09-03-2004 22:31									#31
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quote: Originally posted by MrBaggins Case in point the recent tech-job exodus to India.

Please. Imagine if India fully opened up its agricultural industry- wow, a gain of say 4million tech jobs, and tens of millions of small farmers losing work due to being completely non-competative..which is why so many small states don;t open up fully, for fear of being swamped.

The loss of tech jobs to India makes headlines cause its midfdle class people with the power to complain who get hurt. when millions of small farmers worldwide lose their jobs to agrocorporations in the rich world, no one cares.

	09-03-2004 22:33									#32
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quote: Originally posted by DanS Well, guess who gets paid by corporations? It's ordinary Americans.

Corporate executive pay grades tend to trap more wealth in the already most wealthy segment of society. Trickle-down is a fallacy, and these aren't ordinary Americans we are talking about...

Unless you have the perspective of living in the Hamptons and commuting to work by helo.

	09-03-2004 22:34									#33
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quote: Originally posted by GePap The loss of tech jobs to India makes headlines cause its midfdle class people with the power to complain who get hurt. when millions of small farmers worldwide lose their jobs to agrocorporations in the rich world, no one cares.

Right... I should care about them over Americans... why?

	09-03-2004 22:38									#34
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His predictions are laughable. Yet, I am happy with the results.



Is Bush to blame for the recession?

And why was 5.6% ok in 1996, but is bad now?

Here is a good graph on productivity:



Jumped more than 10 points in 2 years, the last 10 point jump took almost 4.

Average hourly earnings:



Not as good as the CEOs, but good none the less...

Awesome Site

	09-03-2004 22:39									#35
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quote: Originally posted by Japher *SNIP* Average hourly earnings: *SNIP* Not as good as the CEOs, but good none the less...

Mean or median? If its mean... then then you need to break out the executive salaries to show a balanced picture.

	09-03-2004 22:40									#36
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quote: Corporate executive pay grades tend to trap more wealth in the already most wealthy segment of society. Trickle-down is a fallacy, and these aren't ordinary Americans we are talking about...

The most wealthy segment of society only earns about 4% of the national income, which is about the historical average. Your argument lacks perspective.

	09-03-2004 22:44									#37
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quote: Originally posted by DanS The most wealthy segment of society only earns about 4% of the national income, which is about the historical average. Your argument lacks perspective.

Those who have the highest income are individuals with high business incomes. The ratio of earnings of the top one percent of the population to bottom 40 percent is 211 to 1 while for income it is 84 to 1.

These ratios have been increasing.

	09-03-2004 22:48									#38
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Source?

	09-03-2004 22:51									#39
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quote: Originally posted by DanS Source?

“Dimensionality of Inequality: Facts on the U.S. Distributions of Earnings, Income and Wealth,” Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Mineapolis

	09-03-2004 22:51									#40
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Link?

	09-03-2004 22:55									#41
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here

	09-03-2004 23:21									#42
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quote: Originally posted by Japher Is Bush to blame for the recession?

Yes. He ignored the terrorist threat, he talked down the economy, and he exploded the deficit.

quote: And why was 5.6% ok in 1996, but is bad now?

It wasn't good then. It's not good now. Plus, that rate is lower than it should be due to high numbers of people dropping out of the labor force.

	09-03-2004 23:37									#43
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quote: He ignored the terrorist threat

I think 9-11 was already in the cards long before Bush took office. Which means other people, as well as Bush, ignored such warning signs.

quote: , he talked down the economy

He did? Optimism sucks, especially when your at war, huh...

quote: , and he exploded the deficit.

I don't understand what this means.

I will be the first one to bash Bush for his poor handling of the economy, but I don't see the popping of the tech bubble as being his fault. Granted he could have done better in handling that situation, but with ALL things considered it is not all that bad, in fact it is pretty good. Especially when I look at all the opinion polls.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Bush did not take desperate measures, granted, but he took enough of a measure so that desperate didn't become dead.

	10-03-2004 01:02									#44
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quote: He did? Optimism sucks, especially when your at war, huh...

optimism is fine... but he isn't realistic. It's all well and good to be optimistic (as his job growth predictions have been), but it's another to tell the people what they want to hear when the exact opposite of what you say is true.

	10-03-2004 02:55									#45
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quote: Please. Imagine if India fully opened up its agricultural industry- wow, a gain of say 4million tech jobs, and tens of millions of small farmers losing work due to being completely non-competative..which is why so many small states don;t open up fully, for fear of being swamped.

indias agricultural market isnt open because of US subsidies which drive them out of business. if there were no more US subsidies, then they would open their market, and US farmers would go out of business, resulting in them moving to urban areas.

	10-03-2004 03:17									#46
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The reason productivity is up is because those who lost their jobs were less productive than those who kept them.

	10-03-2004 03:46									#47
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You are always going to have people around nay-saying the economic problems, even up to the point when the rioting starts.

The reason is simple, it is perfectly acceptable to the DanS's of the world for 10% of the people to suffer so that the upper class can reap the benefit of cheap labor. Those people mean nothing to people like him.

I mean, if they were worth a ****, they would just get a job, right?

	10-03-2004 03:47									#48
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quote: Originally posted by rev The reason productivity is up is because those who lost their jobs were less productive than those who kept them.

Yeah, the terrorized survivors are pedaling like crazy.

	10-03-2004 03:48									#49
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quote: Originally posted by jimmytrick The reason is simple, it is perfectly acceptable to the DanS's of the world for 10% of the people to suffer so that the upper class can reap the benefit of cheap labor. Those people mean nothing to people like him.

Discuss the topic... not the people.

	10-03-2004 04:04									#50
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quote: The reason is simple, it is perfectly acceptable to the DanS's of the world for 10% of the people to suffer so that the upper class can reap the benefit of cheap labor. Those people mean nothing to people like him.

Are you kidding? I especially get my rocks off on the suffering part.

	10-03-2004 05:36									#51
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quote: Originally posted by Japher Is Bush to blame for the recession?

No, indeed his reckless abandon with the government's finances have prevented a far worse recession (but they come at the cost of there being no room for pump-priming in the next recession).

quote: Originally posted by Japher And why was 5.6% ok in 1996, but is bad now?

Because in 1996 the proportion of adults employed was higher than it is now - indeed it was rising steadily whereas now it is flat after the biggest fall since the 1930s.

	10-03-2004 08:58									#52
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quote: The reason why there hasn't been much job growth is because businesses have been able to increase output greatly while not hiring any more people. In other words, people are becoming hugely more productive, which is in turn hugely beneficial occurence for Americans. I wonder why some are trying their best to kill the goose that's laying the golden eggs? Unemployment is not that bad and will get better over time. Here's a graph that shows productivity growth -- output per hour of non-farm business. As you can see, we haven't had it this good for 40 years. Our work hours have become about 5% more productive in each of the last two years!

quote: That's bullshit, Baggins. Corporations are taking a very low percentage of their business in profits (dividends are tied to profits over the long run). It's pretty much all flowing through to the employees. See the following graph that I prepared showing this fact.

Speaking of bullshit.........

First of all, do I really have to point out how ridiculous it is to equate the statistic dubbed "productivity" with the real world occurance of "people becoming hugely more productive"? The two are not equivalent. And implying that they are is an out and out falsehood.

Productivity (the statistic) is simply the value of all goods and services produced by the United States divided by the hours worked by everyone in the US. By itself it says nothing about whether people are producing goods more efficiently. If large numbers of business were, for instance, to stop producing goods in the US and to start selling imported goods in their place, then "productivity" would go go up, whether those goods were produced more efficiently or not, because the value of the goods would remain the same while the number of hours worked declined.

And, unfortunately, there is absolutely no reason to think that these current increases in productivity growth indicate that goods or services are being produced more efficiently in the United States. If this were true, then economic growth would increase with productivity. After all, if we have been producing goods and services 5% more efficiently over the past two years, then surely the economy must have grown by at least 5% in each of these years, right? Well, I'm afraid it hasn't.

So what this increase seems to indicate is that less goods and services are being produced in the US, and more in China and elsewhere, but that their value is, temporarily at least, remaining the same.

The question of corporate profits as a percentage of GDP is completely irrelevent. If you want to measure whether workers are getting more money for their "increased productivity" why not look at median income figures? That would seem to be the best evidence.

	10-03-2004 09:16									#53
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quote: Ming: the economy created only 21,000 jobs last month...

21000 high paying jobs? Or 21000 "Would you like fries with that"?

	10-03-2004 09:28									#54
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quote: If large numbers of business were, for instance, to stop producing goods in the US and to start selling imported goods in their place, then "productivity" would go go up, whether those goods were produced more efficiently or not, because the value of the goods would remain the same while the number of hours worked declined.

You are forgetting that the numerator in this equation (output) is also reduced as you decrease the denominator (hours). Imports subtract from output.

	10-03-2004 09:30									#55
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The problem with "Total hours worked" part of the productivity formula is that many economists are starting to suspect that the number of hours are being underreported , and perhaps badly underreported - which might severely diminish or eliminate those productivity growth calculation.

That could result in good or bad news re the jobs situation - good as these extra unaccounted hours will eventually lead to more jobs as the economy grows and more work is created - beyond the ability of workers to add extra hours.

But bad - it is becoming obvious that many employers are increasingly demanding more and more hours from their employees, including unpaid overtime, regardless of their level of seniority as a regular situation - many underlings are now working more than even their managers - and that is unlikely to change anytime soon given the trends in business these days - the days of the 35 or even the 40 hour workweek are either dying or dead.

Employers have couched things in terms of regarding employees as "professionals" and using terms such as "empowerment". While many meant it at the time and it has had its benefits and uses for employees, now many employers are using it as an excuse simply to get them to work more hours at the same amount of money and to avoid having to hire additional personnel.

Plus there is the increasing use of contract/temp employees and "consultants" (i.e. outsourcing) who frequently work additional or unspecified hours which can vary from week to week or are even unaccounted for (i.e pay per day for many consultants makes it difficult to account for how many hours they are working for).

	10-03-2004 09:42									#56
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quote: Originally posted by Vanguard And, unfortunately, there is absolutely no reason to think that these current increases in productivity growth indicate that goods or services are being produced more efficiently in the United States. If this were true, then economic growth would increase with productivity. After all, if we have been producing goods and services 5% more efficiently over the past two years, then surely the economy must have grown by at least 5% in each of these years, right? Well, I'm afraid it hasn't.

No, productivity growth isn't the only factor contributing to economic growth, in fact it's probably not even significant in the short run.

	10-03-2004 09:48									#57
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quote: Originally posted by el freako No, indeed his reckless abandon with the government's finances have prevented a far worse recession (but they come at the cost of there being no room for pump-priming in the next recession).

If you support pump-priming (do you?) it makes good sense to prime the pump in the recession that we are in since we don't know when the next recession will be or what the conditions of it will be.

	10-03-2004 09:50									#58
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quote: Originally posted by rev The reason productivity is up is because those who lost their jobs were less productive than those who kept them.

Productivity has been improving for some time, even while there has been employment growth.

	10-03-2004 09:54									#59
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quote: Originally posted by Sava that graph sure illustrates how absurd the administration's job creation predictions are...

Many economists make overoptimistic predictions before and during recessions too. Krugman's record isn't particularly good.

	10-03-2004 19:38									#60
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quote: Originally posted by Kidicious If you support pump-priming (do you?)

Yes I do support pump-priming to a certain extent (but a 5% swing in the structural budget balance is huge by any standards), but I also support the opposite of raising taxes when the economy has recovered (do you?) - this the bush administration shows no sign of doing (indeed they are trying to make the 'temporary' tax cuts permanent)

quote: Originally posted by Kidicious it makes good sense to prime the pump in the recession that we are in

Are you seriously claiming the the US economy is still in recession?

quote: Originally posted by Kidicious Since we don't know when the next recession will be or what the conditions of it will be.

Barring an external shock the next recession is due in around 6 to 8 years time by my reckoning.