4 ms·

This comment is out of touch with the current economic reality in the US. Unemployment is the lowest it has been in decades and real wages are rising. Meanwhile

This comment is out of touch with the current economic reality in the US. Unemployment is the lowest it has been in decades and real wages are rising. Meanwhile emerging markets all around the world are crumbling. Is there always a segment of the population that believe the economic apocalypse is about to happen (or in this case happening)? If you want me to believe your doom and gloom try providing actual statistics that back up your assertions instead of vague hand wavings. > Many thousand businesses moving €500k/year and using money locally is much better for local communities than 5 unicorns moving €50b/year Do you have a citation for this claim? Also why should we be helping "local communities" and not simply helping people?

coldtea 8y ago
>This comment is out of touch with the current economic reality in the US. Unemployment is the lowest it has been in decades and real wages are rising. That's because those things are increasingly more creatively measured to paint a nice picture. For example today any crap job regardless of quality/wages/precariousness etc is measured as "unemployment", whereas in the past you could have the same number of jobs but they would be much more solid (the "company man" and so on. Heck, a GM factory worker in the 50s could buy a house and raise 2 kids earning the only income in his family). People who given up looking for work, because they can't find any, are also not counted, while still unemployed and struggling to make ends meet. "The stock market, for example, has completely recovered from the financial crisis, and then some. Stocks are now worth almost 60 percent more than when the crisis began in 2007, according to a inflation-adjusted measure from Moody’s Analytics. But wealthy households own the bulk of stocks. Most Americans are much more dependent on their houses. That’s why the net worth of the median household is still about 20 percent lower than it was in early 2007. When television commentators drone on about the Dow, they’re not talking about a good measure of most people’s wealth. The unemployment rate has also become less meaningful than it once was. In recent decades, the number of idle working-age adults has surged. They are not working, not looking for work, not going to school and not taking care of children. Many of them would like to work, but they can’t find a decent-paying job and have given up looking. They are not counted in the official unemployment rate." https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/14/opinion/columnists/great-recession-economy-gdp.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/14/opinion/columnists/great-... >Do you have a citation for this claim? Also why should we be helping "local communities" and not simply helping people? For one, because tax havens (where that money go instead of local communities, e.g. Apple's Ireland's cash stock) aren't "people". Second because those local communities where the business is located are what should thrive first and foremost. You can't help "people" without first helping yourself.
- friedman23 8y ago
  >That's because those things are increasingly more creatively measured to paint a nice picture. They are measured the same way they always have been >For example today any crap job regardless of quality/wages/precariousness etc is measured as "unemployment", whereas in the past you could have the same number of jobs but they would be much more solid (the "company man" and so on. Heck, a GM factory worker in the 50s could buy a house and raise 2 kids earning the only income in his family). Oh this talking point again. Never mind the two world wars that made it all possible >People who given up looking for work, because they can't find any, are also not counted, while still unemployed and struggling to make ends meet. You are aware that there are multiple unemployment statistics that are tracked and that discouraged workers are included in some of them? Nobody is purposefully ignoring discouraged workers they are just not relevant to the market because they aren't participating in it. >For one, because tax havens (where that money go instead of local communities, e.g. Apple's Ireland's cash stock) aren't "people". What do you think happens to money in those tax havens? Do you think they convert it all into gold coins and lock it into a scrooge mcduck style vault? It's reinvested, they purchase treasuries with it, they do research and development with it. Governments then use that money to build roads and pay employees. Those employees then go and eat out and buy cars.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >They are measured the same way they always have been As I explained in the very next paragraph the creativity is in determining which people are in the workforce and which are not. Measuring the "same way they always have been" when work today is unlike it has "always has been" is like measuring inflation by the cost of commonly bought 1940s items. >Oh this talking point again. Never mind the two world wars that made it all possible A fact doesn't change based on what made it possible. >You are aware that there are multiple unemployment statistics that are tracked and that discouraged workers are included in some of them? Nobody is purposefully ignoring discouraged workers they are just not relevant to the market because they aren't participating in it. You're aware that the officially circulating numbers (U3 et all) don't show the impact of the problem by a very large margin? And that those people who "are just not relevant to the market" still need to put food on the table, pay rents, and pay medical bills... >What do you think happens to money in those tax havens? It gets further removed from the communities that fostered the companies that made it and their control, and on to the company's (or private owner's) discretion.
codethief 8y ago
> This comment is out of touch with the current economic reality in the US. Unemployment is the lowest it has been in decades and real wages are rising. To the contrary: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/magazine/americans-jobs-poverty-homeless.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/magazine/americans-jobs-p...
- adventured 8y ago
  How is that politically directed piece by the NY Times to the contrary? The U6 is back to where it was in 1999. Wages are growing at the fastest pace in a decade, with a labor market that keeps getting tighter, driving wage gains faster. The poverty rate and homelessness rate are both near record lows. The poverty rate has contracted rapidly in the last several years. That's due to the dramatic improvement in the job market over the past decade and a vast expansion over time in the US welfare state / social safety net, which is paid for by taxes from an aggressively expanding economy. Since January 2010, the US has added a Germany + France in terms of economic expansion ($6 trillion in GDP), while only adding 16m in population. US manufacturing, which is a critical supplier of decent blue collar jobs, has been persistently adding jobs for nearly a decade (1.3m manufacturing jobs added over that time). It's the first sustained period of manufacturing job growth since the late 1990s. It was widely proclaimed to be impossible that that could occur. If you want to bolster the conditions for the bottom 1/2, you do it with jobs, wage pressure through a tight labor market, and a strong social safety net paid for via taxes from a booming economy.

coldtea 8y ago

>This comment is out of touch with the current economic reality in the US. Unemployment is the lowest it has been in decades and real wages are rising. That's because those things are increasingly more creatively measured to paint a nice picture. For example today any crap job regardless of quality/wages/precariousness etc is measured as "unemployment", whereas in the past you could have the same number of jobs but they would be much more solid (the "company man" and so on. Heck, a GM factory worker in the 50s could buy a house and raise 2 kids earning the only income in his family). People who given up looking for work, because they can't find any, are also not counted, while still unemployed and struggling to make ends meet. "The stock market, for example, has completely recovered from the financial crisis, and then some. Stocks are now worth almost 60 percent more than when the crisis began in 2007, according to a inflation-adjusted measure from Moody’s Analytics. But wealthy households own the bulk of stocks. Most Americans are much more dependent on their houses. That’s why the net worth of the median household is still about 20 percent lower than it was in early 2007. When television commentators drone on about the Dow, they’re not talking about a good measure of most people’s wealth. The unemployment rate has also become less meaningful than it once was. In recent decades, the number of idle working-age adults has surged. They are not working, not looking for work, not going to school and not taking care of children. Many of them would like to work, but they can’t find a decent-paying job and have given up looking. They are not counted in the official unemployment rate." https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/14/opinion/columnists/great-recession-economy-gdp.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/14/opinion/columnists/great-... >Do you have a citation for this claim? Also why should we be helping "local communities" and not simply helping people? For one, because tax havens (where that money go instead of local communities, e.g. Apple's Ireland's cash stock) aren't "people". Second because those local communities where the business is located are what should thrive first and foremost. You can't help "people" without first helping yourself.

friedman23 8y ago
>That's because those things are increasingly more creatively measured to paint a nice picture. They are measured the same way they always have been >For example today any crap job regardless of quality/wages/precariousness etc is measured as "unemployment", whereas in the past you could have the same number of jobs but they would be much more solid (the "company man" and so on. Heck, a GM factory worker in the 50s could buy a house and raise 2 kids earning the only income in his family). Oh this talking point again. Never mind the two world wars that made it all possible >People who given up looking for work, because they can't find any, are also not counted, while still unemployed and struggling to make ends meet. You are aware that there are multiple unemployment statistics that are tracked and that discouraged workers are included in some of them? Nobody is purposefully ignoring discouraged workers they are just not relevant to the market because they aren't participating in it. >For one, because tax havens (where that money go instead of local communities, e.g. Apple's Ireland's cash stock) aren't "people". What do you think happens to money in those tax havens? Do you think they convert it all into gold coins and lock it into a scrooge mcduck style vault? It's reinvested, they purchase treasuries with it, they do research and development with it. Governments then use that money to build roads and pay employees. Those employees then go and eat out and buy cars.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >They are measured the same way they always have been As I explained in the very next paragraph the creativity is in determining which people are in the workforce and which are not. Measuring the "same way they always have been" when work today is unlike it has "always has been" is like measuring inflation by the cost of commonly bought 1940s items. >Oh this talking point again. Never mind the two world wars that made it all possible A fact doesn't change based on what made it possible. >You are aware that there are multiple unemployment statistics that are tracked and that discouraged workers are included in some of them? Nobody is purposefully ignoring discouraged workers they are just not relevant to the market because they aren't participating in it. You're aware that the officially circulating numbers (U3 et all) don't show the impact of the problem by a very large margin? And that those people who "are just not relevant to the market" still need to put food on the table, pay rents, and pay medical bills... >What do you think happens to money in those tax havens? It gets further removed from the communities that fostered the companies that made it and their control, and on to the company's (or private owner's) discretion.

codethief 8y ago

> This comment is out of touch with the current economic reality in the US. Unemployment is the lowest it has been in decades and real wages are rising. To the contrary: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/magazine/americans-jobs-poverty-homeless.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/magazine/americans-jobs-p...

adventured 8y ago
How is that politically directed piece by the NY Times to the contrary? The U6 is back to where it was in 1999. Wages are growing at the fastest pace in a decade, with a labor market that keeps getting tighter, driving wage gains faster. The poverty rate and homelessness rate are both near record lows. The poverty rate has contracted rapidly in the last several years. That's due to the dramatic improvement in the job market over the past decade and a vast expansion over time in the US welfare state / social safety net, which is paid for by taxes from an aggressively expanding economy. Since January 2010, the US has added a Germany + France in terms of economic expansion ($6 trillion in GDP), while only adding 16m in population. US manufacturing, which is a critical supplier of decent blue collar jobs, has been persistently adding jobs for nearly a decade (1.3m manufacturing jobs added over that time). It's the first sustained period of manufacturing job growth since the late 1990s. It was widely proclaimed to be impossible that that could occur. If you want to bolster the conditions for the bottom 1/2, you do it with jobs, wage pressure through a tight labor market, and a strong social safety net paid for via taxes from a booming economy.