The New Poor

[KaskadskyjKozak]

 

Prole, I hope your Mom is OK with you posting her photos on cc.com

 

[prole]

THAT BITCH IS LIKE 19! WTF ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!?!

[JayB]

If I'm not posting, or responding to particular threads, it's because I don't always have the time to do so. Feel free to dredge up any threads where you feel like my lack of a response has denied you your rightful triumph, send me the links via PM - and I'll respond to them when I have the time and inclination.

 

The burden of proof is on you, amigo.

 

Define middle class and post-up some unambiguous proof that folks in that arbitrary statistical category are disappearing because their total income - wages, benefits, tax-credits, transfers-in-kind, etc are actually decreasing in real terms.

 

I just gave you a 57 minute lecture to listen to that did exactly that. Pull your head out of your ass, that'll help.

 

 

classic "if I don't acknowledge the data, it goes away, and I can claim that we already discussed it" moment

 

Bump.

 

 

So this is the thread where I posted the data which demonstrate that inflation-adjusted income had increased on both a per-capita, and per-household member basis and your counterpart linked to the above lecture.

 

I don't have the time to watch the video. Evidently you have already done so and found the data she presented compelling. Summarize the specific factual claims that Warren uses to construct her argument I'll be happy to address them.

 

 

 

 

 

[prole]

Anyway, if the state government doesn't want to pay its workers it should just move.

[prole]

So this is the thread where I posted the data which demonstrate that inflation-adjusted income had increased on both a per-capita, and per-household member basis and your counterpart linked to the above lecture.

 

Yeah, more disaggregated bullshit lacking any historical context as to how households have changed over the last fifty years and the increased costs for those households on things like, oh you know, health care. What a laugh. If you weren't so busy cherry picking and digging up obscure "news of the weird" nonsense like "Canadian Politician Goes To America For Operation" to uphold your failed theories while shit falls apart, you might actually help clean up the mess you've been cheerleading for since you started imitating Michael J Fox's character on Family Ties when you were 8 years old.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

So this is the thread where I posted the data which demonstrate that inflation-adjusted income had increased on both a per-capita, and per-household member basis and your counterpart linked to the above lecture.

 

Yeah, more disaggregated bullshit lacking any historical context as to how households have changed over the last fifty years and the increased costs for those households on things like, oh you know, health care. What a laugh. If you weren't so busy cherry picking and digging up obscure "news of the weird" nonsense like "Canadian Politician Goes To America For Operation" to uphold your failed theories while shit falls apart, you might actually help clean up the mess you've been cheerleading for since you started imitating Michael J Fox's character on Family Ties when you were 8 years old.

 

Dick Cheney asked me to tell you to go fuck yourself, Prole.

 

[prole]

You're drunk!

[Buckaroo]

10% unemployment.

 

Yeah but that a bullsh*t number, they've been cooking that one since before Clinton

[Buckaroo]

Microsoft is the exception, and even they are trending toward temps and offshore.

 

What's exploding state budgets? We were doing fine before the downturn? It's reduced tax revenue because of the increase in unemployment that's all. And there have been cuts of state workers.

 

And the TOTAL US state red ink is about $175 BILLION. And we just gave the criminal bankers (your precious fu*king PRIVATE SECTOR) $700 BILLION, and they collected $180 BILLION in bonuses for 2009.

 

whut up wit dat?

 

quality of life has been in decline since Raygoon. The MAIN factor is two adult workers per household to make ends meet when it used to be one, which means breakdown of the family.

[Buckaroo]

 

You create an unemployable underclass by forcing employers to pay more in wages that exceed the value of the output that the least skilled and educated people in society can generate.

 

 

someone needs to de-gibberish this sentence

[JayB]

 

You create an unemployable underclass by forcing employers to pay more in wages that exceed the value of the output that the least skilled and educated people in society can generate.

 

 

someone needs to de-gibberish this sentence

 

Forcing employers to pay someone that can only generate $5 per hour in output $5.50 per hour in wages = guaranteed unemployment.

 

Quite a few of the least skilled, least educated people in the US fall into this category.

[prole]

I wouldn't really care if people were paid five dollars an hour if they had guaranteed high quality health care, free quality education and child care, adequate housing and transport and the other things necessary to live as a really free human being with a certain control over one's life. As it stands now, you know, in the real world, getting paid five dollars an hour looks a lot like slavery. Maybe some privileged white person should do a little 21st century "Black Like Me" study of what life is like on 5 bucks an hour for 20 years and see how their kids turn out.

[JayB]

So this is the thread where I posted the data which demonstrate that inflation-adjusted income had increased on both a per-capita, and per-household member basis and your counterpart linked to the above lecture.

 

Yeah, more disaggregated bullshit lacking any historical context as to how households have changed over the last fifty years and the increased costs for those households on things like, oh you know, health care. What a laugh. If you weren't so busy cherry picking and digging up obscure "news of the weird" nonsense like "Canadian Politician Goes To America For Operation" to uphold your failed theories while shit falls apart, you might actually help clean up the mess you've been cheerleading for since you started imitating Michael J Fox's character on Family Ties when you were 8 years old.

 

The real costs of some things have gone up. Others, like food, communications, appliances, etc have been trending downwards in real terms for ages.

 

What social indicators validate your claims that society is collapsing? Divorce rates, property crime rates? Violent crime rates? Teen pregnancy rates? Drug use? High school graduation rates? College graduation rates? Etc, etc, etc....

[ivan]

 

Forcing employers to pay someone that can only generate $5 per hour in output $5.50 per hour in wages = guaranteed unemployment.

 

Quite a few of the least skilled, least educated people in the US fall into this category.

so we should eliminate the minimum wage in order to have more employment at 7-11 n' the circle K?

[JayB]

I wouldn't really care if people were paid five dollars an hour if they had guaranteed high quality health care, free quality education and child care, adequate housing and transport and the other things necessary to live as a really free human being with a certain control over one's life. As it stands now, you know, in the real world, getting paid five dollars an hour looks a lot like slavery. Maybe some privileged white person should do a little 21st century "Black Like Me" study of what life is like on 5 bucks an hour for 20 years and see how their kids turn out.

 

Yes - because spending their life permanently unemployable is likely to work out quite a bit better for them.

 

At the moment, something like three-percent of the employed population or less actually works for minimum wage, and a significant fraction of that percentage are teenagers just entering the labor force, who live in a household with at least one working adult.

 

The number of people who enter the labor-force at the current minimum wage and stay there for life is virtually zero. By entering the labor force at pay-rates that match their output, they at the very least start to acquire some of the skills, knowledge, and habits that will enable them to increase their earnings over time.

 

Moreover - you can easily structure the tax with a negative income tax on heads of household earning wages below a certain threshold to increase their actual compensation without rendering them unemployable.

 

 

[JayB]

 

Forcing employers to pay someone that can only generate $5 per hour in output $5.50 per hour in wages = guaranteed unemployment.

 

Quite a few of the least skilled, least educated people in the US fall into this category.

so we should eliminate the minimum wage in order to have more employment at 7-11 n' the circle K?

 

It'd make it much easier to find T-shirts, radios, and various other assorted gizmos made in the USA. Elevating pay rates above the value of their output leads to the robots and outsourcing that the ever-declining labor movement has been lamenting for the past fifty years.

[ivan]

 

It'd make it much easier to find T-shirts, radios, and various other assorted gizmos made in the USA. Elevating pay rates above the value of their output leads to the robots and outsourcing that the ever-declining labor movement has been lamenting for the past fifty years.

i don't think it's just teens that would be making us radios, t-shirts and asssorted gizmos - how would paying a lot of workers less increase their overall quality of life?

[prole]

This is the Cato Institute's narrative for the 21st century? "How to maintain a near-starvation labor force and lower expectations among the citizens for much else". Brave New World meets THX-1138. Thanks for the sneak-peek. Good luck maintaining a functioning democratic republic. I'm actually pretty surprised at the extent to which any pretext that what you're advocating for is anything less than the classic "race to the bottom". Desperation would breed a certain candor, I guess, and many had thought that the crisis of neoliberalism would lead to cries of "we didn't go far enough" and calls for more of the same medicine. Though I'd have thought you'd have tried to construct a more compelling facade, your pro-labor/pro-environment lasershow is coming along.

 

Edited February 24, 2010 by prole

[G-spotter]

What about the way Oregon makes people pump your gas for you?

Forced employment, right?

 

I hear they just do it cause they don't have sales tax so they need to create more jobs to make it up in income tax

[prole]

What social indicators validate your claims that society is collapsing?

 

[ivan]

What social indicators validate your claims that society is collapsing?

 

hate to nit-pic, but the funky-writing on the poster doesn't make me feel it's our neck of the woods

 

rooms-full of idiot 1950-ites watchign 3D movies would be about as good (and relevant - folks' detachment from the "big picture" is hardly new)

[prole]

In some ways, Japan is just America cranked up to 11.

[j_b]

Forcing employers to pay someone that can only generate $5 per hour in output $5.50 per hour in wages = guaranteed unemployment.

 

Quite a few of the least skilled, least educated people in the US fall into this category.

 

Only because of unfair trade when Americans are supposed to compete with nations that have labor conditions reminiscent of the 19th century and environmental destruction. Spoken like a true regressive per usual.

 

If slavery in some developing nations was what we had to compete with, libertarians would have no problem with it: "if you don't want to be unemployable, you'd better produce for less than a slave does"

[tvashtarkatena]

For durable goods, much of globalization is a luxury byproduct of cheap energy that will diminish over time as we run out of fossil fuel and suffer the consequences of burning too much of the same. Automation will continue to make jobs involving moving bits around a screen more transferable and therefore less valuable compensation wise, but businesses involving the production of actual objects, particularly low value added bulk items, have likely seen the peak of globalization.

 

Even the least expensive mode of transport, bulk shipping, is cutting way back. For example, Maersk, one of the largest bulk shipping companies, just announced that they're cutting average fleet speed in half: from 24 to 12 knots.

 

The majority of the world's cheap labor has already been exploited, particularly during the Chinese Miracle, which is now slowing down for good after its unsunstainable, record setting growth rates. Most of the opportunities for globalization were exploited when oil was $10 a barrel. At $70 a barrel and climbing, combined with the collapse of the credit bubble, the world is beginning to look like a very different place.

[Hugh Conway]

 

You create an unemployable underclass by forcing employers to pay more in wages that exceed the value of the output that the least skilled and educated people in society can generate.

 

 

someone needs to de-gibberish this sentence

 

Forcing employers to pay someone that can only generate $5 per hour in output $5.50 per hour in wages = guaranteed unemployment.

 

Quite a few of the least skilled, least educated people in the US fall into this category.

 

so lets fire up the death camps and get rid of them! Or promote them to run a hedge fund, because your assertion is comically asinine - because the laziest workers I've ever encountered were in healthcare and the massively bloated US healthcare industry