Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
You're comparing the current situation to the bottom of the second worse recession since WWII.
No, I'm comparing the current situation to the previous 36 years. It's your graph. With minor variations, the number of hours worked by full time employees has been flat since 1980.
***DISCLAIMER***
This is not a post about partisan politics. It's about economic factors int hte decline of this great nation.
I regard all political factions as equally worthless. .
***END OF DISCLAIMER***
Thank you for your patience. Now,
We are having bad economic times. The national debt is as big as the average Walmart shopper, our families are so much in debt they start talking like politicians. The middle class is so close to extinction the WWF has put it on the watch list.
I see one constant: families are no longer able to get by on a single pay. I see young parents, working three jobs and still end up in misery when an unexpected cost comes up. i see poverty rates going up, and the insane wealth of the wealthiest going up as well. that's not right. I don't mind rich people getting richier, they work for it, but at the same time, average Joe should get richer as well. Which isn't the case. So there's something wrong here.
When you see the price inflation, the incline is steeper then the average wage increase. that's bad news, because that means we are steadily losing purchasing power. Which means wer are losing economic momentum leading the the well known vicious circle of economics.
You can fret over SS and foodstamps and whatnot, at least they keep basic consumption flowing. Which is good on the short term, but not on the long term. That's why I like our military so much, they provide training to hopeless cases while keeping a lot of people employed, research and development going and expenditures high. Too bad it's tax money, but that is tax money well spent.
So, apart from all bull**** blah blah uttered by politicians, how do we solve this? You can't strip a bare rock. We need to put money back in the pockets of the average American, or we will go down the way of the dodo as a superpower...
Difficult to answer without getting too political, but IMO the decline of union membership and their power is probably the number one factor. When a company is profiting millions or perhaps billions of dollars a year, yet laying off workers something is wrong. OTOH, if a company is breaking even or losing money lay offs would make sense to me.
I do not think unions can make a come back and perhaps the best we can hope for would be the creation of a 3rd political party (i.e. Labor Party) that could bargain for the ENTIRE American workforce instead of having small unions only bargaining for their members.
I also think boycotts can work in some circumstances, but they can be hard to organize and maintain, especially if they are prolonged.
What economic downturn is this? The US has seen slow, steady economic growth since we exited the Great Recession 7 years ago. The S&P 500 has tripled in that time. Smart, motivated, educated people are prospering in the United States just like they always have. If you're not prospering, maybe it's time for some inward reflection about which of those smart/motivated/educated attributes you're lacking?
The global economic imbalance of 1950 where the rest of the industrialized world was bombed to rubble and the United States was 50% of the world economy is long over. No matter how much people wish it were so, you can't set the Flux Capacitor back to 1955, get the DeLorean up to 88 MPH, and re-live something that is never going to happen again. If you're average, unmotivated, and poorly educated, you're not going to prosper in 2016. In most of the country, you can achieve middle class by being average, being motivated, and having a bit of education as long as you marry someone with those same attributes. Only 6% of the workforce maxes out their Social Security contribution at $118,500. The formula for economic prosperity in the United States is to get married, stay married, and have an educational and work ethic that's better than average.
"No, They Don't, Rich people do not get rich by working, they get rich by exploiting the work of poor people.
There are two ways of thinking, The way of the explotator and the way of the exploted, the explotator needs more people willing to be exploted, and the exploted are people who need a bit of capital to begin their business. but at he age they can start they begin to see their Young years gone."
//////////////////
This whole victim mentality is perpetuated by politicians and their minions (the media) who pander to low income folks for votes (and then do nothing to help them once elected). "The man is holding us down" attitude contributes to a sense of entitlement, rather than a "can do" attitude - driven by hard work and perseverance.
You present a parody of life and how things work, not the real thing. Instead of whining about how nobody will "GIVE you a bit of capital to begin your business," develop your idea/s and start pitching its merits to potential investors -- or figure-out another way to bring them to fruition.
I guess you never read The Capital by Karl Marx, You seem not even to know who is taking the bigger share of the fruit of the work.
In any case I am not promoting any victimization but a Councience that people MUST knwo what is happening to them, so they can counciusly decide whether they want to stay as they are because they like it, or if they decide to to change things, by taking the risk of sending the Explotator away as son as they can begin their own business.
I don't think you have read The Capital, but at leas I would have expected you to read "Rich Father Poor Father" by Robert Kiyosaki.
We are having bad economic times. The national debt is as big as the average Walmart shopper, our families are so much in debt they start talking like politicians. The middle class is so close to extinction the WWF has put it on the watch list.
I see one constant: families are no longer able to get by on a single pay. I see young parents, working three jobs and still end up in misery when an unexpected cost comes up. i see poverty rates going up, and the insane wealth of the wealthiest going up as well. that's not right. I don't mind rich people getting richier, they work for it, but at the same time, average Joe should get richer as well. Which isn't the case. So there's something wrong here.
So, apart from all bull**** blah blah uttered by politicians, how do we solve this? You can't strip a bare rock. We need to put money back in the pockets of the average American, or we will go down the way of the dodo as a superpower...
The economy is booming up here in New England.
It has been that way - to some degree - for decades other than the major Great Recession.
As far as the single person working...I'd bet that if families lived like most did in 1960, lots of households could get by on one wage earner. That means no jet-set vacations, no cable TV, no iphone, only the barest in and and all electronics goods, a house of perhaps 1100 square feet, etc.
Books could be written about your question - but I will give you the basic answer(s).
1. Most people live way above their means. The Government debt you speak of is part and parcel of that in many ways.
2. Unregulated Predatory Capitalism (our system) does not care about the masses making less. Not a bit. Sad, but true.
3. Americans, by and large, have been taught to be selfish. If we lived in a country where it was taught otherwise, we'd probably be different. But our culture is corporate controlled and corporate led. This means they sell fear - and fear generates profits.
4. The single largest driver of government (and other) debt in this country is Health Care. It costs almost 10K per person per year. See #2 above for the reason. Even a small attempt to fix it or head it in the right direction will fail - as we see now. Why, well...because of #5.
5. Lack of Education is the driver of all of the above. Civilization depends on education...otherwise we all just get what we can (classic idea of cavemen bopping woman on head and dragging her away)....
In many ways - look who we just elected - we are heading toward this goal. The guy grabs women and shifts his debt to other (bankruptcy) and many cheer. He claims he loves the uneducated...and they cheer.
I guess my question becomes "what do you expect?" in light of the above. Places like where I live (MA.) will go well economically because we value education, taking care of our populace (universal health care) and our products (biotech, tech, education, high end manufacturing) will always be valuable to the world.
But those areas of the country with people who either don't vote - or don't vote based on facts, education and the real world.....well, they are probably going to be in for some more hard times. Maybe forever.
OK, hold it right there. I think it is highly debatable that we live in "bad" economic times. Of course that begs the question as to what exactly is the criteria for bad times. I agree that we live in different economic times than say, 1980 or 1990. But nothing stays constant. It is a losing proposition to try to go back to something that the clock has long ticked past. Things change.
Economists have long predicted that the center of economic growth will move from the developed world, particularly the US, to the emerging economies. They have the most room for growth since they are starting at a much lower position. Half of GDP growth comes purely from population expansion and population growth is stagnating in developed countries but is still growing in emerging countries.
So, while you say the US economy has down-turned, I say it has evolved along with the global economy. We can either whine about how great it used to be or we can learn how to use our strengths to move forward in the most advantageous way. Trying to go backwards has never worked for anyone.
There are a number of reasons for the economic downturn.
The first is good paying jobs. It used to be a person was respected if he worked, period. When we had good blue collar jobs, a person could work, pay his mortgage, provide for a family, and even send his kids to college on one salary. And no one looked down on him and said he wasn't worth his pay if he could do that, no matter what job he worked at. Today those jobs are gone. What's left is mainly the low end jobs that pay minimum wage, which is now worth $2 an hour less than it was in 1968, adjusting for inflation.
We like to tell people that in America, if you want more, all you have to do is work for it. Unfortunately, that isn't the case anymore.
"At the beginning of the twentieth century, the son of Polish immigrants could
drop out of school after the eighth grade, work on the Jersey docks for eight
cents an hour, and rise to become president of Bethlehem Steel's steamship line.
That's what my grandfather did. Not today. It is a sad truth now that a young
person with limited skills and education - or entering the workforce from a
background of poverty - will start on the bottom rung only to discover that
the higher rungs are beyond his grasp."
David K. Shipler
In addition, we also have a society that blames people for not making more money, even if they work more than one job and/or twice the weekly hours. We don't base their worthiness on whether or not they work anymore. Now we base a person's worth on how much he gets paid which is also related to the type of work he does. Add to that, minimum wage has been stagnate for years and every time it's suggested that it should be raised, people object and rush to point out that the people working these minimum wage jobs aren't "worthy" of higher pay, since they've taken jobs that pay so little. This of course, demonizes the low wage jobs even further which in turn continues to demonize the "unworthy" people working them. Adding insult to injury, others will even explain how minimum wage wasn't supposed to be used for people to be able to support themselves. How wrong can you be?
Objection: Raising the minimum wage will hurt business and reduce employment.
FDR: “No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.” (1933, Statement on National Industrial Recovery Act)
Objection: $10.10 an hour is too much, maybe $9.
FDR:“By living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level — I mean the wages of a decent living.” (1933, Statement on National Industrial Recovery Act)
Objection: Once you add in public assistance and tax credits, $9 an hour is plenty, and business could survive that.
FDR: “Do not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of $1,000 a day, who has been turning his employees over to the Government relief rolls in order to preserve his company’s undistributed reserves, tell you – using his stockholders’ money to pay the postage for his personal opinions — tell you that a wage of $11.00 a week is going to have a disastrous effect on all American industry.” (1938, Fireside Chat, the night before signing the Fair Labor Standards Act that instituted the federal minimum wage)
Objection: The minimum wage is a government mandate that interferes with the free market.
FDR: “All but the hopelessly reactionary will agree that to conserve our primary resources of man power, government must have some control over maximum hours, minimum wages, the evil of child labor and the exploitation of unorganized labor.” (1937, Message to Congress upon introduction of the Fair Labor Standards Act)
------------------------
Another reason for the economic turn down is the cost of housing. Buying a new home in 1963 would have cost you
around $19,300. This is the equivalent to $151,780 in 2015. A new homes in 2015, though, actually cost $360.000. You can see the problem here. As for renters:
"The decade from 2000-2010, however, was the worst for renters. They were hit by rising rents (+12%) and declining incomes (-7%), making them significantly worse off overall. That decade was also the only decade in which real household incomes fell. Things have improved a bit since, as rents and incomes flattened from 2010-2014, but it’s not surprising that many Americans say that they are worse off now than eight years ago."
When we want people to make more money, the first thing we tell them is "get some skills". Unfortunately, today only the well-heeled are able to afford college as a way to get skills. Unless, of course, you want crushing debt in the form of student loans for decades to come. Long gone are the days when you could work your way through college on a part-time job.
"If over the past three decades car prices had gone up as fast as tuition, the average new car would cost more than $80,000."
College tuition is out of control. And we're paying the cost in losing people who could be going to college and earning degrees, people who could then be working higher paying jobs and paying more taxes on their higher salaries. More than that, we're losing the heart of America, the people who could be the next inventors, or statesmen, or scientists, or geneticists. We've gotten around that in the past because we brought in people from overseas to be educated in our universities who would then stay here and work. Who needed educated Americans when we could do this? But those people are now going home to their own countries when they finish their education at a US university. It won't be too long before we're wondering where all the Americans are to fill their places. We will look around and ask why there is no one in the US who can teach chemistry or science or higher math, why there are no researchers, or why our space program needs so many foreigners.
We're being incredibly stupid to allow tuition rates to raise like they have and we're being bullheaded and obstinate for not having vocational schools that should be considered every bit as important as a university. And we're being even more crazy for the reasons tuition is going so high.
What's worse is how much not bringing down the cost of tuition is costing us as a nation.
"(Our) government spends around $69 billion subsidizing college education and another $107.4 billion on student loans. Tuition at all public universities comes to much less than that, around $62.6 billion in 2012. By restructuring the education budget, the cost of attending public universities could easily be brought down to zero. This would also put pressure on private universities to lower their cost in order to be more competitive."
That's a far cry from what we're doing now, when we raise the pay of a university president while simultaneously raising tuition at the same time.
"From 1995 to 2014, the (University of) Michigan's president’s salary, correcting for inflation, rose over 151 percent; the average American worker’s compensation rose less than 25 percent. The salary differential between the president’s salary and the ordinary worker’s pay more than doubled.
The Michigan experience is quite typical. Governing boards are in a frenzy to raise pay of top executives across the country. A recent report by the Chronicle of Higher Education found that the most highly paid college president in the country is Renu Khator at the University of Houston. She receives $1.3 million in total compensation. Four other presidents bring in more than $1 million."
And you wonder why tuition is so high.
So the reason we have an economic downturn is threefold: lack of a living wage, high cost of housing, and high cost of an education.
Feel free to disagree with me.
Last edited by rodentraiser; 12-01-2016 at 03:33 AM..
There are a number of reasons for the economic downturn.
The first is good paying jobs. It used to be a person was respected if he worked, period. When we had good blue collar jobs, a person could work, pay his mortgage, provide for a family, and even send his kids to college on one salary. And no one looked down on him and said he wasn't worth his pay if he could do that, no matter what job he worked at. Today those jobs are gone. What's left is mainly the low end jobs that pay minimum wage, which is now worth $2 an hour less than it was in 1968, adjusting for inflation.
We like to tell people that in America, if you want more, all you have to do is work for it. Unfortunately, that isn't the case anymore.
"At the beginning of the twentieth century, the son of Polish immigrants could drop out of school after the eighth grade, work on the Jersey docks for eight cents an hour, and rise to become president of Bethlehem Steel's steamship line. That's what my grandfather did. Not today. It is a sad truth now that a young person with limited skills and education - or entering the workforce from a background of poverty - will start on the bottom rung only to discover that the higher rungs are beyond his grasp."
David K. Shipler
In addition, we also have a society that blames people for not making more money, even if they work more than one job and/or twice the weekly hours. We don't base their worthiness on whether or not they work anymore. Now we base a person's worth on how much he gets paid which is also related to the type of work he does. Add to that, minimum wage has been stagnate for years and every time it's suggested that it should be raised, people object and rush to point out that the people working these minimum wage jobs aren't "worthy" of higher pay, since they've taken jobs that pay so little. This of course, demonizes the low wage jobs even further which in turn continues to demonize the "unworthy" people working them. Adding insult to injury, others will even explain how minimum wage wasn't supposed to be used for people to be able to support themselves. How wrong can you be?
Objection: Raising the minimum wage will hurt business and reduce employment.
FDR: “No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.” (1933, Statement on National Industrial Recovery Act)
Objection: $10.10 an hour is too much, maybe $9.
FDR:“By living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level — I mean the wages of a decent living.” (1933, Statement on National Industrial Recovery Act)
Objection: Once you add in public assistance and tax credits, $9 an hour is plenty, and business could survive that.
FDR: “Do not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of $1,000 a day, who has been turning his employees over to the Government relief rolls in order to preserve his company’s undistributed reserves, tell you – using his stockholders’ money to pay the postage for his personal opinions — tell you that a wage of $11.00 a week is going to have a disastrous effect on all American industry.” (1938, Fireside Chat, the night before signing the Fair Labor Standards Act that instituted the federal minimum wage)
Objection: The minimum wage is a government mandate that interferes with the free market.
FDR: “All but the hopelessly reactionary will agree that to conserve our primary resources of man power, government must have some control over maximum hours, minimum wages, the evil of child labor and the exploitation of unorganized labor.” (1937, Message to Congress upon introduction of the Fair Labor Standards Act)
------------------------
Another reason for the economic turn down is the cost of housing. Buying a new home in 1963 would have cost you
around $19,300. This is the equivalent to $151,780 in 2015. A new homes in 2015, though, actually cost $360.000. You can see the problem here. As for renters:
"The decade from 2000-2010, however, was the worst for renters. They were hit by rising rents (+12%) and declining incomes (-7%), making them significantly worse off overall. That decade was also the only decade in which real household incomes fell. Things have improved a bit since, as rents and incomes flattened from 2010-2014, but it’s not surprising that many Americans say that they are worse off now than eight years ago."
When we want people to make more money, the first thing we tell them is "get some skills". Unfortunately, today only the well-heeled are able to afford college as a way to get skills. Unless, of course, you want crushing debt in the form of student loans for decades to come. Long gone are the days when you could work your way through college on a part-time job.
"If over the past three decades car prices had gone up as fast as tuition, the average new car would cost more than $80,000."
College tuition is out of control. And we're paying the cost in losing people who could be going to college and earning degrees, people who could then be working higher paying jobs and paying more taxes on their higher salaries. More than that, we're losing the heart of America, the people who could be the next inventors, or statesmen, or scientists, or geneticists. We've gotten around that in the past because we brought in people from overseas to be educated in our universities who would then stay here and work. Who needed educated Americans when we could do this? But those people are now going home to their own countries when they finish their education at a US university. It won't be too long before we're wondering where all the Americans are to fill their places. We will look around and ask why there is no one in the US who can teach chemistry or science or higher math, why there are no researchers, or why our space program needs so many foreigners.
We're being incredibly stupid to allow tuition rates to raise like they have and we're being bullheaded and obstinate for not having vocational schools that should be considered every bit as important as a university. And we're being even more crazy for the reasons tuition is going so high.
What's worse is how much not bringing down the cost of tuition is costing us as a nation.
"(Our) government spends around $69 billion subsidizing college education and another $107.4 billion on student loans. Tuition at all public universities comes to much less than that, around $62.6 billion in 2012. By restructuring the education budget, the cost of attending public universities could easily be brought down to zero. This would also put pressure on private universities to lower their cost in order to be more competitive."
That's a far cry from what we're doing now, when we raise the pay of a university president while simultaneously raising tuition at the same time.
"From 1995 to 2014, the (University of) Michigan's president’s salary, correcting for inflation, rose over 151 percent; the average American worker’s compensation rose less than 25 percent. The salary differential between the president’s salary and the ordinary worker’s pay more than doubled.
The Michigan experience is quite typical. Governing boards are in a frenzy to raise pay of top executives across the country. A recent report by the Chronicle of Higher Education found that the most highly paid college president in the country is Renu Khator at the University of Houston. She receives $1.3 million in total compensation. Four other presidents bring in more than $1 million."
And you wonder why tuition is so high.
So the reason we have an economic downturn is threefold: lack of a living wage, high cost of housing, and high cost of an education.
Feel free to disagree with me.
I actually agree with a lot of your points, except for a few. New homes don't cost $360K in all areas. Depends where you live. The average "new build" here is about $270K and that is for a 4bd home, 2400 sq ft, 2 car garage, full basement and upgraded. My brother lives in Phoenix. He just bought a brand new home. 1800 sq ft for $155K. So truly depends on where you live. I'm in NW Indiana and the COL is lower here so jobs do pay less; however, we're also within 35-40 minutes of Chicago where jobs pay higher so most commute. I also agree that minimum wage is not meant to raise a family on. It's for part-time workers, high schoolers, students IMO. Anyone needing to raise a family needs to either get educated so they can get a better, higher paying job or work more that one job. With that said, the federal minimum wage is too low and needs to be raised. I also agree that they need to be more strict with public assistance. It should not be allowed long term. People should not stay on it their entire life! It needs to be capped to a said timeframe. Not to mention crackdown on fraud.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
