5 ms·

Yeah... no. The reason salaries aren't going up is in the piece but casually dismissed as if it doesn't matter. Instead of "following the money" to people who

by tsotha 12y ago

Yeah... no. The reason salaries aren't going up is in the piece but casually dismissed as if it doesn't matter. Instead of "following the money" to people who own companies, why don't we follow the smell of bullshit to the BLS. Unemployment numbers are laughably phony. Of course workers don't have bargaining power - there are millions of people who've been out of work for half a decade desperate for a job and yet not counted as "unemployed". Also, add in health care cost increases that employers have to pay but that don't show up in salary surveys.

Iftheshoefits 12y ago
That's part of it, sure. The other part of it in America is the successful suppression of any sort of labor movement and the success of efforts by the very rich to drive a wedge between the merely affluent and the middle and lower classes. America has a real strong strain of the "I'm not poor, I'm merely a temporarily embarrassed millionaire" sentiment.
- jgmmo 12y ago
  Organized labor getting everything they wanted is what led to basically all US auto companies going bankrupt.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    There are lots of situations where letting either side have free reign is bad, and the best is for both sides to be in healthy competition.
  - michaelchisari 12y ago
    American unions were always pussycats compared to German and Japanese unions, which didn't suffer near the same fate.
  - Frondo 12y ago
    You ought to read this: http://mediamatters.org/research/2014/03/05/myths-and-facts-unions-and-organized-labor/198343 http://mediamatters.org/research/2014/03/05/myths-and-facts-...
    - cpncrunch 12y ago
      They quote EPI and Brookings. EPI is 29% funded by unions, so not exactly neutral. The Brookings report concludes that price was one of the factors causing an erosion of market share, and presumably employee wages are a factor in that.
    - tsotha 12y ago
      Mediamatters? Seriously? Well, okay. Let me find an equally credible source: http://www.aei.org/publication/maybe-patriarchal-labor-unions-are-to-blame-for-rising-inequality/ http://www.aei.org/publication/maybe-patriarchal-labor-union...
      - Frondo 12y ago
        If you can find factual errors in the source I linked, or errors in interpretation of those facts, I would be keen to hear them.
        tsotha 12y ago
        Oh, I'll accept your link uncritically if you do the same for mine.
        Frondo 12y ago
        Of course I didn't tell you to accept it uncritically.
  - Iftheshoefits 12y ago
    Thanks for illustrating my point.
- ryandrake 12y ago
  Old article [2003] but I bet still relevant today: 39% of Americans believed they are (19%), or will one day be (20%), among the top one percent. Until this "Don't squeeze the rich because, hey, I'll be rich one day" attitude changes, labor and equality movements will always be uphill battles. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/12/opinion/the-triumph-of-hope-over-self-interest.html http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/12/opinion/the-triumph-of-hop...
  - evanpw 12y ago
    If you relax the constraint a bit and replace top 1% with top 5%, then almost 40% of Americans will make it at some point. And 12% of them will hit the top 1%. Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/opinion/sunday/from-rags-to-riches-to-rags.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/opinion/sunday/from-rags-t...
    - ryandrake 12y ago
      Cool follow up link, however it distinguishes between the difficulty of reaching the 1%/5%/etc. for a single year vs. sustaining this state. I'd argue the concept of "being one of the 1%" implies being able to sustain this level for longer than a year.
enjo 12y ago
Unemployment numbers are laughably phony That's simply untrue.
- irishcoffee 12y ago
  In the spirit of neither party citing anything, it is true. I don't understand how people think otherwise. If I had to guess, part of it is the majority of readers here live in a bubble and don't see the forest for the trees.
  - enjo 12y ago
    Please read the rest of the discussion that happened parallel to this.
    - irishcoffee 12y ago
      At the time I posted, there was no such thing. I'm going to assume you're smart enough to be cognizant of that, and as such, your comment seems at best troll-ish.
      - enjo 12y ago
        No.. it was meant to call your attention to the other discussion as opposed to rehashing the whole thing here. I know I don't always go back and check these threads if I don't get a reply.
- TTPrograms 12y ago
  Did you know that if you can't find a job for a year the government can count you as part of the "discouraged" labor force and not count you as unemployed any more? See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discouraged_worker#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discouraged_worker#United_Stat...
  - 21echoes 12y ago
    False -- the BLS reports 6 different metrics of Unemployment with every jobs report, more than half of which include "discouraged workers" Here's a graph of a few of them over time: http://www.macrotrends.net/chart/1377/u6-unemployment-rate http://www.macrotrends.net/chart/1377/u6-unemployment-rate
ryandrake 12y ago
Regardless of what math you happen to use to count unemployment, I think it's pretty clear we're witnessing a massive (unprecedented?), deliberate transfer of wealth from the many (labor) to the few (shareholders). EDIT: "Few" refers to the fact that less than half of Americans own stock of any kind (including through retirement accounts) [1]. And more US families own cats (30%) than individual stocks (13.8%) [2]. 1: http://www.cnbc.com/id/101980294 http://www.cnbc.com/id/101980294 2: http://money.cnn.com/2014/09/09/investing/stock-market-investing-us-families/ http://money.cnn.com/2014/09/09/investing/stock-market-inves...
Florin_Andrei 12y ago
No, the real reason is that money possesses a "gravity" of its own. It tends to start forming clumps; once that gets started, the clumps tend to grow, absorbing the smaller clumps zooming by. Just like gravity. Any theory of society and economics that doesn't take this fundamental tendency into account is hopelessly unrealistic. You must have mechanisms, at the level of the whole society and economy, actively fighting this "clumping" force. Otherwise you end up with a handful of giant black holes and a whole lot of empty space in between.
- joe_the_user 12y ago
  Hmm, I agree but your point doesn't really contradict the parent. The unemployed, in fact, would count as the empty space between the black holes you describe.
aros 12y ago
You need to provide citations if you're going to make grand claims.
21echoes 12y ago
In what way are unemployment numbers "laughably phony"? You know about [all the different reported metrics](http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm), right? So let's look at that most inclusive number, the U-6 (which, of course, would be a crazy number to actually measure unemployment by, which is why everyone talks about U3): http://portalseven.com/employment/unemployment_rate_u6.jsp?fromYear=1994&toYear=2015 http://portalseven.com/employment/unemployment_rate_u6.jsp?f... 11%, vs the late 90's "boom" of 8.5%. Early 90's, of course, were also in the low teens. All of this, of course, is ignoring the fact that _wages have been stagnant since the late 70's_ -- even through times of crazy low unemployment (U-6 below 7%).
- leereeves 12y ago
  I prefer looking at the "employment level" (number of persons employed) and the number not in the labor force. I couldn't find a way to link directly to these statistics but they're available at: http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?ln http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?ln The estimated number of persons employed today is less than 2% higher than in 2008. The estimated number not in the labor force is 15% higher. About 2 million more people are working now than in 2008, while 13 million more are not working or looking for work. (Disclaimer: These are statistically estimated and seasonally adjusted numbers from the same month.)

by tsotha 12y ago

Iftheshoefits 12y ago

That's part of it, sure. The other part of it in America is the successful suppression of any sort of labor movement and the success of efforts by the very rich to drive a wedge between the merely affluent and the middle and lower classes. America has a real strong strain of the "I'm not poor, I'm merely a temporarily embarrassed millionaire" sentiment.

jgmmo 12y ago
Organized labor getting everything they wanted is what led to basically all US auto companies going bankrupt.
- mikeash 12y ago
  There are lots of situations where letting either side have free reign is bad, and the best is for both sides to be in healthy competition.
- michaelchisari 12y ago
  American unions were always pussycats compared to German and Japanese unions, which didn't suffer near the same fate.
- Frondo 12y ago
  You ought to read this: http://mediamatters.org/research/2014/03/05/myths-and-facts-unions-and-organized-labor/198343 http://mediamatters.org/research/2014/03/05/myths-and-facts-...
  - cpncrunch 12y ago
    They quote EPI and Brookings. EPI is 29% funded by unions, so not exactly neutral. The Brookings report concludes that price was one of the factors causing an erosion of market share, and presumably employee wages are a factor in that.
  - tsotha 12y ago
    Mediamatters? Seriously? Well, okay. Let me find an equally credible source: http://www.aei.org/publication/maybe-patriarchal-labor-unions-are-to-blame-for-rising-inequality/ http://www.aei.org/publication/maybe-patriarchal-labor-union...
    - Frondo 12y ago
      If you can find factual errors in the source I linked, or errors in interpretation of those facts, I would be keen to hear them.
      - tsotha 12y ago
        Oh, I'll accept your link uncritically if you do the same for mine.
        Frondo 12y ago
        Of course I didn't tell you to accept it uncritically.
- Iftheshoefits 12y ago
  Thanks for illustrating my point.
ryandrake 12y ago
Old article [2003] but I bet still relevant today: 39% of Americans believed they are (19%), or will one day be (20%), among the top one percent. Until this "Don't squeeze the rich because, hey, I'll be rich one day" attitude changes, labor and equality movements will always be uphill battles. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/12/opinion/the-triumph-of-hope-over-self-interest.html http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/12/opinion/the-triumph-of-hop...
- evanpw 12y ago
  If you relax the constraint a bit and replace top 1% with top 5%, then almost 40% of Americans will make it at some point. And 12% of them will hit the top 1%. Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/opinion/sunday/from-rags-to-riches-to-rags.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/opinion/sunday/from-rags-t...
  - ryandrake 12y ago
    Cool follow up link, however it distinguishes between the difficulty of reaching the 1%/5%/etc. for a single year vs. sustaining this state. I'd argue the concept of "being one of the 1%" implies being able to sustain this level for longer than a year.

enjo 12y ago

Unemployment numbers are laughably phony That's simply untrue.

irishcoffee 12y ago
In the spirit of neither party citing anything, it is true. I don't understand how people think otherwise. If I had to guess, part of it is the majority of readers here live in a bubble and don't see the forest for the trees.
- enjo 12y ago
  Please read the rest of the discussion that happened parallel to this.
  - irishcoffee 12y ago
    At the time I posted, there was no such thing. I'm going to assume you're smart enough to be cognizant of that, and as such, your comment seems at best troll-ish.
    - enjo 12y ago
      No.. it was meant to call your attention to the other discussion as opposed to rehashing the whole thing here. I know I don't always go back and check these threads if I don't get a reply.
TTPrograms 12y ago
Did you know that if you can't find a job for a year the government can count you as part of the "discouraged" labor force and not count you as unemployed any more? See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discouraged_worker#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discouraged_worker#United_Stat...
- 21echoes 12y ago
  False -- the BLS reports 6 different metrics of Unemployment with every jobs report, more than half of which include "discouraged workers" Here's a graph of a few of them over time: http://www.macrotrends.net/chart/1377/u6-unemployment-rate http://www.macrotrends.net/chart/1377/u6-unemployment-rate

ryandrake 12y ago

Regardless of what math you happen to use to count unemployment, I think it's pretty clear we're witnessing a massive (unprecedented?), deliberate transfer of wealth from the many (labor) to the few (shareholders). EDIT: "Few" refers to the fact that less than half of Americans own stock of any kind (including through retirement accounts) [1]. And more US families own cats (30%) than individual stocks (13.8%) [2]. 1: http://www.cnbc.com/id/101980294 http://www.cnbc.com/id/101980294 2: http://money.cnn.com/2014/09/09/investing/stock-market-investing-us-families/ http://money.cnn.com/2014/09/09/investing/stock-market-inves...

Florin_Andrei 12y ago

No, the real reason is that money possesses a "gravity" of its own. It tends to start forming clumps; once that gets started, the clumps tend to grow, absorbing the smaller clumps zooming by. Just like gravity. Any theory of society and economics that doesn't take this fundamental tendency into account is hopelessly unrealistic. You must have mechanisms, at the level of the whole society and economy, actively fighting this "clumping" force. Otherwise you end up with a handful of giant black holes and a whole lot of empty space in between.

joe_the_user 12y ago
Hmm, I agree but your point doesn't really contradict the parent. The unemployed, in fact, would count as the empty space between the black holes you describe.

aros 12y ago

You need to provide citations if you're going to make grand claims.

21echoes 12y ago

In what way are unemployment numbers "laughably phony"? You know about [all the different reported metrics](http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm), right? So let's look at that most inclusive number, the U-6 (which, of course, would be a crazy number to actually measure unemployment by, which is why everyone talks about U3): http://portalseven.com/employment/unemployment_rate_u6.jsp?fromYear=1994&toYear=2015 http://portalseven.com/employment/unemployment_rate_u6.jsp?f... 11%, vs the late 90's "boom" of 8.5%. Early 90's, of course, were also in the low teens. All of this, of course, is ignoring the fact that _wages have been stagnant since the late 70's_ -- even through times of crazy low unemployment (U-6 below 7%).

leereeves 12y ago
I prefer looking at the "employment level" (number of persons employed) and the number not in the labor force. I couldn't find a way to link directly to these statistics but they're available at: http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?ln http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?ln The estimated number of persons employed today is less than 2% higher than in 2008. The estimated number not in the labor force is 15% higher. About 2 million more people are working now than in 2008, while 13 million more are not working or looking for work. (Disclaimer: These are statistically estimated and seasonally adjusted numbers from the same month.)