Posted on 03/19/2006 5:49:56 AM PST by B4Ranch
Nathan Zachary & kstewskis say, " I think this is a commie rant."
Who is right? Us or them? I agree with what the article says and I know I'm not a Commie, but then again I'm not a free trader willing to sell America to the lowest bidder either.
And yet, since 2001, our household net worth has gone from $40.7 trillion to $52.1 trillion. So much for Paul and his zero sum economics.
That and the fact that we are giving away our future amidst all these damn treaties. I have no problem helping my neighbor but I do expect them to work too.
Or prefer not to live 12 guys, 4 women, and 2 babies in a one bed apt! Then go home after a year and retire.
Please tell me where Americans can move to and earn $500/hr for a year,+ free north pole benefits, and I will move to the north pole. After a year, I'll move home wealthy.
Yes, the government spends way too much money. The answer, obviously, is to raise tariffs. LOL!
Question: Was the man insured? Did he have a company name that is registered or is he just a guy trying to survive?
It is a line. It goes up. Gradually, but without any meaningful deviation from a straight line up. 6 years ago, before the stock market crash and the recession and the war, it was $13.78 an hour. Now it is $16.47 an hour, 20% higher, up 3% per year. US wages are simply not going down. The gloom and doomers have been proclaiming they are and will since approximately 1800 when Malthus had his brainstorms, but actual wages utterly refuse to move in the direction they claim they must.
It is a line. It goes up. It has a few more deviations from perfectly straight than wages, which all have the same form - a bit of accelerating up, a sharp dip, and a slow curve back up again. At least 7 dips of that pattern are visible on the graph. Those are major recessions. You can see two of them in the 1950s, when none of the factors the article alleges were in play. If you look at the raw data, six years ago there were 136,559,000 jobs in America. Now there are 143,257,000, up 6.7 million or 1.1 million a year on average, counting one such dip. The number of jobs in the US is not going down. The gloom and doomers have been proclaiming they are since at least the 1970s and the modern protectionst movement, which has its origins in the unwillingness of either major party to promote rotectionism, as an economic and political loser. Since then we've added about 63 million jobs. Rather a lot really. You'd hope someone might notice.
It is an exponential curve. It accelerates at a uniform rate. Deviations from a perfect exponential are tiny and fleeting, and hardly noticable at all in the long term. Our wealth is proportional to the area underneath that curve. Not only are we not getting poorer, we are getting wealthier at an accelerating rate over time. Six years ago, US work and production was adding $9.52 trillion a year to our resources, annual rate. In the last year, the rate was $12.76 trillion a year, a third faster, and in absolute terms a new income of $3.24 trillion. This is the domestic product and excludes imports. During the same period, the "trade deficit" grew by $324 billion, one tenth of our new income. We got a 34% raise, and splurged a whole 3% of it on additional net imports.
There are sensible financial reasons to worry a modest amount about the trade deficit, about how sustainable it is and about the low domestic savings rate it reflects. That low domestic savings rate in recent years has mostly reflected a propensity of people to rely on price appreciation of stocks then real estate for their savings requirements, instead of ongoing large scale new investment. They have done fine that way, with US net work well over $50 trillion at this point. But in the long run, additional new savings are a more reliable way to future increases in our raging prosperity. The very low interest rates we have enjoyed in recent years are primarily responsible for both those strong asset prices, and the low savings rate. It is sensible to increase rates modestly to encourage additional savings and strengthen the dollar, and the Fed has been doing so, slowly but consistently, for two years.
Political misuse of economics is widespread and depends on fundamental ignorance of the actual processes and facts on the part of those addressed. Facts annihilate the gloom and doomers' misconceptions. They have been utterly wrong about absolutely everything for decades, in the case of Malthusian wage decline nonsense, literally two centuries. It never stops them from spouting the same silliness. But facts are even more stubborn than pigheaded ideology.
I agree with you too, B4.
(you'll have to please excuse me, I haven't had my coffee yet.)
But you do bring up the crux of the problem. The article does have a point.
The two characters that I mentioned above, have to compete with those who hire the "imports" at a lower wage, however their "product" speaks for itself.
The situation is a bit more complex than what is presented.
Good Sunday to ya ;o)
Oh and I'll hang sheet rock or clean slaughtered seals for that money!
I see taxes increasing locally and statewide. The highways are falling into disrepair. Crime is increasing. The kids coming out of school aren't anywhere near as educated as you and I were at the same age. Is this advancement?
No, this fellow is insured, bonded, and incorporated.
Who is this "na" character? Is he the guy who has his work published at CounterPunch.org?
The Free traders are a bunch of socialist or ,at best, dupes of socialists who want unified world control over the worlds production and wealth.
They have forgotten about our national sovereignty and the pride of being an American too. All in the interest of a dollar bill.
LOL!! Please, show us all how the economies of protectionist nations are better than the economies of freer trading nations. Take your time.
Is Sunday a national fantasy-day?
"but the American economy and people are fine."
If we were fine then our bills would be paid and we'd have cash in the bank. Two things we don't have now.
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