I prefer "I've earned mine, Jack".  And I interview a lot of people looking for work.  I know how hard it is out there.  But I think there is this misconception that it was easy at one time and, if we simply make a few changes at the top, it will be easy again.  Neither of which is true.

Earning reports tonight, folks. Should be interesting, especially with amazon, apple and netflix

 

I thought AMZN and AAPL were reporting on 1/24, and NFLX on 1/25.

 

Yeah, all the old people don't understand what's going on.

 

I think we do. 

 

We understand that if we are in our 50s and laid off we are most-likely unemployable and will be competing with our grandkids for those starbucks jobs, except it wont be starbucks (since they hire younger people) but maybe competing with our grandkids for jobs clerking at Home Depot.

 

(about to speak in some generalities) While I'm sure the economy is hitting your generation hard, you have to understand that it is completely decimating the millenials. You guys had many years to enjoy a middle class life that to us is a chapter in US history books. Your generation does and will receive unbelievable yet completely unfunded socialized programs that are not remotely sustainable for my and future generations, especially Medicare, which by the way is the biggest single chunk of our deficit.

 

I hear countless stories of those in their 50s and 60s complaining about having worked for 30 years in one well-paid industry but are now struggling (and by the way, why didn't you guys save your money instead of buying cars every 3 years and have Disney World vacations periodically). Well, the fact is people of my generation never had that middle class opportunity, not at that level; our struggles have started much much earlier, probably right around our first insane college/grad school debt bills arrive (something you guys never had to worry about, not at this level), yet we are the ones essentially funding everyone else's way of life but our own.

 

To the older generations, buying a car and home were seen as wise and common investments; now, it is almost impossible to forsee for so many 20 and 30 year olds to do so, given the economy, given how there are virtually no guaranteed middle class jobs i.e. steel and manufacturing. We can't start families because we have no job security. We can't find jobs that pay these non-existent middle class wages outside of very specialized field. And yet we're the ones blamed for laziness, for playing with iphones and mobile devices (which are not only essential for business purposes in today's world but also they're the only things we can afford), and it's mind boggling.

 

In a sense there is some kind of undisclosed generational warfare in which its the boomers vs the millenials, and it's a very one-sided battle so far.

Earning reports tonight, folks. Should be interesting, especially with amazon, apple and netflix

 

I thought AMZN and AAPL were reporting on 1/24, and NFLX on 1/25.

 

Ah.

Well, still watch out for those in the near future

That sense of entitlement comes from a lifetime of parents and teachers pushing education, and with it all its colossal bills, as the only way to achieve a middle class job or even propserity. You have many millions of American teens and young(ish) adults following these instructions, making the obscene time and financial sacrifices, only to find an economic climate devoid of jobs, certainly the ones that let us afford independence.

 

Definitely.  And even if you get a job that's just good enough to afford independence for one person, it's even rarer to get one that allows one to afford to support a family.  Two incomes and no kids (or one income and no kids and no marriage) seems to be more and more prevalent.

 

It's not a sense of entitlement in as much as a sense of betrayal. Our country, our parents, corporate America, and especially our colleges and graduate institutions have completely lied to us about the value of these sacrifices, that they are generally a one way street, that we have no right to complain, that we had no right to expect renumeration for our struggles, despite our having paid out the a$$ for all these years.

 

I think a lot of these colleges lied to themselves for a while, too, particularly with respect to the value of some degrees.  "Get a degree" is a simplistic mantra when there are better and worse degrees out there.

 

Get a good degree from a good school, and do productive things other than study while getting that good degree at that good school as well.

 

The problem is that there is still an element of truth to the "get a degree" mantra, so it's hard to jettison it entirely: the unemployment rate for college graduates overall is still far below the national average (though it's obviously higher for new college graduates), whereas the unemployment rate for those with only high school diplomas is far higher (and for high school dropouts higher still, obviously).

Philips, Siemens Hit By European Weakness

 

"Royal Philips Electronics NV (PHIA)’s earnings fell 45 percent, while Siemens AG (SIE) cautioned that its targets have become harder to reach, as the two European manufacturers feel the strain of the region’s economic crisis."

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-10/philips-says-weak-european-markets-held-back-its-profits-in-fourth-quarter.html

 

Tiffany Reduces Annual Profit Forecast

 

"Tiffany & Co. declined the most in more than a month after the world’s second-largest luxury jewelry retailer reduced its annual earnings forecast, hurt by slowing holiday sales growth across all regions."

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-10/tiffany-reduces-annual-profit-forecast-as-holiday-growth-slows.html

 

Alcoa Inc. Earnings: Margins Shrink as Costs Rise

 

"Results: Reported a loss of $191 million (18 cents per diluted share) in the quarter. Alcoa Inc. had a net income of $258 million or 25 cents per share in the year earlier quarter. Revenue: Rose 6% to $5.99 billion from the year earlier quarter. Actual vs. Wall St. Expectations: AA fell short of the mean analyst estimate of 5 cents per share. It beat the average revenue estimate of $5.79 billion."

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Alcoa-Inc-Earnings-Margins-wscheats-2590076516.html

This is not just about saving housing, this is about saving the banks. Every month that home prices fall the banks real losses continue to grow (even though they continue to do a lot of mark to fantasy on the books and selling the loans to Fannie and Freddie - taxpayers). This election year is going to have some amazing efforts to save this and that.

 

The Fed's Housing Politics

The central bank compromises its independence with rank electioneering.

 

"These columns have defended the independence of the Federal Reserve from attacks on the right and left, but after last week the central bank is on its own. It’s impossible to defend the Fed’s rank electioneering as it lobbies for more political and taxpayer intervention in the housing market—just in time for the election campaign.

 

This extraordinary political intrusion came in the form of a 26-page paper that the Fed sent to Capitol Hill last Wednesday, without invitation, graciously offering what Chairman Ben Bernanke called a “framework” for “thinking about certain issues and tradeoffs.” He was underselling his document. The paper is a clear attempt to provide intellectual cover for politicians to spend more taxpayer money to support housing prices..."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203471004577142883453169136.html

 

Time for another housing bailout?

 

"That's what Ben Bernanke appears to be suggesting.

 

The Federal Reserve recently fired off a white paper to Congress chock full of ideas for stabilizing the housing market, Bloomberg reports.

 

While job growth has picked up, the housing market is still headed in the opposite direction, threatening the economy as a whole, the Fed contends.

 

More than $7 trillion in housing equity has vanished - more than half of what was on the books in 2006 before the housing bubble burst. Overall, prices have fallen 33 percent since then, the Fed notes in its report."

http://www.boston.com/realestate/news/blogs/renow/2012/01/time_for_anothe.html

 

Yeah, all the old people don't understand what's going on.

 

I think we do. 

 

We understand that if we are in our 50s and laid off we are most-likely unemployable and will be competing with our grandkids for those starbucks jobs, except it wont be starbucks (since they hire younger people) but maybe competing with our grandkids for jobs clerking at Home Depot.

 

I hear countless stories of those in their 50s and 60s complaining about having worked for 30 years in one well-paid industry but are now struggling (and by the way, why didn't you guys save your money instead of buying cars every 3 years and have Disney World vacations periodically).

 

I think Jeffery does understand money considering all those crazy (but very informative) graphs and diagrams he posts.

 

But TBid generally illustrated something that a lot of people don't know know -- that all that SUV depreciation and interest that started whacking people when they got popular in the '90s ate up much of our national wealth. Those things (except Toyotas and Escalades) dropped like rocks after a few years since they are expensive to run and maintain due to their weight, plethora of electronic doodads and complex drivetrains.

 

Yeah, all the old people don't understand what's going on.

 

I think we do. 

 

 

We understand that if we are in our 50s and laid off we are most-likely unemployable and will be competing with our grandkids for those starbucks jobs, except it wont be starbucks (since they hire younger people) but maybe competing with our grandkids for jobs clerking at Home Depot.

 

 

 

this is not necessarily true. In New York there are older people working in Starbucks (of course they're in the minority). You see many more in Home Depot, I guess because of their years of knowledge working "on the house." Wait a minute, this is Manhattan, where people can barely figure out how to screw in a lightbulb! I think they hire suburbanites.

 

Yeah, all the old people don't understand what's going on.

 

I think we do. 

 

We understand that if we are in our 50s and laid off we are most-likely unemployable and will be competing with our grandkids for those starbucks jobs, except it wont be starbucks (since they hire younger people) but maybe competing with our grandkids for jobs clerking at Home Depot.

 

I hear countless stories of those in their 50s and 60s complaining about having worked for 30 years in one well-paid industry but are now struggling (and by the way, why didn't you guys save your money instead of buying cars every 3 years and have Disney World vacations periodically).

 

I think Jeffery does understand money considering all those crazy (but very informative) graphs and diagrams he posts.

 

But TBid generally illustrated something that a lot of people don't know know -- that all that SUV depreciation and interest that started whacking people when they got popular in the '90s ate up much of our national wealth. Those things (except Toyotas and Escalades) dropped like rocks after a few years since they are expensive to run and maintain due to their weight, plethora of electronic doodads and complex drivetrains.

 

I think SUV depreciation is the least of our concerns.  They were never really sold as investments, after all, and while they're more expensive than most cars (though hardly all cars, and there was plenty of splurging on luxury cars as well), the only relevant stat would be the difference between the SUV costs and the costs of what people otherwise would have spent on more sensible vehicles.  That might be zero if people were going to get Lexuses and Infinitis and Acuras and BMWs instead.

 

The depreciation in the nominal value of housing is a far greater concern for many families, since houses (far more than cars) were sold as investments, causing people to overspend, but reinflating the housing market is simply going to help those families at the expense of a different set of Americans (prospective homebuyers).

I hear countless stories of those in their 50s and 60s complaining about having worked for 30 years in one well-paid industry but are now struggling

 

What's been more evident if one is old enough, and comes from a blue-collar background (or if you are black), is that these kind of living wage jobs have started to disappear in the 1970s,...or even earlier.... so witnessing the destruction of a broad-based (vs narrow-based) prosperity for people of lower education leverls....not just lawyers, doctors, engineers, etc.....has been an ongoing life -experience.  In the 1980s it started to affect middle managment.  Now its affecting professionals, the IT sector, etc, etc. 

 

Heres a good book on the start of the end of the line, more from the blue-collar POV.

 

Stayin' Alive

 

...and here's where it all ends.  These guys talk about the "Edge Men', which is were you end up in your late middle age without work..

 

Someplace Like America

 

..and, finally, for the blacks, there are a few books.  Ive already mentioned "The Orgins of the Urban Crisis", but more up-to-date is this one

 

When Work Disappears

 

..though Wilson writes primarily about the African American community, and this book came out in the 1990s, perhaps the issue is expanding?  Fascinating to watch, the great collapse of incomes in the US....

 

 

The generational thing is a nice spin on the issue, and I think it has already been posted here that if you enter the job market during a recession you will see a lifetime of lower earnings vis a vis people who enter the job market during prosperity....but we are in something other than a normal recession.

 

The demographic consequences of hard & uncertain times are true as well, and I can attest to that from personal history...my US grandparents got married and started raising a family in the Great Depression...they had only two kids.  My German granparents were married during the Nazi era, and had only one kid (born during WWII, which started in 1939 for Germany).  So yeah we will see demogrpahic fallout from hard times.

 

 

Finally...yeah, I too wonder how these oldesters cruising around the US in their big RVs, car in tow, can afford to do that.  Must be nice. 

Excellent article in the Atlantic giving a pretty comprehensive look at manufacturing in the US today and what challenges the workers and companies face.

 

Making It in America

 

In the past decade, the flow of goods emerging from U.S. factories has risen by about a third. Factory employment has fallen by roughly the same fraction. The story of Standard Motor Products, a 92-year-old, family-run manufacturer based in Queens, sheds light on both phenomena. It’s a story of hustle, ingenuity, competitive success, and promise for America’s economy. It also illuminates why the jobs crisis will be so difficult to solve.

By Adam Davidson

 

Image credit: Dean Kaufman

 

I first met Madelyn “Maddie” Parlier in the “clean room” of Standard Motor Products’ fuel-injector assembly line in Greenville, South Carolina. Like everyone else, she was wearing a blue lab coat and a hairnet. She’s so small that she seemed swallowed up by all the protective gear.

 

Tony Scalzitti, the plant manager, was giving me the grand tour, explaining how bits of metal move through a series of machines to become precision fuel injectors. Maddie, hunched forward and moving quickly from one machine to another, almost bumped into us, then shifted left and darted away. Tony, in passing, said, “She’s new. She’s one of our most promising Level 1s.”

 

Read more at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/01/making-it-in-america/8844/1/

The section of the article about the machinest is the kind of manufacturing that still happens in Dayton.  Yet even this sector..in the Dayton area...is declining in employment. Could be from attrition. 

 

....though I've read that the Asians (particularly Taiwan) are starting to target advanced machining as their next export market....

What's been more evident if one is old enough, and comes from a blue-collar background (or if you are black), is that these kind of living wage jobs have started to disappear in the 1970s,...or even earlier.... so witnessing the destruction of a broad-based (vs narrow-based) prosperity for people of lower education leverls....not just lawyers, doctors, engineers, etc.....has been an ongoing life -experience.  In the 1980s it started to affect middle managment.  Now its affecting professionals, the IT sector, etc, etc.

...

The generational thing is a nice spin on the issue, and I think it has already been posted here that if you enter the job market during a recession you will see a lifetime of lower earnings vis a vis people who enter the job market during prosperity....but we are in something other than a normal recession.

 

The demographic consequences of hard & uncertain times are true as well, and I can attest to that from personal history...my US grandparents got married and started raising a family in the Great Depression...they had only two kids.  My German granparents were married during the Nazi era, and had only one kid (born during WWII, which started in 1939 for Germany).  So yeah we will see demogrpahic fallout from hard times.

 

 

Finally...yeah, I too wonder how these oldesters cruising around the US in their big RVs, car in tow, can afford to do that.  Must be nice.

 

Right, people talk about the Baby Boomers being this filthy rich, spoiled generation. The oldest boomers got jobs pretty easily, but ones born after '57 (the Generation Jones concept that's been discussed on here) or so had a much harder time finding work because their older brothers took it all. And those gin-drinking older gents with the black-framed glasses held all the power jobs. These younger Boomers are the ones who spent the '70s working on muscle cars and tearing ass on Kawasaki H2 750 two-strokes. They got apathetic quickly and are the ones that made Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Metallica big.

No one is saying the boomers were a filthy rich, spoiled generation, or at least I'm not, but rather there was a way of life, of middle class existence, of owning homes and cars, of raising families, of schools focusing on teaching rather than standardized testing, of living in idyllic safe suburbs, not to mention (more or less) present day access to a healthcare and social security system that the millenials will never have access to.

 

And yet we're somehow perceived as the lazy generation despite never having these spoils, having to fund this retirement system that is truly impossible to maintain, and fighting tooth and nail for a job against our peers, those who refuse to retire, and a global community. It's like millenials are being attacked on all fronts sometimes, and politicians are too nervous to even come close to addressing our plight.

^Agreed. Most college grads I meet would kill to be an office gopher. I think so much of the hate towards Gen Y is due to the rich East Coast Gen Y in New York, Boston, and DC, not Ohio or Michigan (alright, maybe the hipsters in Columbus). I'll be honest, I don't like my generation, but I certainly understand their plight. I think a lot of it has to do with the yuppie/hipster attitudes and style. Work ethic might not even come into it since so many of the good kids aren't even getting a chance. Maybe employers should quit hiring yuppies and hipsters, and start hiring kids from grittier backgrounds. The best people I've worked with have always been people who haven't had things easy in life. Overcoming adversity is worth a lot more than coming from a nice happy household, a nice happy college, and a nice happy internship (those kids are sheltered beyond belief). People who've been through hell and back don't fold under pressure.

 

Someplace Like America

 

HIGHLY recommend this book, especially for Ohioans. It chronicles a lot of what happened in Youngstown, and discrimination faced by expats in states like Texas. You can see how Ohio has been a rough place to come up since the early 80's recession. The first big wave of out-migration from Ohio started with the collapse of the steel industry. Most of the country has not been through what the Rust Belt has been through. The book's saddest stories come from Ohioans and Michiganders. But you can really see how the Rust Belt issues are spreading to other parts of the country. Anyone who thought this was limited to manufacturing was sorely mistaken.

^

^

 

What makes you think the retirement system will be around for people currently in their middle ages?  In their 40s?

 

And yet we're somehow perceived as the lazy generation

 

If you are talking about people currently in college (my neices age) , they seem more serious than lazy.  Wasnt it this millenial generation that was active in Occupy Wall Street?  Is that a bad thing?

 

 

@@@@

 

Pertinent to the artcile in the Atlantic, about Level 1 and Level 2 workers in that article, perhaps...or the Level 1 & 2s and the management ensconced in the old HQ in Long Island City.

 

Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs

 

One reason for the mobility gap may be the depth of American poverty, which leaves poor children starting especially far behind. Another may be the unusually large premiums that American employers pay for college degrees. Since children generally follow their parents’ educational trajectory, that premium increases the importance of family background and stymies people with less schooling.

 

At least five large studies in recent years have found the United States to be less mobile than comparable nations. A project led by Markus Jantti, an economist at a Swedish university, found that 42 percent of American men raised in the bottom fifth of incomes stay there as adults. That shows a level of persistent disadvantage much higher than in Denmark (25 percent) and Britain (30 percent) — a country famous for its class constraints.

 

Meanwhile, just 8 percent of American men at the bottom rose to the top fifth. That compares with 12 percent of the British and 14 percent of the Danes

 

....bolding relates to the discussion we have on and off about education and the cost of college.  But the shocker is the US is less mobile than the UK, esp. considering the UK has went through a similar deindustrialization era as we did....they are the closest to the US for the Europeans...Denmark not so much. 

 

 

Though the article does say the lack of mobility is more at the top and bottom...that the middle class is still pretty mobile...

 

Even by measures of relative mobility, Middle America remains fluid. About 36 percent of Americans raised in the middle fifth move up as adults, while 23 percent stay on the same rung and 41 percent move down, according to Pew research. The “stickiness” appears at the top and bottom, as affluent families transmit their advantages and poor families stay trapped.

 

 

....which might go along with the observations about the "disappearance of the middle class".

 

I guesss we are dirgressing from the 'Recession" topic, though.....

 

Back to the fallout from the Great Recession.  The UK Gaurdian reports:

 

Land of the free, home of the hungry

 

 

.... food insecurity is a common, growing and enduring problem. According to Gallup polling, one in five Americans reported not having enough money to buy food in the past 12 months ...Around the country, food banks are feeling the pinch of market forces: as poverty climbs, demand is rising and supply is falling as people who would have donated have less left to spare.

 

An analysis by the New York Times revealed a 17% increase in the number of school students receiving free and reduced lunches across the country between 2006/07 and now. In Rockdale County, east of Atlanta, 63% of students now have subsidised food – up from 46% four years ago.

 

Between 2008 and 2011, the number of those living on food stamps, assistance to those who lack sufficient money to feed themselves and their families, soared by 50%, putting one American in seven in the programme. Catholic Charities recently revealed that requests for the working poor were up 80% over the second quarter, and up 59% for the middle class.

 

...welcome to The New Normal

 

 

How about we start imposing insanely high taxes on unhealthy foods and use that money to subsidize healthy products. That might do more to stem obesity than hunger completely, but it seems win win a kids will start eating more nutritional meals.

 

How about we start imposing insanely high taxes on unhealthy foods ...

 

...like we do with cigarettes and alchohol.  Sounds reasonable. 

 

 

 

 

Will take a lot to overcome that army of lobbyists!  At least alcohol and tobacco had the churches working against them, but sadly most American's don't see the problem with fast food and obesity.  It is quickly becoming health epidemic #1!!

I will start sympathizing more (keyword "more") with the plight of today's youth when I stop seeing them shaking their fists in the air with an iPhone4s in hand, an iPad in stow, and $10,000 worth of body art tatted up and down their arms, not to mention cable TV, multiple macbooks, and an X-Box360 at home.  I have siblings in the Gen Y age group and I interact with them and their friends quite often.  Sincerely, I don't see anymore or different struggles among the youth today than I have in the past (take out the tech explosion which really skewed the employment prospects for awhile).

Here's some more on middle class mobility...downward mobility....for the tail end of the baby  boom and the "millenials"....

 

Middle Class Dropouts

 

...not the gender and especially the racial disparity here:

 

"...One's foothold on the middle class is more secure if you are a white man. Thirty percent of white women and 38% of black men drop out of the middle class, while only 21% of white men do.

 

Things have only gotten worse in recent years. The Great Recession has likely made it harder for many people to remain in the middle class, experts said.

 

...the article talks about a Pew study that takes a long term look at what happened to people who were born in the early/mid 1960s vs their parents.  Which sort of verifies what i've observerd.

 

However, the article also talks about youth.

 

Young adults may find it particularly difficult to hold onto their parents' middle class status. That's because they are having a much harder time landing jobs, particularly well-paying positions in their field. The unemployment rate for 20- to 24-year-olds was 14.4% in December, compared to the national 8.5% rate.

 

This could hurt their earning potential for decades to come, which has earned them the nickname "The Lost Generation."

 

Then, on the same page, there is this "We're Number One!"....

 

Americans make up half of the world's richest 1%

 

Yay!  USA #1  !  USA # 1 !  Huzzah!

 

 

 

 

For Jeffery's post above.

The middle class in America is clearly under fire, to say the least. More and more people are falling into the poverty catagory and new entries into the workforce are facing lower pay and many of them are strapped with some very high debt loads. This is reflected in the growth of jobs and default levels on student loans (that continue to grow rapidly). We have a lot of low paying jobs replacing middle income and even higher income jobs. They can try and not focus on this trend as they report the headline employment numbers, but it won't make the issue go away on Main Street. We are becoming a poorer nation in our distribution of wealth (those that have and those that have not). This problem is putting a lot of strain on society. From parents being out of the home more and more with multiple jobs and less and less civic envolvement by people in our communities. These things are what has made the middle class the stabilizers of our society for decades.

 

 

Note: These numbers were not adjusted for inflation, which means actual sales were probably negative for the retailers.

I guess all the happy talk about huge holiday sales was nothing more than talk. Of course we had another trade organization (Retail Industry) that kept telling everyone (and the media kept printing it) how holiday sales were really doing good. It almost sounds likes another trade organization that is related to housing (Its never a better time to buy than now, everyone else is doing it).

 

U.S. retail sales rise scant 0.1% in December

 

"Excluding a 1.5% rise in motor vehicles sales, retail sales for the month fell 0.2% — much weaker than the 0.3% gain expected.

Sales at gasoline stores fell 1.6% in December. Excluding autos and gasoline, sales were flat on the month.

So-called “core” sales, which exclude autos, gasoline, and building materials, fell 0.2% in December. This was the one and only drop in core sales seen during 2011."

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/december-retail-sales-rise-scant-01-2012-01-12

 

Looks like we are moving back to that wonderful 400,000 mark.

 

U.S. unemployment claims rise sharply to 399,000

Number of applications climbs 24,000 to 399,000

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-unemployment-claims-rise-sharply-to-399000-2012-01-12

 

Looks like home depot might give some of our seasonal workforce another seasonal opportunity.

 

Home Depot to hire 70,000 seasonal workers

 

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- Home Depot will hire 70,000 seasonal workers to get ready for the spring season, the busiest of the year, the home improvement retailer said Thursday.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/home-depot-to-hire-70000-seasonal-workers-2012-01-12

And not one politician is saying a f#$king thing about it, outside of empty rhetoric and focuses on non-issues. Enough with this free trade garbage; we absolutely need to reinstute massive, MASSIVE tariffs and eliminate numerous international trade agreements. Oh no, the Chinese and Indians will be pissed?f**ck 'em.

 

How about a law saying US minimum wage laws must govern all employees, regardless of their being employed by multinational conglomerates outside the States. That means if Microsoft is paying Chinese workers $2/hour, then they have to incur a penalty to make up the difference between that and, let's say $15 an hour. Since these jobs aren't coming back to the United States voluntarily, then we'll force them to return by instituting such high penalites that a company will either accept it, or get the f$uck ou and no longer do any business in the States at any level. Or maybe we'll engage in a trade war that will result in open war, who the hell knows. Either way, we must do something to reestablish the middle class, since this free market will not permit it. That's the point of government, to ensure our country does not turn into another Zimbabwe, which is (an exaggerated version of) the path we're taking.

 

But instead we hear Santorum babble about playing with his dead baby or Gingrich defending his draft deferrment. I'm so sick of it! Obama, get on tv and do your f$%ing job.

And not one politician is saying a f#$king thing about it, outside of empty rhetoric and focuses on non-issues. Enough with this free trade garbage; we absolutely need to reinstute massive, MASSIVE tariffs and eliminate numerous international trade agreements. Oh no, the Chinese and Indians will be pissed?f**ck 'em.

 

Tariffs don't work; there's always a way around them. Tax the hell out of their fuel on the other hand...

I think a big issue with many things related to our society and economics is that we are now in year 5 of this downturn. What makes it worse is I think people on Main Street are starting to realize this may not be over tomorrow or even in 5 more years. They look at the job opportunities, cost of living, inflation, transfer of wealth to the top and the growing debt that is being put on their backs and future generations and are starting to realize 'something is not right in Kansas' anymore. This is not a doom and gloom situtation, but what it does mean is the current system and approach is broken. But I am not sure the Boomers (which make up most of the leaders in Washington, Wall Street, Corporate America, they are the ones that built an unsustainble infrastructure (suburbia) and even are the bulk of the leadership on Main Street) is willing to spread the wealth more evenly and take their lumps with everyone else as a whole (many boomers are hurting as well).

 

With that said the Boomer population is not the only ones that need a fingure pointed at them nor is this a black and white discussion about different generations.

 

How about a law saying US minimum wage laws must govern all employees, regardless of their being employed by multinational conglomerates outside the States. That means if Microsoft is paying Chinese workers $2/hour, then they have to incur a penalty to make up the difference between that and, let's say $15 an hour. Since these jobs aren't coming back to the United States voluntarily, then we'll force them to return by instituting such high penalites that a company will either accept it, or get the f$uck ou and no longer do any business in the States at any level. Or maybe we'll engage in a trade war that will result in open war, who the hell knows. Either way, we must do something to reestablish the middle class, since this free market will not permit it. That's the point of government, to ensure our country does not turn into another Zimbabwe, which is (an exaggerated version of) the path we're taking.

 

 

To use your example they'd just make Microsoft America and Microsoft International and MSA would contract or license services or product from MSI.  Nothing really changes.  Apple already exists this way.  They don't actually make anything, they R&D (and then give it away because you're doing business in China), design, and brand.

In that case then we consider all Microsoft products contraband, even if the company is using such deceitful measures with subsidiaries or dummy corps. If you don't physically make it in the United States, or you pay internationals less than the US minimum wage (or whatever) in some overseas plant and don't pay the HUGE penalty, then your product is banned and ownership criminal in the US. A complete embargo on non US goods/goods made for anything less than $15/day overseas (just a random number I'm throwing out there) if they're made by US companies. If that means fewer Walmarts and more mom and pops with higher costs, then lah de dah, I'll take that tradeoff in a heartbeat.

 

I'm not saying this is realistic but rather we need our politicians to start dealing with our pain. This is just an extreme means of doing so

And not one politician is saying a f#$king thing about it, outside of empty rhetoric and focuses on non-issues. Enough with this free trade garbage; we absolutely need to reinstute massive, MASSIVE tariffs and eliminate numerous international trade agreements. Oh no, the Chinese and Indians will be pissed?f**ck 'em.

 

This would be one of the most disastrous economic moves we could possibly make.  You would end up destroying far more jobs than you would create, and destroying a great deal of societal wealth on top of that.  At the end of the day, you would dramatically increase the price of almost all American consumer goods.  On top of that, you would produce far fewer jobs than you think, especially in the long run, because most employers would react by investing far more in automation than they do already (and those investments are already substantial).

 

How about a law saying US minimum wage laws must govern all employees, regardless of their being employed by multinational conglomerates outside the States. That means if Microsoft is paying Chinese workers $2/hour, then they have to incur a penalty to make up the difference between that and, let's say $15 an hour. Since these jobs aren't coming back to the United States voluntarily, then we'll force them to return by instituting such high penalites that a company will either accept it, or get the f$uck ou and no longer do any business in the States at any level. Or maybe we'll engage in a trade war that will result in open war, who the hell knows. Either way, we must do something to reestablish the middle class, since this free market will not permit it. That's the point of government, to ensure our country does not turn into another Zimbabwe, which is (an exaggerated version of) the path we're taking.

 

A highly, highly exaggerated version.

 

Your system would drive scores of American companies out of the country entirely.  Or would you also bar German and Canadian companies from doing business in the U.S. unless they paid their Chinese workers at least the U.S. minimum wage?  If so, then you are going to hurt the U.S. economy even more, given the amount of business relationships you would immediately terminate.  (You're talking about imposing harsher sanctions on German companies for employing Chinese labor than we currently impose on Iran for pursuing nuclear weapons.)  If not, then American companies will simply go become Canadian or German or British companies in order to evade your straitjacket.

 

Capital is mobile, and it goes where it is welcomed and flees where it is not.

 

The fact is that there is nothing you can do to try to force someone to pay $60,000 per year plus benefits to someone with skills that are only worth $12/hr and whose skills are only needed for 20 or 30 hours per week.  This is even moreso when that person's job could be automated (and perhaps even performed better) by a single machine for a $100,000 one-time payment.

In that case then we consider all Microsoft products contraband, even if the company is using such deceitful measures with subsidiaries or dummy corps. If you don't physically make it in the United States, or you pay internationals less than the US minimum wage (or whatever) in some overseas plant and don't pay the HUGE penalty, then your product is banned and ownership criminal in the US. A complete embargo on non US goods/goods made for anything less than $15/day overseas (just a random number I'm throwing out there) if they're made by US companies. If that means fewer Walmarts and more mom and pops with higher costs, then lah de dah, I'll take that tradeoff in a heartbeat.

 

I'm not saying this is realistic but rather we need our politicians to start dealing with our pain. This is just an extreme means of doing so

 

In other words, make American businesses as uncompetitive as possible against all foreign rivals.

 

You're not talking about saving the middle class.  You're talking about driving most businesses in the country either out of the country or into bankruptcy (where they won't fetch much at liquidation, because who wants to buy the assets of a business that will be kneecapped by its own government)?

 

Remember, you can point to a few massively profitable businesses in the U.S. that cut costs using foreign labor (Apple, etc.).  However, far more businesses are just scraping by or are at least not rolling in money.  One local Northeast Ohio company that I know well sells a lot of products made in foreign countries, including China, but its margins are incredibly small (smaller than Wal-Mart's, I think).  It's a discount retailer.  The notion that its customers would suddenly pay double or triple price for the same goods to be made in America is fool's thinking.  The far more likely scenario is that they'd simply stop buying such goods entirely, and the company would go under.  No jobs would be created, and many would be destroyed.

Pretend and extend. Rinse and repeat. Man that can is getting heavy.

 

Financial Frankness Is a Bad Dream for a Bank: Jonathan Weil

 

"A telling example is Regions Financial Corp. (RF), which has about $130 billion of assets and still hasn’t repaid its $3.5 billion of bailout money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The Birmingham, Alabama-based bank pulled out all the stops in the third quarter to sidestep losses on its intangibles, as the research service FootnotedPro highlighted in a Nov. 4 report to its customers.

 

Avoiding the Problem

 

To help avoid writing down goodwill, Regions raised its estimate of the control premium an investor would pay to buy its commercial-banking unit, to 60 percent from 30 percent, even though Regions’ stock market value fell by almost half during the third quarter. (A control premium is the amount a buyer is willing to pay over current market value to purchase a company.) Basically, Regions was saying it disagreed with the market, which naturally made the company more valuable in management’s eyes.

 

Today Regions has a $6 billion market capitalization, slightly more than its $5.6 billion of goodwill, and trades for 44 percent of book. So the goodwill supposedly was worth almost as much as Regions itself, which makes little sense because goodwill isn’t salable.

 

Yesterday after the markets closed, Regions said it would take a $673 million fourth-quarter charge to earnings, mostly due to elimination of goodwill, after agreeing to sell its Morgan Keegan investment-banking unit to Raymond James Financial Inc. (RJF) for $930 million. You have to wonder if Regions should have known a lot sooner that the business wasn't worth as much as its balance sheet said."

 

"Other struggling lenders in Europe and the U.S. will see both examples as more reason to paper over their losses, which will make their problems and the eventual cleanup worse. Delay- and-pray is never a good strategy. Unfortunately it’s the only one a lot of zombie banks have left."

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-12/financial-frankness-is-a-bad-dream-for-a-bank-commentary-by-jonathan-weil.html

Would prices of goods go up? Of course. Customers will spend more money on goods when they have the jobs that allow them to afford such goods.

 

Would this result in a rise in automation? Sure. That's why you have the government threatens to nationalzie companies who do so. 

 

Would there be fewer jobs in the long run? Maybe, maybe not, but what I can tell you is as more companies outsource jobs, Americans have fewer jobs to pick from. We're bleeding like crazy either way. The idea is mostly Hail Mary as it is, I'll concede.

 

I have no idea how I'd treat German/el al companies that do business in the US but use child and virtual slave labor elsewhere.

 

And you're probably right, that this idea wouldn't work in the real world. But at least it's something new, something to argue over, something radical, as opposed to the complete acceptance or ignorance of the American collapse by our politicians. You gotta do beter than simply say why something is wrong; you also have to say what's right then.

These are some sobering stats and the numbers seem to be getting worse.

 

White-Collar Workers Join Crowd Straining Food Banks

 

"The portion of college-degree holders in New York who said they had difficulty affording food increased to 30 percent in 2011 from 24 percent in the previous year, according to a survey of 827 adults released today by the nonprofit Food Bank for New York City.

 

Only about 7 percent of those who lost jobs after the 2008 financial crisis have found work that matched or exceeded their previous job, according to a study released last month by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University."

http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-11/mercedes-owners-ph-d-holders-join-swelling-crowd-straining-soup-kitchens?category=%2Fnews%2Fmostread

Informative site.

 

http://dollarcollapse.com/

One way to deal with the concentration of wealth, of the benefits from the current set up in the 1%, or whatver %, is via distribution.

 

The way to do that is via some sort of Robin Hood tax, and use the revenue generted to subsidize a massive expansion of the EITC, using the tax code to redistribute wealth. People would file but would get more than simple credit, it would be a credit plus some other number as an income supplement.  Call it Credit Plus, since you'd be getting a credit plus something beyond a credit. 

 

This way the tax would actually be revenue neutral, in that it not would subsidize "expanded government"...meaning one could still have an austerity program....it would go back to the 99%, so to speak.

 

 

 

 

 

For RageRunner...some history....since he correctly called this early based on the housing market performance...

 

Documents show how Fed missed housing bust

 

Ben Bernanke presided over his first meeting as Federal Reserve chairman in March 2006 believing the nation's economy could pull off a "soft landing" from falling home prices. Three months later, Bernanke had begun to grasp that he and others had underestimated the risk housing posed to the economy.

 

Newly released transcripts of Fed meetings during Bernanke's first year as chairman show that, among Fed officials, he often expressed the most concern about housing. But no official, according to the transcripts, recognized the extent of the damage a housing bubble would cause. A year later, the housing market's collapse helped send the nation into its worst recession since the Great Depression.

 

In fact, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, then a Fed official, expressed confidence in September 2006 that "collateral damage" from housing could be avoided...

 

 

 

One way to deal with the concentration of wealth, of the benefits from the current set up in the 1%, or whatver %, is via distribution.

 

The way to do that is via some sort of Robin Hood tax, and use the revenue generted to subsidize a massive expansion of the EITC, using the tax code to redistribute wealth. People would file but would get more than simple credit, it would be a credit plus some other number as an income supplement.  Call it Credit Plus, since you'd be getting a credit plus something beyond a credit. 

 

This way the tax would actually be revenue neutral, in that it not would subsidize "expanded government"...meaning one could still have an austerity program....it would go back to the 99%, so to speak.

 

The EITC still goes into federal spending figures, at least to the extent that the government is actually writing checks to people.  To the extent that it simply reduces tax revenue, it goes into some spending figures because many budget analyses count tax cuts/credits/etc. as expenditures.

 

The easier way to increase revenues from the wealthy would be to eliminate a lot of the tax breaks that they currently get, forcing them to pay something closer to their ostensible, nominal rates.  The current 35% marginal tax rate on the top bracket is fairly reasonable (and I've said in the past that the 39.6% rate under Clinton could return without much disruption).  However, many people in that bracket actually pay nowhere near that level.  The characterization of hedge fund managers' compensation as capital gain instead of ordinary income is the most egregious example of this, but the actual numbers involved in that are modest.  (It should still be dealt with on principle, but the financial industry has Congress too deep in its pockets for that to happen.)  The problem is that a lot of the deductions that they do claim in massive amounts are also ones claimed by the middle class in smaller amounts (but also massive amounts in the aggregate, because contrary to popular belief, the middle class is still very large).  Those include things like the mortgage interest tax deduction, the state and local tax deduction, and so on.  Phasing those out was, I believe, part of the proposed Simpson-Bowles reforms, meaning that it's got bipartisan support--but only among deficit hawks in both parties, which are sadly a slim minority in both parties, and the Simpson-Bowles plan was therefore quickly and quietly shoved aside and forgotten.

 

The EITC still goes into federal spending figures, at least to the extent that the government is actually writing checks to people.  To the extent that it simply reduces tax revenue, it goes into some spending figures because many budget analyses count tax cuts/credits/etc. as expenditures.

 

I was thinking of it more as an already-existing redistributive mechanism, and one that has an element of "reward for working" to it since one has to be working (earned income) to qualify. 

 

 

 

If you wanted to do this (redistribute) and use the EITC as a means to get there I think you'd have to reduce the weighting of the credit away from children and the unmarried individuals that care for those children.

 

In the same world where the EITC would ever be expanded to try and redistribute wealth it would be simple enough to cap credits like the home mortgage interest deduction at a dollar amount that would be useful to the middle class but provide decreasing benefit to wealthier individuals.

Documents show how Fed missed housing bust

 

Ben Bernanke presided over his first meeting as Federal Reserve chairman in March 2006 believing the nation's economy could pull off a "soft landing" from falling home prices. Three months later, Bernanke had begun to grasp that he and others had underestimated the risk housing posed to the economy.

 

Newly released transcripts of Fed meetings during Bernanke's first year as chairman show that, among Fed officials, he often expressed the most concern about housing. But no official, according to the transcripts, recognized the extent of the damage a housing bubble would cause. A year later, the housing market's collapse helped send the nation into its worst recession since the Great Depression.

PBS' "Newshour" coverage reported how the Fed commissioners joked about homebuilders having to give away automobiles to entice buyers to buy their new homes.  Those insensitive 1%ers were totallly clueless as to how this housing collapse was ultimately going to cause a "credit squeeze" and destroy the economy. 

 

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/jan-june12/federalreserve_01-13.html

Bill Gross from Pimco knew about the coming bubble pop and credit crunch in 2006 and was warning his clients and the company's website visitors.

One way to deal with the concentration of wealth, of the benefits from the current set up in the 1%, or whatver %, is via distribution.

 

The way to do that is via some sort of Robin Hood tax, and use the revenue generted to subsidize a massive expansion of the EITC, using the tax code to redistribute wealth. People would file but would get more than simple credit, it would be a credit plus some other number as an income supplement.  Call it Credit Plus, since you'd be getting a credit plus something beyond a credit. 

 

This way the tax would actually be revenue neutral, in that it not would subsidize "expanded government"...meaning one could still have an austerity program....it would go back to the 99%, so to speak.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And exaclty how is that going to put people to work?

 

TEdolph

Well, it would give people more money to spend on goods and services, thus increasing employment. It's not like our so-called job creators are bothering to do that.

It makes me really happy to see that the usage of the term "job creators" has mainly become sarcastic.

Agreed, it was nothing but a talking point that never stood up to any logical scrutiny.

Probably because "job creators" are also "job eliminators", "job movers" and "hour reducers" depending on the needs of the company and its shareholders.

Demand creates jobs, not some benevolent aristocrat.

Money in pockets creates jobs