Free Republic

Nice graphs,

Wages up 3.19% from 2001-2005. So, adjusted for inflation of at least 2.0% a year, at minimum, wages have actually DECLINED, albeit not as much as they did under that idiot Clinton.

Also, one of your charts shows average real hourly earnings at a little over $8.20/hr. At a standard 2000 hr work year, that is $16,400/year. There may well be pockets in rural North Dakota, or Arkansas, where you can scrape by on this, but you will be hard-pressed to live on that amount of money anywhere else.

Both of these charts are garbage. They just threw in everybody from the CEO to the high school kid working 12 hours a week delivering pizzas. Also they cherry-picked the numbers. 1995-2000, a period of rapid, though ultimately false growth is missing.

"Our govt. doesn't count you as 'unemployed' after six month, even if you are desperate for a job."
"Hogwash."


"Persons are classified as unemployed if they do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks, and are currently available for work."

After you have been unemployed for six months your unemployment checks stop. At this point, since the government has NO WAY TO TRACK YOU ANYMORE, they simply DON'T. You just drop off the radar. I know that this is hard to believe, I could hardly accept it myself when I first found out in Grad School. Liberal government bureaucrats in action.
By not counting you it makes whatever administration is in power look good, and THAT is what it is all about.

So, you WANT to live in a third-world country with third-world wages?

You WANT to live behind the walls of a gated community with 24/7 armed guards as my relatives in Brazil, or as my parents did for a few years in Manila?

You WANT to worry about you or your family being kidnapped for ransom as the rich are south of the Rio Grande?

Take every middle-class suburb in your area, and imagine it as the ghetto. Entire metro areas as Compton. You want to live in that kind of a country?

Screw that, YOU get a clue.

Its true. In the USA working population, about 20% are degreed. Most of the rest have high school diplomas, and a very, very small percentage are high school dropouts.

In the work place, about 20% of the working population is supervisory. (See a correlation here?). These people have done quite well in the last ten years.

The problem is with the 80% who are not supervisory. Their wages acutally went down by about 4% in real terms from 1999-2003, (thanks Bill Clinton). While real wages for non-supervisory personnel rose in 2004 and 2005, they did not keep pace with inflation.

20% of the population is doing great,(me included) However, things essentially s*ck for 80% of the population. Do you see a problem with this? This is the type of thing that, unresolved, brings down governments and societies.

"Why would you include those not willing to work under any circumstances in your calculation of the unemployment rate? Your result would be meaningless"

If you had a really lazy society, say 90% of those unwilling to work counted as 'unemployed', even if the 10% of your society that was willing to work was completely employed, your 'unemployment rate' would still be 90%.

The unemployment rate SHOULD only count those who raelly do want a job. Our govt. doesn't count you as 'unemployed' after six month, even if you are desperate for a job.

"Must be one of those Rerum Novarum un-American Catholic Reactionaries.
If you don't like the law of the jungle, move to France."


Scandinavian Lutheran here, pretty far from doctrinaire Catholic.

I personally know a number of middle-class, and working class French people. They no more resemble your MSM-driven view of France, than Teddy Kennedy resembles the average American. The Muslims in France are close to getting a 2x4 up the side of their heads.

The 'Law of the Jungle' is for animals, not for the citizens of a free republic.

I have wealthy relatives in Brazil, where a very small percentage of the population is very, very rich, and most are so poor they make Jamaicans look prosperous. Believe me, YOU DO NOT WANT TO LIVE IN A COUNTRY LIKE THAT. No matter how much money you have, YOU DON'T WANY TO LIVE LIKE THAT.

"Hey PCR - 4.6% unemployment. Bite me."

If you believe this, the govenment is playing the part of W.C. Fields, and you are playing the part of the rube/sucker at the county fair.

Run THIS formula: unemployment=1-( (total number of citizens between 20-65 employed + total number of noncitizens/illegals between 20-65 employed + housewives + prisoners + those physically unable to work + those who will not work under any circumstances)/ ( citizens between 20-65 + noncitzens/illegals between 20-65)).

Using every source and number I've been able to find, the lowest I have been able to get the unemplyment rate is a little over 11%. Do better if you can.

This would go a LONG way in explaining why the dollar is not surging against the Euro.

REAL figures talk, Govt. BS walks.

Your graphic is fine, for college graduates.

80%. Countem' 80% of the work force DOES NOT have a college degree. I suppose the 'little people' don't count in your feudal view of our society.

I have an MBA myself, but I know that if the 'little people' are angry and starving, people like you and
I will find ourselves on the way to the guillotine.

Look beyond your own sweet a** for a change, or you may possibly lose it.

Third World Wages = Third World Country
First World Wages = First World Country

When you remove the First World wage jobs from this country to 'cheaper' climes, what you have left here are the Third World wage jobs. When we become impoverished here, just who do you think is going to buy your 'cheap' products?

Keep you wide open, free-trade Third World. I'm not ready to live in your dump yet.

"We don't want Harvard grads living, working, and paying taxes here anymore?"

Not if it keeps an American from Penn State, U Tenn.,
U. Kansas, or Boise State unemployed. Let them go home and shed their divine, Ivy League radiance on their fellow countrymen.

The dirty little secret of the Ivy league is that the schools are hard to get into, unless you're a legacy. However, after you're in its a piece of cake. How else do you explain Teddy Kennedy, John Kerry, GWB, and Bill Clinton, none of them intellectual giants, able to graduate from Harvard and Yale?

I suppose its only to be expected.

I 'own' the computer I'm writing this on. I bought it, paid the sales tax at the store, and now its mine. Same thing as my clothes and cooking utensils.

I have a car. If I don't pay my 'personal property tax' on it, I can't get plates for it, so I can't use it, BUT it's still 'mine'until I sell or abandon it.

Real Estate is different. If I don't pay my property taxes, the government will come and take the house away from me, even if I have paid off any mortgage. Even If I paid cash in full for it.

YOU DON'T OWN YOUR HOME! The government owns it. You pay them rent every year for the priviledge of living there.

If the government wants to take IT'S property back, and sell it to someone else, they will give you some money for the hassle they are putting you through. It s*cks, but thats the way it is.

Until property taxes go away, you will never own your house, and the chances of property taxes going away is nil.

Thank God for Australia. Just about the only people in the world whom we can count on to have our back, instead of trying to stick a knife in it.

Perhaps if GWB and friends followed Mr. Blair's example, and had to wait in endless lines, take off their shoes, and get a strip and body-cavity search, and then, while they were dressing, see a group of young jihadis sail on through security with never a second glance, then they might finally, finally fix airport security.

"As I recall the interviewer asked her why she didn't just raise wages to a level where Americans would take the work. A very reasonable question you must agree. Her answer was that she was already paying $35/hour, getting no Americans that would work more than a day and that they wouldn't stay on for $50/hr. The work was just too hard."


You've been had. People tend to throw a lot of figures around without realizing the implications of what they are saying. $35/hour is $70,000/yr for a standard 2000 hour year.
$50/hr. is $100,000/yr.

If there was seasonal farm work around the country, that paid this much, there would be tons of professional American harvesters following the crops in season.

The same sort of thing just went on in California with a woman who owns a landscaping service, who 'couldn't get American labor at any price'. California freepers throughly debunked her right here on this forum.

The two main sources of lies in the world are the government and journalists.

"So where you going to find the hard workers once you get rid of the Mexicans?? How you going to get it done?"


There is nothing implied in American law or culture which garantees you a plentiful supply of labor at the price you want to pay.

If you can't make a profit here with American workers, you can either:
1. Shut down, and someone with a better business model will replace you. OR
2. Bite the bullet, and pay what you have to pay to get the quantity and quality of workers you need.

Nobody promised that you would make a profit. Thats what capitalism is all about. Nobody promised your customers a rose garden either. If they have to break the law to make a profit, then they SHOULD go out of business.

Shoving a portion of your labor costs on the general public, because you do not want to pay the going rate is socialism on your part

"Is there a more gay sport than soccer?"


Soccer is an excellent sports for young girls.

MEN play American and Canadian football, Aussie Rules Football, and Rugby.

"Kind of obvious that you have not listened to a single word Bush has said on Immigration. So yes, your actions DO expose you as a knee jerk Bush hater who has not even bothered to find out Bush's position on Immigration."

We know his position on immigration.

When you cut through all the verbiage, smilely-face feel-good, and spin, it essentially it breaks down to: "bring in as many as you can, as fast as you can."

Same as Teddy, Nancy, Harry, and Hillary.

Just another RINO, Northeast-Establishment, Wall Street, Rockefeller Elitist returning to his roots, like a swallow to Capistrano.

Too bad the time he spent in Texas didn't "take".

"Let me count how many successful attacks there have been against us since the GWOT started on 9/12/2001, the official "start of the game" to use your football analogy:

ZERO. ZILCH. NADA. None. Zip."


This ia the one part of the 'War on Terror", that has always bothered me.

It is beyond reason to think that our government, which can't even begin to get a handle on countless tons of drugs coming into the country every single year, has been able to stop EVERT SINGLE jihadi effort and plot against us.

I realize that the Muslims are probably focused on Iraq and Afghanistan. Good.

Nevertheless, if they were actually making a serious effort to harm us HERE, they would have had at least some successes in the past five years, no matter how efficient the government was at trying to stop them.

They appear to be one hit wonders. Shot off everything they had on 9/11, and don't have anything left in the tank.

Individual fruitcake muzzies blew away a few folks at LAX, and terrorized the DC area for awhile.

You would think that any organized Al-Queda types would have been able to do this, and a lot more, even if 95% of their people and plots had been identified and stopped.

"yeah, all those fat people I see driving big, new cars, crowding the malls and grocery stores are figments of my imagination. Get real."

Those are the people who ARE employed.


Those who are unemployed would not spend a whole lot of time driving big, new cars, or shopping at malls. I also suppose that they would be extremely careful in their purchases at the grocery store.

The liberal New York Times columnist, Pauline Kael, once famously said: "How can Nixon have won. I don't know anyonw who voted for him?"
Pauline Kael lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
You are making the same basic mistake.

"Your stench is that of the Rio Lib."

What the devil is a 'Rio Lib'?

I have some relatives in Brazil, but I've never been there, nor do they live in Rio de Janiero. Also, I have never stayed at the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas.

As for 'Lib'. I have been voting since 1972, and in that time I have voted for ONE, countem' ONE Democrat, and that was when the Republican candidate was convicted of fraud a week before the election.

As for stench, I shower daily, and use copious amounts of deodorant. :)

If you want to argue my points, fine. Thats what political discussion is all about However, ad hominem attacks are for those who are unable to support their own, flawed, arguments.