[Sixstrings]

How can America follow in China's footsteps? IMO the USA lost its way after World War Two.

End of WWII began the process of globalization. We gradually lost all our jobs. It was retarded -- didn't have to be this way -- after reconstruction, Germany has never given up its solid blue collar middle class jobs.

We let our rich fleece us, and now there's little left. That's what happened.

China on the other hand has strictly enforced drug laws, an education system that requires students to actually learn useful skills, a budget surplus.

There are some major cultural differences, between Asians and us. They are more savers. More nose to the grindstone. But we have some good differences -- we are more innovative, creative, and able to think outside the box. That's what a free society allows for, and Russia and China cannot compete with.

China is becoming more like us, though -- the McMansions, fast food, all of it. They actually want to be like us.

I don't know why our democracy failed, but it sure as heck has. Historically the average survival period of a democracy is under 300 years, often a lot less.

You're right there. That's a sad thought. You can see it happening over time, executive branch gaining ever more power. I guess we could go another direction, a more technocratic socialist direction like Europe.

If we stay uber capitalist and oligarch and keep drifting, we're going to wind up like Russia.

[Plantagenet]

We let our rich fleece us, and now there's little left. That's what happened.

Our problem isn't the rich. Our problem is the poor.

We've currently got the highest rates of food stamp dependency and poverty in US history. The unemployment rate is going down only because so many people are unemployed for so long they give up looking for work or the BLS just stops counting them.

The only way to help all the poor is to unleash the private sector to create jobs----trapping the poor into government welfare dependency just creates perverse incentives for more and more people to tumble into poverty. Obama's policies have resulted in the worst US poverty rate in history---why in heck would you want more of that?


poverty rate for US children

[ROCKMAN]

I wasn't digging at plant either. The problem with the current POTUS (and all previous ones) is the connect between the words and the actions. With the exception of health care I see little significant difference between what's ling on during President Obama's term and that of President Bush. Lots of difference in verbiage, of course. But we still drill, frac, dig and export coal, import oil, refine oil, export refined products, have a existing vehicle fleet with very little change in mpg, still have shiny aluminum boxes coming thru Graves Registration at Dover, etc. etc. etc. Some numbers up some...some down a bit. But no big changes in the realities. In the words...more changes of course. But who realty gives a sh*t what a politician says? I don't. LOL.

[ROCKMAN]

Plant - "The only way to help all the poor is to unleash the private sector to create jobs". And that's exactly where I see the real nightmare coming. Every new job, be it making a pot at Starbucks or repairing an old bridge, is going to require some level of energy input. And as energy stays expensive (whether ff or alt), let alone becomes less available, creating more jobs will be difficult. We either have to kill off a lot of 20-somthings or a lot of 50-somethings. You already know my vote. LOL.

And that brings us back to the new third rail of politics: immigration...both illegal and legal. As the work force grows (by birth and immigration) we need more jobs. Even crappy low paying ones. I appreciate all immigrant efforts to pull themselves out of the gutter. I was lucky to do so myself. But it doesn't change the facts: it takes more energy to maintain a population at the same lifestyle level if the population is growing. And if the population is growing by whatever means and energy becomes increasingly more expensive/less available the lifestyle will suffer. And that's where I see a nasty backlash against immigrants (especially the illegal) developing.

[Tanada]

I wasn't digging at plant either. The problem with the current POTUS (and all previous ones) is the connect between the words and the actions. With the exception of health care I see little significant difference between what's ling on during President Obama's term and that of President Bush. Lots of difference in verbiage, of course. But we still drill, frac, dig and export coal, import oil, refine oil, export refined products, have a existing vehicle fleet with very little change in mpg, still have shiny aluminum boxes coming thru Graves Registration at Dover, etc. etc. etc. Some numbers up some...some down a bit. But no big changes in the realities. In the words...more changes of course. But who realty gives a sh*t what a politician says? I don't. LOL.

America appears to me to be in serious decline. Being out of work is pretty convincing of that after a while, and the economy around here sure isn't growing gangbusters. Peak Oil is here, but by and large the world is still in the denial stage of grief. Once they can no longer deny reality Anger normally comes next. It is not going to be pretty. Losing your spot on the pedestal when you have grown up with the idea that "The American Way Of life Is Not Negotiable" is going to be a very bitter pill to swallow.

[Plantagenet]

Plant - "The only way to help all the poor is to unleash the private sector to create jobs". And that's exactly where I see the real nightmare coming. Every new job, be it making a pot at Starbucks or repairing an old bridge, is going to require some level of energy input. And as energy stays expensive (whether ff or alt), let alone becomes less available, creating more jobs will be difficult.

Yup. Energy is the key.

But please note that just putting more on more people on food stamps and welfare doesn't solve the energy and jobs problem either. An ever growing number of folks who are dependent on the government is also "difficult." I see a real nightmare coming there

[AgentR11]

But please note that just putting more on more people on food stamps and welfare doesn't solve the energy and jobs problem either. An ever growing number of folks who are dependent on the government is also "difficult." I see a real nightmare coming there

I'm not sure this is true. Honestly. Numerous futurists describe worlds where few people actually work (and hopefully are appropriately compensated) and most just do whatever they feel like. Calories in the form of wheat and corn syrup are spectacularly inexpensive; we currently lack some delivery focus, and the payout is probably a *little* too low on the ebt cards; but really, does society gain much value trying to force the young woman I saw being defeated by the assembly instructions for a hamburger into a paid working position. Wouldn't we all be happier if she were not messing up our burgers, and she not having to be overly concerned with starvation?

It is a hard point to get to, we have a real ingrained hatred of anything that smells like socialism, often I think, because it is framed in class hatred language against productive workers and capital managers. ACA/Obamacare is another piece of the puzzle, its really cruddy care at its minimum, but it is sufficient to keep the above woman from becoming the next spreader of Plague 871. So we get SNAP + subsidized ACA + some sort of housing allowance + free school & lunch for kids; and these folks cease to be a problem. The incentives need to be fixed so that families are financially better together than apart, and make sure to not create disincentives for pooling benefits, as well as aggressive academic tracking of talented kids within the swarm of the mindless so as to draw them up into the productive economy. And most critically, class warfare has to become anathema as a tool of advancing policy. The well compensated need to be content that Ms. Burgerdisaster is no longer a problem and no longer mangling their lunch; and the incompetent and disinterested need to be content that others have more financial resources as a result of doing the real work that keeps the machine humming along and spitting out chips and cheese dip.

How much energy do we waste trying to keep the incompetent performing labor for meager amounts of spending money?

I believe we will get there, after having tried all possible alternatives.

nb.. this isn't a gender rant, it just happens that the person that is etched into my brain for all time happened to be female, it could as easily have been a male human botching the burger test.

[Pops]

The thing is people don't just go away if you give them welfare, they will find something to do. A good example is the youth of KSA who became jihadis for lack of anything constructive to occupy their time.

I'm somewhat of a socialist, the kind where there is profitable private business but where the workers are the owners. It is "private" in that the owners and the market are in "control" rather than a central planning authority. I'm opposed to communism simply because it eliminates incentive at the personal level, exactly the same as welfare.

[Tanada]

The thing is people don't just go away if you give them welfare, they will find something to do. A good example is the youth of KSA who became jihadis for lack of anything constructive to occupy their time.

I'm somewhat of a socialist, the kind where there is profitable private business but where the workers are the owners. It is "private" in that the owners and the market are in "control" rather than a central planning authority. I'm opposed to communism simply because it eliminates incentive at the personal level, exactly the same as welfare.

Exactly, as much as I despise what some of the English did during the Irish Potato Famine some of the better morality wise English didn't let people starve or just give them a handout. Instead they had the people do low importance high volume work, like gather all the rocks and stones out of a field and pile them on the fence rows for food. A lot of people got to eat and maintain their pride from those projects. The Civilian Conservation Corp projects in the USA during the Great Depression were often the same sort of thing, in Toledo, Ohio they used men with shovels and wheel barrows to fill in the remaining section of the old Eire-Chicago canal, manually pack it and build a road on the restored surface called Anthony Wayne Trail. The same work could have been down rapidly with a few steam shovels, but they did it the manual labor route to inject money into many more families while letting the workers maintain their self worth.

[Sixstrings]

The only way to help all the poor is to unleash the private sector to create jobs

The private sector is not chomping at any bit to be unleashed to go and hire a bunch of people.

They are hoarding cash, and have been for years.
They are going automated -- like Walmart using auto checkouts instead of even bothering to pay a cashier $7 an hour.

McDonalds is just lookin' for an excuse to go automated. If workers really did strike, computers will do their jobs for them.

Look at Apple -- they've got more money than God. How do they do it? Well, they employ one million chinese instead of employing Americans. Their American workforce is just the low wage retail stores, and then a few thousand engineers and designers, the rest of it is all in China.

The US middle class is gone, conservatives are destroying the last of the good gov jobs up north (already gone in the South), our entire society has already re-oriented to the rich having all the money. You want to know who is a big proponent of food stamps? Walmart, Plant. And big ag. Because they can't stay in business if people can't afford to eat, ergo they lobby for foodstamps.

(by the way, China subsidizes food for its population too, this may just be the new reality, conservatives have to realize we may have to subsidize food to compete with China)

Walmart famously passes on its labor costs to federal gov. And when their customers can't afford to shop, Walmart will lobby the feds to hand out checks.

Plant, in the midst of globalism and ever increasing automation and doing things on the internet, let me ask you, WHERE ARE ALL THE JOBS TO BE "UNLEASHED" FROM, as you say?

A good start would be raising the darn minimum wage. All of us know what's been going on here. That business and the rich are sucking labor dry, because they can, because there is nobody to say they can't.

***If you read nothing else, read this much: that the ONLY way to spur mainstreet brick and mortar private business is to boost labor's wages. That way a retail worker has some money in their pocket to patronize these businesses in their town, and then those business will need to hire more, and ergo the real economy grows. If you keep giving all the money to people in the Hamptons and financial sector and not main street, the economy will never grow.***

Meanwhile, a Canadian or Australian making $18 an hour for a low end job just thinks we're totally insane, paying people **SEVEN DOLLARS AN HOUR**, part time 20 hours a week at that, and then Republicans harp about the food stamps. Jesus.

Plant, I can tell you honestly just aren't aware of the dimensions of the problem. And short of Putin firing missiles at us, this is why the GOP will not win anymore presidential elections. They actually aren't aware, of the problem. Everything looks fine from within the gated community.

[Plantagenet]

Plant, in the midst of globalism and ever increasing automation and doing things on the internet, let me ask you, WHERE ARE ALL THE JOBS TO BE "UNLEASHED" FROM, as you say?

Half of all US jobs are created by SMALL BUSINESSES. That means mom and pop's flower shop. The diner down at the corner. The hobby shop where the kids buy glue. A small organic farm. etc. etc. Small business isn't affected by automation or globalism, but it is VERY SENSITIVE to things like raising the minimum wage, increasing taxes, etc.

If we want more jobs, we need to liberate small businesses to create jobs.

***If you read nothing else, read this much: that the ONLY way to spur mainstreet brick and mortar private business is to boost labor's wages.

Obviously the people who actually run mainstreet brick and mortar private businesses are best placed to judge that.

this is why the GOP will not win anymore presidential elections.

Actually, no. Changing demographics are the reason why the GOP will not win anymore presidential elections. The number of folks who vote for Ds is growing, while the number of folks who vote for Rs is shrinking.

Demography is destiny.

[Sixstrings]

Half of all US jobs are created by SMALL BUSINESSES. That means mom and pop's flower shop. The diner down at the corner. The hobby shop where the kids buy glue.

I will STOP using ALL CAPS if you and Agent STOP IT TOO. When YOU do it, I SEE how annoying IT IS.

Point remains. The retail / service industry worker needs enough cash in his pocket after essentials to go down to that diner and eat, or buy glue at that hobby shop.

For that matter, the hobby shop and diner workers are making minimum wage too.

Careinke just illustrated things perfectly. He made effectively $15 an hour a very long time ago in seventh grade. Inflation has gone up and up since then (natural), but wages have not. It's math. You cannot argue with math. Wages are supposed to track inflation, at least somewhat reasonably, if they do not then people wind up dirt frickin' poor.

It's math.

A small organic farm. etc. etc. Small business isn't affected by automation or globalism, but it is VERY SENSITIVE to things like raising the minimum wage, increasing taxes, etc.

That's a fallacy. Studies have proven it. Raising minimum wage doesn't lead to less jobs, it leads to more jobs.

The small business has to pay more for labor, but also makes more money from all the new customers coming in, and in the aggregate they wind up having to hire more help.

It's math. If you let the rich / business get away with it, they'd not pay people at all and have slaves and then complain how they can't run their plantation without their slaves, if they had to pay them.

Obviously the people who actually run mainstreet brick and mortar private businesses are best placed to judge that.

Not necessarily. Clearly something is not working, right? Maybe it's the low wages? Maybe the one thing we have not tried is getting money to working people? Have we not already tried giving it to the rich, ever since the housing crisis, and for the past 30 years now since Reagan?

Maybe we could just try the other way, like back in the 1970s Plant, when we had no mega-zillionaires but had a lot of middle class and solid workin class people?

This debate is crazy. Minimum wage hasn't even kept up with inflation, if you keep refusing to raise it then people will be slaves eventually and paid nothing at all, and everyone getting a government check and just working to get out of the house a little bit.

Actually, no. Changing demographics are the reason why the GOP will not win anymore presidential elections. The number of folks who vote for Ds is growing, while the number of folks who vote for Rs is shrinking.

The changing demo you speak of is a lot more poor folks.

They ain't just mexican immigrants. Or minorities. Lot of white folks who used to be "middle class" and used to vote Republican. Those are your "changing demographics." And the GOP isn't offering anything except more poverty. (I swear I will not vote R ever again, there would have to be a cold war on and the US getting steamrolled and Dems so weak I have no choice, otherwise R's are never getting my vote unless they turn into cuddly Canadian conservatives and start acting like rational reasonable moderates.

Give me a Nixon on domestic policy. He was a super liberal by today's standards. Give me a Bob Dole. This "makers and takers" thing won't cut it with me, as a swing voter. I know the truth.)

[ralfy]

"Middle class" blue collar jobs is a phenomenon in rich countries, where the minimum wage is higher than what even mid-level white collar workers earn in most parts of the world.

[Pops]

The problem is an oversupply of labor due to automation, offshoring, past bubbles, etc, all things that aren't going away soon. But the point is not simply to increase the number of jobs - do away with wages altogether and you could have an unlimited number of jobs for a while. Did the USSR ever have an unemployment problem?

Small biz does produce about half of new jobs and about half of job losses as well but here is an interesting picture showing job openings by establishment size

Link


A job opening is one unfilled. Now why would small biz have so many more unfilled openings than big biz?

One big possibility pops to my mind, they don't want to pay enough to get the employee they need. Easy to say in the survey "I could sure use another rocket scientist, but gosh, I just can't afford $7/hr."

For many workers there is the same cost/benefit calculation to make as there is for employers, they can stay home and watch the kids, stay in the basement and play games, stay in the low-wage job they already have rather than take a job at $7/hr job and pay daycare, clothing, commute, etc.

Would some of those openings disappear @10/hr? No doubt. So would some of the $7/hr jobs. But I'd bet lots of those "Openings" would be filled at $10 that aren't at $7.

[Ibon]

Thought I would share some statistics here as a comparison. We pay our staff as follows here in Panama

Field hand: $ 10 a day
administrator: $ 14 a day
Construction Manager $ 35 a day
Construction laboror $ 17 a day
Skilled carpenter $ 25 a day

The labor output per worker is something most folks in America have no concept of since we are not very mechanized. The day laborer clears pastures with a machete. We harvest timber from the forests with chainsaws and physically haul blocks of wood. Coffee is planted manually and harvested manually. Construction staff agreed to come up the mountain and all sleep together in a shack we built for them and they work 10 hour days Mon-Fri and we pay them for 6 days. They go back down to town on the weekends and come back up Monday. We cook lunches of everyone.

Having lived and worked in several other developing countries these wages and conditions are pretty typical.

Not a single one of our workers, including the construction manager, owns a vehicle, no one has private health insurance. Extended families all live under one roof and often in town the home and business is integrated. Carpenters have their shop as an extension of their homes.
All homes have televisions and some have sattelite TV that costs $ 19 per month. Diet here is basically rice, beans, yucca, banana, chicken. Bananas are 14 for a dollar. Rice is $2.39 for a 5 pound bag.

Everyone, including the field hand earning $ 10 an hour, owns a cell phone. Cheap ones cost $ 12 dollars and they buy phone cards for $3.
Internet use is just now catching on with young kids.

In town people walk and shop to visit friends.

Electricity is expensive. Gas is subsidized. Nobody heats water with gas or electricity. Everyone takes cold showers. Gas is only used to cook food. Utility costs are thus pretty low.

Entertainment is hanging with friends and family. Way to much alcohol consumed. There is no social drinking. You are straight most of the week and then get smashed with you buddies and often dissapear on drinking binge for up to a week and then suddenly appear for work again when you recover. There is no movie theatre in the nearest town of 20,000. The only movie theatre is in the provincial capitol. A meal in a local restaurant for locals is around $ 3.50 - $ 5.00. Locals rarely go to restaurants.

Folks are generally very content with their lives.

Every couple of months my wife and I head back up to Florida to look after our rental properties. It hits us everytime we are back in the US. All these cars, nobody walks, fragmented social structure, the poor wandering around displaced. An accelerated jazzed up anxious collective.

[Quinny]

With all the 'floss' that surrounds modern life little contributes to well-being. I read '10x Economics' Peter Donaldson as a young adult, it's really worth the effort. I've been very lucky in not being driven by material wealth and luxury, but by getting the most out what we are given. I've done the luxury all-inclusive, but the memories were of when I went into the local towns and met the people. They still have a rich life and in many cases I met people who had real values.

I befriended a kitchen hand on my honeymoon in Mauritius and gave him some fishing tackle which was expensive there. As I was leaving he gave me a package with a carefully wrapped present for me my wife and every one of my children. It would have cost me more than a week of his wages to buy. He told me I mustn't open it till I got home. He'd even spelt all my children's names correctly. I'll never forget the kindness he showed me.

Economics has a lot to answer for!