusted" jobs.

    The difference between the two is one is based on the Current Population Survey and the other on the Current Employment Survey. Effectively, the CPS is a telephone survey, while the CES is based on payroll data.

    For links, follow these instructions to the letter:

    Go to the US government web-site here:

    https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/srgate

    Copy and paste the series codes below into the box provided:

    LNU02000000
    CEU0500000001

    Click on "Next->"

    Click on "Retrieve Data"

    There it be.
     
  8. ronv

    ronv Well-Known Member

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    I always look here. It's easier. :)
    Were you worried about the 2 million plus jobs lost in January using the unadjusted number?
    upload_2019-3-25_18-5-42.png

    upload_2019-3-25_18-7-7.png
     

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