Friday, October 31, 2014

Why aren't Multi-Billionaires Taxed for Social Security?

Maybe it's because billionaires don't need Social Security benefits when they retire (or become disabled). But we can also assume that they made (or inherited*) their billions from consumers and employees (workers) who will eventually need these benefits at some point in their life. So should billionaires, who are exempt from paying Social Security taxes on their "investment income" (aka "unearned income"), be made to contribute more to the Social Security Trust Fund?

Thursday, October 30, 2014

Ebola Poll: Can Bodily Fluids be Airborne?

The general public is told by government officials and healthcare professionals that Ebola is not an airborne transferable disease, and that it can only be transferred via bodily fluids by intimate contact with an infected person — but only AFTER they begin showing symptoms (such as fever.)

But yet, even though we're told that Ebola can not be transferred via "airborne bodily fluids" being discharged from living beings, Ebola can be transferred by contact with non-living infected surfaces — such as clothing (etc.) The general public wonders, "How can that be?"

Sunday, October 26, 2014

An argument for NOT caring about Inequality

(* Excepted from a post titled Scale, Profits, and Inequality by Dietrich Vollrath, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Economics, University of Houston)

Saturday, October 25, 2014

Jobs of Multiple Job Holders Counted as Number of People Employed

The government has been counting the number of jobs held by "multiple job holders" as the number of "people" who are "employed", understating the actual number of people working and the actual number of people unemployed --- currently for a difference of 5.7 million. First, let's begin with new wage data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, who reports:

Why Profits aren't Reinvested, Creating Jobs (in the U.S.)

First read "The Profits-Investment Disconnect" below by Paul Krugman:

Offshoring to Africa — or Outsourcing to Robots?

Why Africa might not expect to see a vast number of jobs offshored to them, as they have been from the U.S. to China, Vietnam and Cambodia (etc.) In his post, What Path for Development in Africa -- and Elsewhere? Tim Taylor writes:

Thursday, October 23, 2014

The Fed's Lyin' Eyes (Labor Force Partcipation Rate)

QE = $233,000 per job

The reasons the Fed has been giving us for the falling labor force participation rate have been utterly ludicrous — "an aging work force", "retirements", "young people going to school", "those on disability" and those who choose to "stay home to take care of family or home". While these factors may contribute to the decline, they don't significantly, and they aren't the main reason. Millions of Americans already know from personal experience that it's mostly because of  "a lack of jobs" (and mainly for younger people trying to enter the labor market).

Is this the Smoking Gun? (Jobs and Participation Rate)

Using data from the Bureau Labor Statistics, they reported an additional 1,911,000 year-to-date (from Sept. 2013 to Sept. 2014) for those "not in the labor force". Now subtract 1,155,557 for retired and disabled on Social Security during that same time for a difference of 755,443. That would indicated that, out of 3,037,040 high school (and college) graduates this year, 755,443 of them dropped out of the labor force to maybe "take care of home or family"

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Social Security COLAs (1975 to 2014)

The very first Social Security check (check number 00-000-001) was issued to Ida May Fuller in the amount of $22.54 and dated January 31, 1940.

(The charts below are from the St. Louis Fed) Historical Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers. As you can see, inflation really began taking off ever since the 1970s.

Monday, October 20, 2014

Poll: 64% of Voters think U.S. is "Out of Control"

In a recent poll by Politico, they asked "Which of the following comes closest to your own views when you think about the United States?" The number one answer to that question that made the morning headlines was: "Things in the U.S. feel like they are out of control right now.........64%

Other poll results:

Saturday, October 18, 2014

Why the US should be more like France

Not in the way we grow grapes and ferment wine in Napa valley, and not in the way we process cheese in Wisconsin, but in the way we treat our workers.

Conservatives have been well known for bad-mouthing our European ancestors — especially the French 1 — calling them "socialists" and whatever other insults they can think of to hurl at them 2. Although, "socialist" isn't even an insult, but a political terminology that's used as a scare tactic by the Republicans to invoke irrational fear — equating Socialism to Stalinism and genocide (playing on their base's ignorance).

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Republicans now Demanding MORE Government

The Republican/conservative/tea party politicians have been ultra-critical of all "government" (even though they themselves are part of our "big government") — especially since Obama first took office. They have been demanding less government regulation — while also demanding cuts in taxes and less government spending. They've insistently pushed for cutting budgets or eliminating government agencies altogether (such as the CDC, EPA, IRS, FBI, FAA, FCC, FEC, FDA, etc.).

Sunday, October 12, 2014

Minimum Wage Updates (October 2014)

Clearly the majority of Americans IN BOTH PARTIES favor raising the federal minimum wage, as well as most of our Democratic leaders. So why won't the Republicans in Congress do the people's will?

Saturday, October 11, 2014

Why Republicans Should Vote for Democrats in 2016

Republican voters, who might earn more than $7.25 an hour, should understand that, by setting the ground floor for the lowest federally mandated minimum wage (by raising it) also puts great pressure on their employers to raise their wages as well. How can their bosses explain to a factory worker in Tennessee (or elsewhere) that McDonalds employees are earning more than they are?

Friday, October 10, 2014

Please! Send the Helicopters!

In the beginning of the Great Recession, George W. Bush responded to the early signs of economic trouble with a "helicopter drop" in the form of lump sum tax rebates to wage earners, which were provided for in the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008.

Diatribe of a Disgruntled Worker 

While computers, automation, robotics and other methods in the workforce may have increased worker productivity, gads of publications have shown that wages haven't kept pace for the past 30 years. In a service job, such as at a restaurant or bar, an individual's workload is primarily governed by the flow of customers into the place of business and the management's scheduling of its employees. During the "down times", the non-management workers are usually expected to pick up a rag and clean (or otherwise keep themselves busy in other ways) because to be "idle" is "stealing" time/wages from the employer (although the boss is usually not so concerned about wage theft during those times when their employees work through their breaks and/or after their shifts officially end).

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

War Tax for the War on ISIS (ISIL)

With the escalation of our “new” war with ISIS (ISIL), how is this going to paid for — with “offsetting costs” (PAYGO) — such as cutting food stamps, rather than raising the capital gains tax rate on the war profiteers?

Sunday, October 5, 2014

Dumb Down the People to Rip them Off

Information = Power, control and wealth — that's why the very wealthy clamor to monopolize it.

Since the days of the Pony Express, the telegraph and old fashion newspapers, it took ordinary people a long time to discover the shenanigans that were being perpetuated upon them. Until the U.S. government's invention of the internet, which gave us the world wide web and social media, we were pretty much at the mercy of the Mushroom Syndrome: kept in the dark like mushrooms and fed bullshit. The information boom, the prevalence of computers and a hunger for instant and reliable information, was a transformation and opportunity for common folks to see what was happening in the world around them, without having to rely on slow and/or restricted sources of information. But many of the same corporations who enabled us with this informational freedom (and profited immensely while dodging taxes) are now also trying to limit it to us with "net neutrality".

Bits and Pieces (October 2014)

New York Times: "The private sector has now added 10.3 million jobs over 55 straight months of job growth [but] the actual percentage of working-age people with jobs — 59 percent — has not changed for four months, a reflection of just how many people have stopped looking for work ... Republicans blamed Mr. Obama’s economic policies for leaving the labor participation rate at its lowest level since 1978 ... 4.8 million workers are missing from the job force, neither employed nor actively looking for work. Some of that is attributed to demographics: As the large baby boomer population ages, many in that generation will leave the work force. But the participation rate for Americans 25 to 54, considered prime working age, is also at troubling levels."

My Comment:

Friday, October 3, 2014

The Future of American Labor

Brad DeLong: Need We Fear the Robot Uprising? — "The global division of labor that had previously been near-exclusive property of American workers, had allowed workers elsewhere in the world to use their new-found bargaining power to extract resources for their own consumption. This was to the detriment of America's blue-collar working and middle classes."

In a speech yesterday at Northwestern University, President Obama said, "American manufacturing has added more than 700,000 new jobs."  But since Obama first took office in 2009, we've actually had a NET LOSS of 400,000 manufacturing jobs. In December of 2009, the number bottomed out at 11.4 million (Source: BLS). We now have 12.2 million manufacturing jobs — for an actual gain of  681,000 manufacturing jobs since December 2009 — out of over 10 million jobs created since that time. While that's good news (that we have more jobs in manufacturing), most of the net new jobs created have been low-paying jobs in the service industry — and judging by past history, we can expect that trend to continue.