Posted on 09/02/2012 7:46:34 PM PDT by Nachum
NEW YORK — Sure, the economy is adding jobs these days…but most of those positions pay pretty poorly. Some 58% of the jobs created during the recovery have been low-wage positions, according to a new report by the National Employment Law Project. Only 22% have been mid-wage jobs and 20% higher-wage positions. These low-wage jobs pay $13.83 an hour or less. “The recovery continues to be skewed toward low-wage jobs, reinforcing the rise in inequality and America’s deficit of good jobs,” said Annette Bernhardt, NELP’s policy co-director. “While there’s understandably a lot of focus on getting employment back
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EXACTLY what I was taught many years ago. Another might be knowledge based ideas that can be used and/or sold. Also I was taught that to improve a local ecomomy, such items be sold outside of one's locality to increase local wealth.
“Yep, and the numbers help Obama mask the real story.”
Nothing is masking it from the people forced to take those jobs (or their families and friends), and nothing is masking it from those that can’t even get those jobs. The horrible economy (unemployment, inflation) should suffice to sink Obama, because they simply can’t be hidden from the average person.
“Not necessarily obama wages, more like global wages. Don’t expect any change no matter which of the two liberals end up @ 1600 Pennsylvania ave.”
I’d still rather give Romney a try than the token teleprompter; if Romney doesn’t get some results he will get demolished in the mid-term and sent packing two years later.
Also, you can’t create wealth by counting it (accountants) or suing it (lawyers). We’ve got FAR too many of those guys in the USA now!
Junk economics.
Hong Kong has a strong economy, and for most of its modern history, has always had one, yet it manufactures nothing and has no wealth of natural resources either. Hong Kong is a strong economy because it concentrates on what it does best and what the rest of the world (i.e., Hong Kong's customers) finds most valuable: it provides SERVICES to the global economy, and in return, it receives manufactured goods, agricultural goods, etc. "Manufacturing" is not at all necessary for a viable, growing economy; FREEDOM of trade and division of labor are important.
It also follows that if a country manufactures everything it needs on its own, even if it has a great wealth of natural resources, it won't be a strong, viable, growing economy. In fact, it will be a weak economy. The economist Henry George made the following argument in the 19th century, the logic of which is still relevant (and, I believe, still unanswerable) today:
One of the ways a country effectively subdues another country during wartime is by imposing an economic blockade, thus forcing the blockaded country to rely economically completely on itself: trade with other countries is forcibly prevented, so the blockaded country must manufacture everything on its own. No military strategist would think this was a way of strengthening the blockaded country! By forcing the blockaded country to rely completely on its own resources, you obviously weaken it. That's why blockades are imposed. That's why they work.
And yet, certain conservatives (Trump, et al.) believe that if a country such as the US imposed a blockade on itself by implementing economic policies forcing it to manufacture things it could simply trade for much more cheaply, it would somehow have the opposite effect of a military blockade, and would magically strengthen the economy! Obviously, whether a blockade is imposed from the outside by an a enemy nation, or from the inside by one's own government policies, the result will be the same: the blockaded nation will waste its resources, its land, and its labor, trying to be completely self-sufficient, by having to manufacture everything domestically. Under conditions of liberty and free trade, countries do the same thing as individual people: they concentrate their efforts on whatever they do best, and whatever their customers estimate to be of the highest economic value. Then they trade, value for value.
In the case of the US and the rest of the world, what we do best — in other words, what our customers, the global economy estimate to be the contribution with the highest value — are services like electronic component design (not manufacture, but design); computer and smartphone design (not manufacture, but design), software (a service, not a manufactured object), and of course, banking, finance, and insurance. Those services add the most value to various final products, the manufacture and assembly of which are more efficiently done by others, elsewhere.
Finally, a common flawed assumption of much junk economics is that a service is either not a true economic good, or is somehow "less valuable" than a physical good. Thus, according to this view, the service of providing a haircut is less valuable to an economy than the physical manufacture of the scissors. This is utterly untrue and reflects nothing but a materialistic bias on the part of those who make the claim. In fact, "value" in an economy is subjective and in the eye of the beholder — ultimately, the consumer. If consumers are willing to pay a higher price for the service of a haircut than they are for a physical pair of scissors, then by definition the haircut service adds more value to the economy than the manufacture of the physical scissors. That scissors are necessary for providing a haircut is true but irrelevant to the argument.
You might think of it this way: brain surgery is a service; scalpels are physically manufactured objects. Which adds more value to an economy? True, the surgical service requires the physical scalpels, but the scalpels take on a greatly added value in the hands of the skilled surgeon. Same can be said for the scissors and the barber. And the entrepreneurial manufacturer and his banker or financier. And the assembly of smartphones and those who design and improve them: the service ADDS VALUE to the physically manufactured object. And in these cases, the added value is itself of higher value than the original physical object.
Again, what the US should be doing is whatever it does best that adds the most value to the world economy, which, today, is no longer physically manufacturing things, but ADDING VALUE to things manufactured by others, elsewhere, at less cost.
C’mon. It is better to see one working for 13 bucks than one spending gubmint benefits to consume booze and meth instead of working.
If people voluntarily pay to have their laundry done, then by definition, it creates wealth, even if it's not something physically tangible. Conversely, if no one buys an ugly, inefficient, Chevy Volt, even if every solid part was patriotically manufactured in the good old USA, then, by definition, zero wealth was created even though the entire product is physically tangible. In fact, there was a net loss of wealth, because Chevy misdirected resources — land, labor, capital — into manufacturing something that no one found valuable. The land, labor, and capital could have been used to create something else that people find valuable . . . for example, they could have been used to build and staff a laundromat that provided the valuable service of taking in people's laundry.
If people voluntary pay money to have their laundry taken in, washed, folded, and handed back to them in a timely manner, and if they do NOT voluntarily want to pay money to Chevy to buy a physically manufactured object such as a Volt, then the service of taking in the laundry has added value — wealth — to the economy, and the manufacture of a physical good like the Volt has added nothing; in fact, it has subtracted wealth from the economy.
Additionally, what you're not seeing is the fact that laundry has to get done, willy-nilly. If my laundry is not done by the low-wage immigrants operating the laundromat down the block, then it has to be done by high-wage-ME, at home. Since my time is worth a lot more than the low-wage immigrant's time, having to do my own laundry results in a loss to the economy — in the same two hours that I might normally waste doing my own laundry, I could have been at the office doing two more hours of productive high-value-added work. That someone else takes in my laundry and does it for me, however, frees up my time and labor so that I can be more productive and add a bit more value to the economy.
Thus, the service of taking in laundry also indirectly creates wealth by freeing up other people's time and labor.
It is not just that so many low wage jobs are being created, many that paid fairly well, are now paying LESS, even though the company is making a very good profit. And those that lost jobs are finding that when companies hire, they now hire at lower wages for the same job. And if you are 50+ you are going to have a harder time finding a job. You are getting to that age where health care is the driving factor not your skills.
No, you’re all wrong. The only sources of wealth are:
* Tax it from “the rich”
* Tax it from “Big Business”
* “Solar Energy” and other “Green Jobs”
* Returns on “Investment” in human capital
* Get the Federal Reserve to print more of it
* Give it to government employees and welfare recipients to multiply by spending it in “the economy” as stimulus
Forgot one:
* General Motors
That’s a lot of big red O’s
And that is the intent, at least the part creating more poor people. This will give the dirty Americans their just award for their supposed excesses, killing the Indians, enslaving blacks, harming the environment, yada, yada yada.
At the same time, these policies are creating more government dependence and the number of likely Dimocratic voters.
The rich get to pay for it all, until they are poor, too.
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