We Need Factories for Making Products and Not for Making Jobs

Everyone's future, their path, is held in their own hands. Whatever people desire, they alone must set the wheels in motion to obtain their goals. Those thinking government or a politician is going to solve their problems is sorely mistaken...

 

I don't think the past or current government and economics can be tied to a single political party...IMO all of Washington, for years now, has been basically worthless...and it continues today. We are simply incapable of solving complex issues! We're not even capable of having a constructive on-point dialogue. The aggregate 'we' are failing and I don't see any impetus to change this path...

 

I can agree to that wholeheartedly, and if you were in my seat (here in France) you'd note that such a condition is not uniquely American.

The most effective rule on earth is autocratic. "Do this or you die!" Works wonders!

A democracy is quite a different animal, and it works its ways intricately and mysteriously. (How the hell did Trump get elected after losing the popular vote by a sufficiently wide margin of 2%?)

I know the answer to that question, but that was not the reason I posted it. The reason is - "when push comes to shove" (and especially in a presidential election) - found in two very old latin words, "Vox Populi". That is, the voice of the people.

It's one helluva variable voice and its a damn fine politician who can bend it to his/her program. Because, if - for instance - that Voice was called upon to once again elect a president today at a 35% popularity rating today Donald Dork would be consigned to the pits where he justly belongs ...

 

What is the best guess as to why the interest in voting is so low in the U.S.?

 

"These" robots? So you have one?

 

This is a position on the basic question of what the purpose of society is. Is it primarily for the people, or is it primarily for business?

Society has always been, and will always be, for people and their benefit. But historically there have been opportunists who seek to divert the public good to their own personal and private good.

 

"Demagogues"? Sorry, but the objections are for very good reason: While real GDP and productivity per worker has increased nicely, the real median wage of the middle class has been flat-to-down since 1970. All that gain has gone to the top who refused to share it with their partners in labor. And the article you quoted (and therefore indicate agreement with) finds this little detail to be worthy of being ignored.

 

Eve

Every business does. Manufacturing jobs historically paid better wages because the workers were represented by unions that could leverage wages that more reflected productive input as opposed to whatever market valuations were.

 

Sure but their voices will not carry as much weight will it.

"We"? I thought you were in France. And the market economy is not the cause of most of that poverty, individual choice is. As in not getting your free high school education, not having children in your teens, not having children unless you are married, not getting married until you are established and in your twenty's, not engaging in crime, not abusing drugs and/or alcohol to name a few.

Why does that make them lucky, people below the poverty level live and equivalent $30K to $50K standard of living depending on how many dependents they have.

Anecdotal reference regarding America's prisons from The New Yorker:

And? Yes one can make a LOT of money in this country, that doesn't prevent others from doing so. I have no college degree have been willing to take risk and provide a lot of revenue for my employers and I am in the top 25% of income earners and probably the top 20% of worth. And lots of this "wealth" and income is that involved in a private businesses the persons owns and how that wealth and income flows through their personal income.

You want to pay the 40% income tax rate in France along with the high sales taxes and social taxes have at it. That's not what we want here.

 

It can work if you apply the same rules across the board. If State A has a higher min wage or unions were workers get good wages, and State B does not and the workers get paid crap, businesses will move to State B, if they can. Manufacturing plants can be moved. Retail/service establishments not so much.

But if your laws mandate the same min wage and/or union rules in both states, there won't be the same "race to the bottom."

 

They paid more because the workers were of higher skill and training and harder to replace and that productive input and the value of it is the market valuation. If workers were better off with unions then why does only about 6% of the private workforce belong to unions? Why are unions routinely rejected by large margins by non-union workforces?

 

It works by having competition between the states.

 

Exactly right. 70% of the economy is consumer spending. Why has it been so weak?

Before the Reagan "trickle down" revolution, the bottom 90% got about 65% of the nation's gross personal income (and the top 10% got about 35%).



Now the bottom 90% are only getting about 50% of the gross national income. With a $16 trillion gross personal income, that means the bottom 90% are getting, proportion about $2.4 trillion less every year. Since the bottom 90% tend to spend most of their income while the wealthier tend to save more, the overall effect on spending from this massive redistribution

Since the bottom 90% tend to spend most of their income, while the wealthy tend to save proportionally more, the result is a negative effect on overall economic spending, and hence, the economy.

If we want a more robust economy, we need to get more of the nation's income back to the bottom 90% -i.e., increase wages.

Which raises the question. How do we increase wages for workers so they will have more money to spend and drive a more robust economy?

 

It's du jour for 1% apologists to blame the 90% of hard working Americans for the fact that virtually all the economic growth since 1981 has gone to the rich.

[Top 1%, top 1/10,000, bottom 90%]

But millions of Americans didn't suddenly start making bad "individual choice" decisions starting in 1981 that sent inequality skyrocketing.

Something else happened that year.

 

It didn't take a lot of skill to screw a nut on a bolt on an assembly line day after day. Anyone could do it or be trained to do it quickly.

Those workers got paid middle class wages because of unions, not because there was a shortage of labor of nut screwers.

Long and systematic demoralization of unions by corporate funded RW interest and weakening of unionization rules and businesses moving to "right to work" type states where they could pay lower salaries.

If a union gets a toehold in, say, a Wal-mart store, they just shut the store down and get away with it.

 

Resulting in a race to the bottom for what workers get paid.

Which is one reason why virtually all of the growth in gross national income and wealth has gone to the wealthy and virtually none to the bottom 90% since Reagan "trickle down" economics.

 

Ahhh no it hasn't gone to one stagnant group of people. I've certainly had economic growth and built wealth in my many years of working during that period. Ain't nothing special about it other than what I previously stated.

It would appear more and more, just look at single motherhood, unmarried males, high school achievement rates, crime and drug abuse and on and on. And then those who live their lives in jealousy of those who are the most successful and blame them for their own failures.

 

Hardly it has resulted in a better standard of living for all those who want to go out and grab a piece of rather than wallow in their jealousy. And again the premise of your argument is that these are static groups which they certainly are not.

Tell me why should the people at the bottom who have not even done enough to earn a middle class standard of living expect to share in the wealth those at the top earned?

 

Almost none of the growth since the Reagan "trickle down" revolution has gone to middle class workers, virtually all the growth has gone to the rich.

Family median income 2012 dollars
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/families/2012/F06AR_2012.xls

Year - income
2012 62,241
1979 57,734
1953 31,929

In the 26 years from 1953 to 1979, real median family income (in inflation adjusted terms) grew by 81%.

In the 33 years from 1979 to 2012, real median family income (in inflation adjusted terms) grew by 8%.
That equates to 0.25% growth per year.

http://bea.gov/national/nipaweb/SelectTable.asp?Selected=N

In the 26 years from 1953 to 1979, real GDP (in inflation adjusted terms) grew by 126.4%

In the 33 years from 1979 to 2012, real GDP (in inflation adjusted terms) grew by 137.9% The real income of the bottom of the top 5% grew 308% in that same time period. That equates to 2.75% annual GDP growth, and 4.5% annual growth of the top 5%.

http://bea.gov/national/xls/gdplev.xls
https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/inequality/

The trillions of growth in income and wealth have not been shared with the middle classes since the Reagan "trickle down" revolution.

People didn't suddenly start being single mothers, or being unmarried males, or stop going to high school, or get into crime and drugs etc. in 1981.



Something else happened that year.

You're just blaming hardworking Americans for the effect of "trickle down" policies that helped create a massive redistribution of income and wealth from the middle class workers to the wealth, to justify the rich getting more and more of the nation's income and wealth.

As you previously admitted, you don't care how much of the nation's income and wealth to the richest and away form the middle class or poorer.

 

The data proves the point. Since the Reagan "trickle down" revolution, median incomes and wages have stagnated, their share of the nation's income and wealth has fallen dramatically, while the richest have seen their income and wealth skyrocket while they've gotten more and more of the pie.

These are facts and have nothing to do with how static or dynamic class movement it, though it has become less dynamic since the Reagan "trickle down" revolution.

 

Wages and been up and down and workers have been up and down through various levels and there is no evidence it is less "dynamic". What you have not shown is that the value of those jobs at the bottom is higher than it was during Reagan's term. Other than inflation why should the job of cooking french fries pay more now than it did during Reagan's term?

 

Lack of proper "Civics" instruction in high-school.

It is improving, but instruction of those presently voting is at least 2, 3, 4 decades old - and thus practically non-existent. I doubt seriously they have had any real understanding of our tripartite system of governance (Executive, Legislature, Judicial) and the interaction between the three. Especially the "separation of powers" that was an innovative concept in the 18th century and is the bedrock of our governmental system of powers (plural) today.

Meaning what? Meaning it will take a great long time for these people to "drop off the voting lists" to be renewed by a "more intelligent" but younger voter. Moreover, the younger one is and the more educated, the more they tend to be "centrists" in the political scale.

From the Atlantic:
Why Civics Is About More Than Citizenship

 

I think it has more to do with feelings of pointlessness, absence of personal representation, hopelessness due to seeing neither Party serving anyone but corporations. I do not accept the notion that Americans are fundamentally different from Swedes, Danish, Fins, Norwegians, French, Austrians, Icelanders, Canadians, Irish, Dutch, or British. The populations in those countries rate higher on "satisfaction" than we do. http://geography-resources.wikispaces.com/file/view/Satisfaction+with+Life+Index.pdf

I believe participation in the political life of one's country correlates with satisfaction. When you feel you have a stake in your country, you are more likely to participate.

 

That depends how well they are "organized" into political parties. And how well those parties cannot be "bought" by BigBusiness interests.

It may amuse you to learn that in France, one can make a contribution to a political party of ONLY a limited amount (less than $10K).

You are being naive.

The rules of a market-economy make for poverty. For instance, the fact that the minimum wage of $7.25 per hour in the US is the principal reason so many individuals live below the poverty-threshold all their lives.

They haven't the faintest chance of leaving poverty, unless they win a lottery ticket - which is why so many play the lottery. Meaning what?

Meaning that getting oneself out of poverty is simply and uniquely a matter of chance. When it should be a matter of educational capacity.

We who? We, the sheeple?

Wakey, wakey! After the Donald Dork disaster, America is going to have the Great Awakening that it so richly deserves (pun intended) ...

 

One need not look any further than "economic theory" (principally the Supply & Demand curve") for the answer to your question.

Which demonstrates that people create Demand for goods-and-services by employing the Revenue from their work to provide the Supply of goods-and-services is at the heart of any modern market-economy ...