OT: Why there are no new jobs

On Monday, September 28, 2015 at 5:42:09 PM UTC-4, Joerg wrote:

On 2015-09-26 8:04 PM, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Sunday, 27 September 2015 01:05:57 UTC+10, Joerg wrote:

They quit working so much and plopped themselves into Obamacare. As
a result of this and other failed policies our labor participation
rate fell by several percentage points. That is really dangerous
because even if we get a better administration next time around,
which I seriously hope, the labor participation rate typically
never bounces back.

Where? When?


US:
http://etfdailynews.com/2014/09/05/labor-participation-rate-drops-to-lowest-since-1978-dow-jones-industrial-average/

A bit old. Here's a current plot of the U.S.' labor participation rate:
https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1LEI

From 63% to 59%, a 6% plunge in working portion, not accounting for hours.
Thanks Barry!

Finland (click on MAX):
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/finland/labor-force-participation-rate

Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Tuesday, 29 September 2015 02:09:41 UTC+10, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Monday, September 28, 2015 at 1:14:05 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Monday, 28 September 2015 06:49:09 UTC+10, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:
On Sunday, September 27, 2015 at 1:12:54 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

Sloman, who hasn't worked in decades, and didn't seem to be very
productive ever, thinks he's competent to plan entire economies.
That's absured.

Yup. No one can, not efficiently.

As I've argued for years. Only Larkin would be silly enough to put up such a strawman argument.

<snipped irrelevance>

> Bill Sloman argues against central-planning...

Some central planning makes sense, but as means for fine-tuning the distribution of goods and services overall, it sucks, as the Soviet Union demonstrated at length. It wasn't a compete disaster, but it didn't work as well as a well-regulated free market.

Some goods and services - like health care and education - don't provide the immediate feedback that makes regular markets work well, and benefit from a lot more regulation, up to and including letting the central government regulate the lot, which is something that you aren't inclined to accept.

Nobody is advocating a centrally planned economy.

...then advocates central-planning in his next sentence,

What is advocated is an administration that collects more in taxes
than the US does

That's central spending, not necessarily central planning. In Australia - at least - the central government sets the tax rates, and the individual states dispense the money.

> and compounds it by errors of fact--

Which happens to be a lie, as James Arthur should know.

and spends more of it on health, education and welfare, as the Scandinavian and German governments do.

We already spend more per capita on health care (as you've complained so
often) and education. We've also more than doubled real spending since
the 1960's, with no change in results.

That's a deceitful argument. There's no error of fact in claiming that the Scandinavian and German governments collect larger portion of the national income in tax, or that they spend more of it on health, education and welfare.

The fact that the proportion that they spend on health is smaller than the proportion the US spends on health says nothing about the proportion they spend on education and welfare. They can get away with spending less on health care because they spend it more efficiently - wasting less on over-administration and unnecessary cover-my-back testing - while still getting results - for the population as a whole - which are better than yours.

Finland - in particular - gets very good results out of it's education system, and area where the USA is particularly third world, and US welfare is a bad joke.

> You've beclowned yourself. Again.

Actually, you have, trying to use cheap debating tricks to obscure real differences.

narratives snipped

John was right. It's not worth responding to you.

Obviously. Your cheap rhetorical flourishes get chewed to ribbons, and you sound like a high-school debater stuck with defending the indefensible - which isn't all that far from the real world situation.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Tuesday, 29 September 2015 02:15:53 UTC+10, John Larkin wrote:

On Mon, 28 Sep 2015 09:09:36 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Monday, September 28, 2015 at 1:14:05 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Monday, 28 September 2015 06:49:09 UTC+10, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:
On Sunday, September 27, 2015 at 1:12:54 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

Sloman, who hasn't worked in decades, and didn't seem to be very
productive ever, thinks he's competant to plan entire economies.
That's absured.

Yup. No one can, not efficiently.

As I've argued for years. Only Larkin would be silly enough to put up such a strawman argument.

Especially a place as big, and with such
diverse people, resources, and terrain as the U.S.

Bill Sloman argues against central-planning...

Nobody is advocating a centrally planned economy.

...then advocates central-planning in his next sentence,

What is advocated is an administration that collects more in taxes
than the US does

and compounds it by errors of fact--

and spends more of it on health, education and welfare, as the Scandinavian and German governments do.

We already spend more per capita on health care (as you've complained so
often) and education. We've also more than doubled real spending since
the 1960's, with no change in results.

You've beclowned yourself. Again.

narratives snipped

John was right. It's not worth responding to you.

Cheers,
James Arthur

Sloman is the major catalyst for endless, crude, off-topic,
hundreds-of-posts insult threads. Please ignore him.

He savors these miserable episodes. Don't feed him.

John Larkin posts endless off-topic references to food and links to right-wing drivel in right-wing newspapers. When he sticks to the rather limited range of electronic subject where he has hands-on experience, he can have useful stuff to say, though not as useful as he likes to think.

He gets hurt when people don't take him as seriously as he thinks he deserves and feels insulted, poor thin-skinned twerp that he is.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Joerg]

On 2015-09-26 2:21 PM, Robert Baer wrote:

Joerg wrote:
On 2015-09-24 10:00 PM, rickman wrote:
On 9/24/2015 8:23 PM, Joerg wrote:
On 2015-09-24 1:37 PM, rickman wrote:

[...]


You can whine and moan all you want, it doesn't change the fact that
this is one of the very best countries in the world for starting a
business. If you don't like it, why don't you take your business
somewhere else?


That is what my former employer did, shedding tons of well-paying US
jobs in the wake.

Engineering jobs?


Most businesses do not consist of engineering jobs alone.


... Seems like plenty of folks are trying to get into the
US to have those. H-1B visas ring a bell? Obviously we still have a
very competitive market for Engineering.


Sure. Engineering jobs are plentiful here. I want to partially retire
and my clients don't let me.

H-1B is abused. People often come in because making $35k/year is still
better than making $15k where they came from. This abuse is trivially
easy to stop and I have explained numerous times how. Sad to say but it
seems the only other person that seems to understand how or is willing
to even say it is ... Donald Trump :-(


... Have you had any better offers?


Yes. From Costa Rica.

So why are you still here? Is that a better place to do your job?


a. Engineering work is plentiful in the US.

b. Especially in view of the failed policies of the current
administration I'd be more than willing to emigrate to a nice place in
the Caribbean. But I have a family and not everyone has an easy time to
learn yet anotehr language. Which you have to or will remain a foreigner
forever.
* Which alludes to a VERY sore point.
Is there any other country in the world that does not require
immigrants to learn the local language?

Most don't. But they also generally do not accommodate them by mandating
bilingual signage everywhere which is something I'll never understand in
the US.

I am an immigrant myself and not in my wildest imagination would I ever
think that the US is "required" to accommodate my native tongue.

Bilingual education like the leftists here want to re-introduce is a
level higher on the stupidity scale. That is the perfect recipe to
create 2nd class citizens who will have problems in the workforce
because their language skills aren't up to snuff. This guy really knew why:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Escalante

[...]

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

 

[Joerg]

On 2015-09-26 4:00 PM, krw wrote:

On Sat, 26 Sep 2015 08:17:08 -0700, Joerg <news@analogconsultants.com
wrote:

On 2015-09-24 10:00 PM, rickman wrote:
On 9/24/2015 8:23 PM, Joerg wrote:
On 2015-09-24 1:37 PM, rickman wrote:

[...]

... Seems like plenty of folks are trying to get into the
US to have those. H-1B visas ring a bell? Obviously we still have a
very competitive market for Engineering.


Sure. Engineering jobs are plentiful here. I want to partially retire
and my clients don't let me.

H-1B is abused. People often come in because making $35k/year is still
better than making $15k where they came from. This abuse is trivially
easy to stop and I have explained numerous times how. Sad to say but it
seems the only other person that seems to understand how or is willing
to even say it is ... Donald Trump :-(

My employer hires boatloads of H1B[*] programmers. I don't think
they're underpaid. The salaries range from $75K to somewhere around
$125K. Without H1Bs, all of the jobs would likely be somewhere else,
though they've started moving some of that work off-shore anyway (for
tax reasons, I'm sure).

Then you employer adheres to the letter of the law. That's what H1B is
supposed to do, bring in talent where we can't find suitable US engineers.

[*] All H1B job postings have to be displayed on company boards, along
with descriptions and salaries. These listings have from one to over
a hundred positions each, so there are a *lot* of jobs involved. The
number is sorta amazing since there are only 65K H1Bs allowed.

We had our ads everywhere, with the IEEE jobs board being one of the
most likely sources of good candidates. To our surprise we even found a
good analog guy though that (but needed more than one). Problem is, in
consequence another company lost a good analog guy because of us hiring
him away. So not importing one didn't help our country.


[...]

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Tuesday, 29 September 2015 06:03:14 UTC+10, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Monday, September 28, 2015 at 12:15:53 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 28 Sep 2015 09:09:36 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:
On Monday, September 28, 2015 at 1:14:05 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Monday, 28 September 2015 06:49:09 UTC+10, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:
On Sunday, September 27, 2015 at 1:12:54 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

<snip>

Sloman is the major catalyst for endless, crude, off-topic,
hundreds-of-posts insult threads. Please ignore him.

He savors these miserable episodes. Don't feed him.

He fails the Turing test. But the good news is that we can recreate him
if ever need be.

While <earth spins> Do
Generate troll.
Download reply.
While not end_of(post)
Extract proper names.
Consult insult table.
Append insult.
Repeat
Loop

Bill's immortal.

James Arthur is a clown. In order for me to fail the Turing test, he has to run his joke algorithm and post the results here and persuade us that his program produces the same result as I might have.

Since I know what the Turing Test is, and he clearly doesn't it's fairly clear how his program is going to fall at the first hurdle.

I never met Turing - he died in 1954 in the UK when I was twelve, before I'd ever left Australia. I did meet - and even did some work with

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Davies

who had worked with Turing. This is pure name-dropping but it's the kind of detail that a Turing-test simulation would have trouble doing well - particularly when written by somebody like James Arthur who confines his reading to dead right-wingers of the dumber kind.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Tuesday, 29 September 2015 07:42:09 UTC+10, Joerg wrote:

On 2015-09-26 8:04 PM, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Sunday, 27 September 2015 01:05:57 UTC+10, Joerg wrote:
On 2015-09-24 9:34 PM, P E Schoen wrote:
"Joerg" wrote in message
news:d6jig8Fa1dpU1@mid.individual.net...
On 2015-09-24 1:37 PM, rickman wrote:

snip

Here is where we disagree. It is not the government's job to
create jobs. How wrong that usually goes has been extensively
demonstrated in socialist systems.

Centrally planned socialists systems. The modern socialist systems in
Germany and Scandinavia don't try to run the economy from the centre
- they are happy to let the free market direct resources where they
are needed.


Germany isn't socialist at all, their Social Democratic Party doesn't
have a real say since a long time. Mama Merkel rules there and she sure
ain't socialist.

But she is constrained by a constitution that puts trade unionists on company boards. And she runs a coalition government with the

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democratic_Party_of_Germany

which is rather more socialist than her own Christian Democratic Union, which is - in turn - rather more socialist than US Democrats.

Scandinavia is a different story where people can get
taxed out of their homes like it used to be in California until the
taxpayers revolted.

Not a story I've heard, but I'm not in the market for right-wing anti-socialist propaganda. You really need to post a link to an example of this terrifying behaviour.

They do provide some central planning to get the workers trained and
educated - which is too long-term and investment for the free market
- and they provide enough social welfare to keep the unemployed fed,
housed and healthy while thye are being retrained for the next job,
and to keep their kids well-fed and health enough to take full
advantage of the education on offer.

That mind-set does also persuade them that the free market does
require some regulation - left to it's own devices it goes into boom
and bust, with the weaker players being bankrupted in the process
until you end up with monopolies, which have to be regulated to
prevent them ripping off their customers.

True to some extent. Not so much because of boom and bust but because
sans regulation there'd be utter envornmental destruction. But it must
have limits.

Exactly. But that goes both ways. The US currently sets the limits a lot closer to utter environmental destruction than the US media admit.

If there aren't enough jobs each person has to become creative and
yes, sometimes like during a recession that requires taking a job
"below one's pay grade".

Not always that easy. When I've tried it, I've been knocked back as
"over-qualified" - "you'd just resign and go to a better job as soon
as the economy revives -"

Easily circumvented: Self-employment. Nobody ever asks me for my
educational background.

First find the people who will self-employ you. I found a few, but never enough to keep me anything like busy.

... Fundamentally, jobs are created by need for the products and
services they provide. But we already have plenty of food, and
there are lots of vacant houses, and plenty of doctors and
hospitals to provide health services. However, people need money
for these necessities, and no new jobs are needed unless the
demand skyrockets.

Then we must either increase our level of value creation in the
various jobs or lower our standard of living. I prefer the first. I
also strongly believe in living within ones means. We must be
willing to accept no-growth situations and concentrate on what we
already have, not what we want. Be thankful for it, which at least
in my prayers I am every day.

It is a normal course of events in human history that man invents
ever better method to achieve his goals with less and less labor.
Highly developed countries such as ours will be at the top and,
therefore, create the highest value additions. xxxxx hours of work
does not only result in a train with hundred of cars full of
tomatoes but instead it can result in a shiny new aircraft. Which
can then be exported for much more money than canned tomatoes.

This naturally forces people to have to step up in their skill
sets. Here many groups lament that they are oh so disadvantaged.
Not buying it. We have to ask ourselves why it is that Asians who
often came with barely more that the clothes on their bodies excel
in making it and also score hightes in SAT and other goals, by far.
I know why that is.

Sure. Those Asians who have the enterprise to move to a new continent
are enterprising enough to do well when they get there, and their
kids shared their parent's enterprising attitude

There isn't much enterprising about fleeing in panic because commies
threaten to kill you. You simply flee.

Not everybody does, by any means. And the ones who make it to places like Australia and the US usually had the wit to see the disaster coming and got out ahead of the bulk of the fleeing hordes, which makes it easier to get into the preferred destinations.

No, this has to do with family integrity and family values. Precisely
what conservatives teach.

Dream on.

... And the government would literally have to remove all
regulations and give investors money to make the prospect of
running a business (especially manufacturing) in the US.

The government only has to make things competitive and this does
not require tossing all regulation. Some of the more stupid ones,
yes. Mandating a corporate tax rate that exceeds even that in
left-leaning countries is not the way to do that. Jacking up the
price of electrity to more than 2x of other places is not the way
to do that. Allowing a predatory tort law isn't either. And so on.
It's simple, really.

There is plenty of wealth to go around, but most of it is
stagnating in the hands of the top 1%. Reagan's corporate tax
cuts and trickle down economics proved disastrous, but the
economy turned around when he later provided tax cuts to benefit
the middle class, and then by the effects of the collapse of the
USSR, the IBM PC revolution in 1982, the stock market/day trader
phenomenon, and then the dot-com and housing bubbles. But these
mostly produced many millionaires and billionaires, and
short-term rich people who trickled back down to the lower end of
the middle class when their excesses got the better of them.

The current administration is destroying the middle class piece by
piece.

It's not the current administration. The US has become progressively
more unequal since Reagan came to power, and much as Obama would like
to reverse the trend (as Clinton did, to some extent) the Republican
majority blocks pretty much every move.

Nonsense. This administration is the very reason that many potential
jobs did not materialize and many existing jobs vanished. Such as almost
all production jobs at my former employer that are now on Costa Rica.

That doesn't make the decline of the US middle class any less a long-term trend that started around 1980.

Example: They tout that Obamacare "works" yet all it does is flush
people into yet another welfare system. Government essentially pays
most of the premiums and many other costs. They started taxing the
middle class health plans, the folks that still pay their own way,
which made their health insurance even more expensive. Great
wealth redistribution, ain't it?

Granting that the money sink in the whole deal - the health insurance
industry - had to be bribed to get the legislation through Congress -
it's not surprising that that it hasn't helped health costs much.
Since the primary aim was to extend health cover, this isn't a
strong criticism of Obamacare. Atul Gawande thinks that Obamacare is
having positive effects in practice, and writes about it (well) in
the New Yorker, so I'm inclined to trust his opinion more than
yours.

The reality is very different. The "poor" who get health care for free
have an easier life. Those with "normal" Obamacare plans faces this:

a. They have a hard time finding a doc who will take them at all.

b. Their deductibles are so onerous that they often avoid docs
altogether and self-medicate. Because they don't have the money.

Great.

Not great. But US health care has been a carrot dangled in front of potential employees for a long time, and the employers are resisting any change that will weaken their bargaining power vis-a-vis their employees with all the enthusiasm that US employers - in particular - can muster, including an army of lobbyists.

I personally met people who, in consequence, hung it up.

Every population includes special cases, who make fine anecdotal
evidence, but lack statistical effect.

Head in the sand again?

Cherry-picking convenient snippets of evidence while ignoring bulk reality as evidenced by population-wide statistics is a "head-in-the-sand" attitude..

Trying to persuade yourself otherwise is a fool's game.

They quit working so much and plopped themselves into Obamacare. As
a result of this and other failed policies our labor participation
rate fell by several percentage points. That is really dangerous
because even if we get a better administration next time around,
which I seriously hope, the labor participation rate typically
never bounces back.

Where? When?

US:
http://etfdailynews.com/2014/09/05/labor-participation-rate-drops-to-lowest-since-1978-dow-jones-industrial-average/

Which doesn't mention that the populations age structure isn't quite what it was in 1978. It's not the whole explanation, but any honest commentator would have mentioned it as a factor

Finland (click on MAX):
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/finland/labor-force-participation-rate

No comment about why. Nokia is reputed to be having a difficult time - it's a big firm and Finland is a small country.

> And so on.

Sure. Clinging to statistics like a drunk clinging to a lamp pole, more for support than illumination.

The middle class and the lower class need money so they can spend
it and stimulate the economy, rather than hoard it like the top
1%. Like it or not, redistribution of wealth is absolutely
necessary for our nation's stability and survival. It can still
be done equitably (and not equally, as right-wing-nuts seem to
fear), but continued and growing disparity will inevitably lead
to collapse and violent revolution. If every one of the 1% would
lose 90%, or even 50%, of their present wealth, they would still
be at least multi-millionaires and would hardly have their
lifestyles diminished. But the 99% would see their wealth doubled
and tripled, yet only to levels equivalent to what was normal
during the 50s and 60s when we were truly prosperous and everyone
had a fair chance.


Most of the 99% would just fritter it away and then complain
again.

They aren't doing that in Australia. The savings rate has gone up,
and the administration is worried that this is causing the economy to
grow more slowly than they'd like.

Why is it that the "poor" I meet have trouble making rent yet they
drive Cadillac Escalades and the like, "need" 60" TV sets, buy a $5
coffee every workday, have $200+/month family cell plans, $100 gym
membership, cannot live without a $80/most cable TV, and so on?
That's where the key problems are.

People who get their priorities wrong end up poor in most cultures.

Yet that's the ones the leftists court with freebies. Leveraged by the
leverage that was already leveraged. They don't care who pays for that
because they ain't.

That's the demon leftists that exist only in your - and James Arthur's - imagination.

The freebies that the leftists do offer - enough welfare to keep you barely adequately fed and housed, and as much education as you can take - aren't Cadillac Escalades and 60" TVs.

Or ask yourself this: Why is it that I comfortably live with a
$7/mo cell plan that suffices even for business use? Same for my
wife. For about a decade now, and before that we didn't even have a
cell phone. Our car are 18 and 19 years old and are simple basic
models, our antenna delivers TV for free, we make our own coffee,
my gym is in nature and also free.

Protestant work ethic, and a positively Calvinistic attitude to minor
indulgences - except those involving mountain biking.

Yup

Yeah, that's a lot to read, and the conservatives probably
ignored it all, holding onto their own smug beliefs in their
superiority and absolute knowledge. I don't claim all of my
statements and beliefs are perfect - it is very complex, after
all. But I think they hold much more validity than than those who
believe we can return to BAU based on their hazy recollections of
yesteryear and the era of unlimited growth and infinite
resources.

What is BAU?

Business As Usual was Googles most plausible suggestion.

Those days are gone, "comrades", and like those jobs, they "aint
coming back"!

Jobs that the unions, government or predatory lawyers have driven
out of the country will usually not come back.

In a modern economy, new technology and new products mean that jobs
are vanishing all the time, and being replaced by difference jobs in
different industries. Unions actually do serve as useful social
purpose -

Yeah, like forcing employers to employ firemen on electric locomotives.

A single driver electric locomotive is rather dangerous if he collapses on his dead-man's handle, as has been known to happen. Aircraft have a two-pilot in the cockpit rule for pretty much exactly that reason, and a German aircraft got flown into the ground recently when somebody deviated from it. The flight recorder had a senior pilot bashing on the cabin door trying to get back into the cockpit as the plane went down.

... until greedy employers bribe them into criminal
uselessness. The employers then complain that the bribe-taking union
officials - that the employers have encouraged and supported in their
pursuit of profitable power within the unions - are corrupt
criminals.

The bribery happens between unions and governments.

Not really. Governments have a hard time covering up real bribes - as opposed to compensation payments which do happen to be legitimate. Employers are clearly much freer to bribe people, as repeated scandals have made clear.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Joerg]

On 2015-09-26 8:04 PM, Bill Sloman wrote:

On Sunday, 27 September 2015 01:05:57 UTC+10, Joerg wrote:
On 2015-09-24 9:34 PM, P E Schoen wrote:
"Joerg" wrote in message
news:d6jig8Fa1dpU1@mid.individual.net...
On 2015-09-24 1:37 PM, rickman wrote:

snip

Here is where we disagree. It is not the government's job to
create jobs. How wrong that usually goes has been extensively
demonstrated in socialist systems.

Centrally planned socialists systems. The modern socialist systems in
Germany and Scandinavia don't try to run the economy from the centre
- they are happy to let the free market direct resources where they
are needed.

Germany isn't socialist at all, their Social Democratic Party doesn't
have a real say since a long time. Mama Merkel rules there and she sure
ain't socialist. Scandinavia is a different story where people can get
taxed out of their homes like it used to be in California until the
taxpayers revolted.

They do provide some central planning to get the workers trained and
educated - which is too long-term and investment for the free market
- and they provide enough social welfare to keep the unemployed fed,
housed and healthy while thye are being retrained for the next job,
and to keep their kids well-fed and health enough to take full
advantage of the education on offer.

That mind-set does also persuade them that the free market does
require some regulation - left to it's own devices it goes into boom
and bust, with the weaker players being bankrupted in the process
until you end up with monopolies, which have to be regulated to
prevent them rippin g off their customers.

True to some extent. Not so much because of boom and bust but because
sans regulation there'd be utter envornmental destruction. But it must
have limits.

If there aren't enough jobs each person has to become creative and
yes, sometimes like during a recession that requires taking a job
"below one's pay grade".

Not always that easy. When I've tried it, I've been knocked back as
"over-qualified" - "you'd just resign and go to a better job as soon
as the economy revives -"

Easily circumvented: Self-employment. Nobody ever asks me for my
educational background.

... Fundamentally, jobs are created by need for the products and
services they provide. But we already have plenty of food, and
there are lots of vacant houses, and plenty of doctors and
hospitals to provide health services. However, people need money
for these necessities, and no new jobs are needed unless the
demand skyrockets.


Then we must either increase our level of value creation in the
various jobs or lower our standard of living. I prefer the first. I
also strongly believe in living within ones means. We must be
willing to accept no-growth situations and concentrate on what we
already have, not what we want. Be thankful for it, which at least
in my prayers I am every day.

It is a normal course of events in human history that man invents
ever better method to achieve his goals with less and less labor.
Highly developed countries such as ours will be at the top and,
therefore, create the highest value additions. xxxxx hours of work
does not only result in a train with hundred of cars full of
tomatoes but instead it can result in a shiny new aircraft. Which
can then be exported for much more money than canned tomatoes.

This naturally forces people to have to step up in their skill
sets. Here many groups lament that they are oh so disadvantaged.
Not buying it. We have to ask ourselves why it is that Asians who
often came with barely more that the clothes on their bodies excel
in making it and also score hightes in SAT and other goals, by far.
I know why that is.

Sure. Those Asians who have the enterprise to move to a new continent
are enterprising enough to do well when they get there, and their
kids shared their parent's enterprising attitude

There isn't much enterprising about fleeing in panic because commies
threaten to kill you. You simply flee.

No, this has to do with family integrity and family values. Precisely
what conservatives teach.

[...]

... And the government would literally have to remove all
regulations and give investors money to make the prospect of
running a business (especially manufacturing) in the US.

The government only has to make things competitive and this does
not require tossing all regulation. Some of the more stupid ones,
yes. Mandating a corporate tax rate that exceeds even that in
left-leaning countries is not the way to do that. Jacking up the
price of electrity to more than 2x of other places is not the way
to do that. Allowing a predatory tort law isn't either. And so on.
It's simple, really.

There is plenty of wealth to go around, but most of it is
stagnating in the hands of the top 1%. Reagan's corporate tax
cuts and trickle down economics proved disastrous, but the
economy turned around when he later provided tax cuts to benefit
the middle class, and then by the effects of the collapse of the
USSR, the IBM PC revolution in 1982, the stock market/day trader
phenomenon, and then the dot-com and housing bubbles. But these
mostly produced many millionaires and billionaires, and
short-term rich people who trickled back down to the lower end of
the middle class when their excesses got the better of them.

The current administration is destroying the middle class piece by
piece.

It's not the current administration. The US has become progressively
more unequal since Reagan came to power, and much as Obama would like
to reverse the trend (as Clinton did, to some extent) the Republican
majority blocks pretty much every move.

Nonsense. This administration is the very reason that many potential
jobs did not materialize and many existing jobs vanished. Such as almost
all production jobs at my former employer that are now on Costa Rica.

Example: They tout that Obamacare "works" yet all it does is flush
people into yet another welfare system. Government essentially pays
most of the premiums and many other costs. They started taxing the
middle class health plans, the folks that still pay their own way,
which made their health insurance even more expensive. Great
wealth redistribution, ain't it?

Granting that the money sink in the whole deal - the health insurance
industry - had to be bribed to get the legislation through Congress -
it's not surprising that that it hasn't helped health costs much.
Since the primary aim was to extend health cover, this isn't a
strong criticism of Obamacare. Atul Gawande thinks that Obamacare is
having positive effects in practice, and writes about it (well) in
the New Yorker, so I'm inclined to trust his opinion more than
yours.

The reality is very different. The "poor" who get health care for free
have an easier life. Those with "normal" Obamacare plans faces this:

a. They have a hard time finding a doc who will take them at all.

b. Their deductibles are so onerous that they often avoid docs
altogether and self-medicate. Because they don't have the money.

Great.

I personally met people who, in consequence, hung it up.

Every population includes special cases, who make fine anecdotal
evidence, but lack statistical effect.

Head in the sand again?

They quit working so much and plopped themselves into Obamacare. As
a result of this and other failed policies our labor participation
rate fell by several percentage points. That is really dangerous
because even if we get a better administration next time around,
which I seriously hope, the labor participation rate typically
never bounces back.

Where? When?

US:
http://etfdailynews.com/2014/09/05/labor-participation-rate-drops-to-lowest-since-1978-dow-jones-industrial-average/

Finland (click on MAX):
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/finland/labor-force-participation-rate

And so on.

The middle class and the lower class need money so they can spend
it and stimulate the economy, rather than hoard it like the top
1%. Like it or not, redistribution of wealth is absolutely
necessary for our nation's stability and survival. It can still
be done equitably (and not equally, as right-wing-nuts seem to
fear), but continued and growing disparity will inevitably lead
to collapse and violent revolution. If every one of the 1% would
lose 90%, or even 50%, of their present wealth, they would still
be at least multi-millionaires and would hardly have their
lifestyles diminished. But the 99% would see their wealth doubled
and tripled, yet only to levels equivalent to what was normal
during the 50s and 60s when we were truly prosperous and everyone
had a fair chance.


Most of the 99% would just fritter it away and then complain
again.

They aren't doing that in Australia. The savings rate has gone up,
and the administration is worried that this is causing the economy to
grow more slowly than they'd like.

Why is it that the "poor" I meet have trouble making rent yet they
drive Cadillac Escalades and the like, "need" 60" TV sets, buy a $5
coffee every workday, have $200+/month family cell plans, $100 gym
membership, cannot live without a $80/most cable TV, and so on?
That's where the key problems are.

People who get their priorities wrong end up poor in most cultures.

Yet that's the ones the leftists court with freebies. Leveraged by the
leverage that was already leveraged. They don't care who pays for that
because they ain't.

Or ask yourself this: Why is it that I comfortably live with a
$7/mo cell plan that suffices even for business use? Same for my
wife. For about a decade now, and before that we didn't even have a
cell phone. Our car are 18 and 19 years old and are simple basic
models, our antenna delivers TV for free, we make our own coffee,
my gym is in nature and also free.

Protestant work ethic, and a positively Calvinistic attitude to minor
indulgences - except those involving mountain biking.

Yup

Yeah, that's a lot to read, and the conservatives probably
ignored it all, holding onto their own smug beliefs in their
superiority and absolute knowledge. I don't claim all of my
statements and beliefs are perfect - it is very complex, after
all. But I think they hold much more validity than than those who
believe we can return to BAU based on their hazy recollections of
yesteryear and the era of unlimited growth and infinite
resources.

What is BAU?

Business As Usual was Googles most plausible suggestion.

Those days are gone, "comrades", and like those jobs, they "aint
coming back"!

Jobs that the unions, government or predatory lawyers have driven
out of the country will usually not come back.

In a modern economy, new technology and new products mean that jobs
are vanishing all the time, and being replaced by difference jobs in
different industries. Unions actually do serve as useful social
purpose -

Yeah, like forcing employers to employ firemen on electric locomotives.

... until greedy employers bribe them into criminal
uselessness. The employers then complain that the bribe-taking union
officials - that the employers have encouraged and supported in their
pursuit of profitable power within the unions - are corrupt
criminals.

The bribery happens between unions and governments.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Tuesday, 29 September 2015 08:04:22 UTC+10, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Monday, September 28, 2015 at 5:42:09 PM UTC-4, Joerg wrote:
On 2015-09-26 8:04 PM, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Sunday, 27 September 2015 01:05:57 UTC+10, Joerg wrote:

They quit working so much and plopped themselves into Obamacare. As
a result of this and other failed policies our labor participation
rate fell by several percentage points. That is really dangerous
because even if we get a better administration next time around,
which I seriously hope, the labor participation rate typically
never bounces back.

Where? When?


US:
http://etfdailynews.com/2014/09/05/labor-participation-rate-drops-to-lowest-since-1978-dow-jones-industrial-average/

A bit old. Here's a current plot of the U.S.' labor participation rate:
https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1LEI

From 63% to 59%, a 6% plunge in working portion, not accounting for hours..
Thanks Barry!

First Dubbya engineers a house-building boom, then it crashes.

If Dubbya had had the residual wit to plan it, it would have been centrally planned, but it's actually more evidence of right-wing idiocy.

James Arthur isn't actually an idiot, but he believes so many false-to-fact things to keep his right-wing friends happy that he regularly looks like one.

If I remember rightly,James actually initially blamed the global financial crisis on the CRA (Community Reinvestment Act) which had forced bankers to make bad loans, though subsequent analysis showed that loans made under CRA didn't go bad and the bankers had been making really bad loans on their own initiative, unrestrained by a moronic administration.

<snipped the out-of-context Finnish anecdote>

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[John Larkin]

On Sat, 26 Sep 2015 14:21:04 -0700, Robert Baer
<robertbaer@localnet.com> wrote:

Joerg wrote:
On 2015-09-24 10:00 PM, rickman wrote:
On 9/24/2015 8:23 PM, Joerg wrote:
On 2015-09-24 1:37 PM, rickman wrote:

[...]


You can whine and moan all you want, it doesn't change the fact that
this is one of the very best countries in the world for starting a
business. If you don't like it, why don't you take your business
somewhere else?


That is what my former employer did, shedding tons of well-paying US
jobs in the wake.

Engineering jobs?


Most businesses do not consist of engineering jobs alone.


... Seems like plenty of folks are trying to get into the
US to have those. H-1B visas ring a bell? Obviously we still have a
very competitive market for Engineering.


Sure. Engineering jobs are plentiful here. I want to partially retire
and my clients don't let me.

H-1B is abused. People often come in because making $35k/year is still
better than making $15k where they came from. This abuse is trivially
easy to stop and I have explained numerous times how. Sad to say but it
seems the only other person that seems to understand how or is willing
to even say it is ... Donald Trump :-(


... Have you had any better offers?


Yes. From Costa Rica.

So why are you still here? Is that a better place to do your job?


a. Engineering work is plentiful in the US.

b. Especially in view of the failed policies of the current
administration I'd be more than willing to emigrate to a nice place in
the Caribbean. But I have a family and not everyone has an easy time to
learn yet anotehr language. Which you have to or will remain a foreigner
forever.
* Which alludes to a VERY sore point.
Is there any other country in the world that does not require
immigrants to learn the local language?

I thought that literacy in English was a requirement to become a
naturalized citizen.

And you have to be a citizen to vote.

So why are ballots in dozens of languages?

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Tuesday, 29 September 2015 07:08:14 UTC+10, Joerg wrote:

On 2015-09-26 2:21 PM, Robert Baer wrote:
Joerg wrote:
On 2015-09-24 10:00 PM, rickman wrote:
On 9/24/2015 8:23 PM, Joerg wrote:
On 2015-09-24 1:37 PM, rickman wrote:

<snip>

* Which alludes to a VERY sore point.
Is there any other country in the world that does not require
immigrants to learn the local language?


Most don't. But they also generally do not accommodate them by mandating
bilingual signage everywhere which is something I'll never understand in
the US.

I am an immigrant myself and not in my wildest imagination would I ever
think that the US is "required" to accommodate my native tongue.

Bilingual education like the leftists here want to re-introduce is a
level higher on the stupidity scale. That is the perfect recipe to
create 2nd class citizens who will have problems in the workforce
because their language skills aren't up to snuff. This guy really knew why:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Escalante

Most of the world's population is at least bilingual. Forcing students to learn English as well as their native language works fine. Dumb students in the Netherlands don't speak very good English, but they don't speak very good Dutch either. One of our cleaning ladies would not speak English to us - we were fluent in Dutch - but she knew quite enough English to use it with our English-speaking guests (which rather surprised us).

English-only instruction only works if the students are pretty good in English to start with - as they mostly are in the USA. It's a nonsense where they aren't.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 28 Sep 2015 15:04:13 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Monday, September 28, 2015 at 5:42:09 PM UTC-4, Joerg wrote:
On 2015-09-26 8:04 PM, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Sunday, 27 September 2015 01:05:57 UTC+10, Joerg wrote:

They quit working so much and plopped themselves into Obamacare. As
a result of this and other failed policies our labor participation
rate fell by several percentage points. That is really dangerous
because even if we get a better administration next time around,
which I seriously hope, the labor participation rate typically
never bounces back.

Where? When?


US:
http://etfdailynews.com/2014/09/05/labor-participation-rate-drops-to-lowest-since-1978-dow-jones-industrial-average/

A bit old. Here's a current plot of the U.S.' labor participation rate:
https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1LEI

From 63% to 59%, a 6% plunge in working portion, not accounting for hours.
Thanks Barry!

Look at the bright side: we have so many government workers. 1.8 per
manufacturing worker! And the government workers have great pay and
benefits, and can't be fired!

If everybody worked for the government, we'd all be rich.

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 28 Sep 2015 14:54:11 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Monday, September 28, 2015 at 5:49:25 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 26 Sep 2015 14:21:04 -0700, Robert Baer wrote:

* Which alludes to a VERY sore point.
Is there any other country in the world that does not require
immigrants to learn the local language?

I thought that literacy in English was a requirement to become a
naturalized citizen.

And you have to be a citizen to vote.

So why are ballots in dozens of languages?

For non-citizen voters.

Cheers,
James Arthur

oh. good point.

 

[krw]

On Mon, 28 Sep 2015 14:08:04 -0700, Joerg <news@analogconsultants.com>
wrote:

On 2015-09-26 2:21 PM, Robert Baer wrote:
Joerg wrote:
On 2015-09-24 10:00 PM, rickman wrote:
On 9/24/2015 8:23 PM, Joerg wrote:
On 2015-09-24 1:37 PM, rickman wrote:

[...]


You can whine and moan all you want, it doesn't change the fact that
this is one of the very best countries in the world for starting a
business. If you don't like it, why don't you take your business
somewhere else?


That is what my former employer did, shedding tons of well-paying US
jobs in the wake.

Engineering jobs?


Most businesses do not consist of engineering jobs alone.


... Seems like plenty of folks are trying to get into the
US to have those. H-1B visas ring a bell? Obviously we still have a
very competitive market for Engineering.


Sure. Engineering jobs are plentiful here. I want to partially retire
and my clients don't let me.

H-1B is abused. People often come in because making $35k/year is still
better than making $15k where they came from. This abuse is trivially
easy to stop and I have explained numerous times how. Sad to say but it
seems the only other person that seems to understand how or is willing
to even say it is ... Donald Trump :-(


... Have you had any better offers?


Yes. From Costa Rica.

So why are you still here? Is that a better place to do your job?


a. Engineering work is plentiful in the US.

b. Especially in view of the failed policies of the current
administration I'd be more than willing to emigrate to a nice place in
the Caribbean. But I have a family and not everyone has an easy time to
learn yet anotehr language. Which you have to or will remain a foreigner
forever.
* Which alludes to a VERY sore point.
Is there any other country in the world that does not require
immigrants to learn the local language?


Most don't. But they also generally do not accommodate them by mandating
bilingual signage everywhere which is something I'll never understand in
the US.

I am an immigrant myself and not in my wildest imagination would I ever
think that the US is "required" to accommodate my native tongue.

Bilingual education like the leftists here want to re-introduce is a
level higher on the stupidity scale. That is the perfect recipe to
create 2nd class citizens who will have problems in the workforce
because their language skills aren't up to snuff.

That's exactly what leftists want.

This guy really knew why:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Escalante

[...]

 

[krw]

On Mon, 28 Sep 2015 14:49:20 -0700, John Larkin
<jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

On Sat, 26 Sep 2015 14:21:04 -0700, Robert Baer
robertbaer@localnet.com> wrote:

Joerg wrote:
On 2015-09-24 10:00 PM, rickman wrote:
On 9/24/2015 8:23 PM, Joerg wrote:
On 2015-09-24 1:37 PM, rickman wrote:

[...]


You can whine and moan all you want, it doesn't change the fact that
this is one of the very best countries in the world for starting a
business. If you don't like it, why don't you take your business
somewhere else?


That is what my former employer did, shedding tons of well-paying US
jobs in the wake.

Engineering jobs?


Most businesses do not consist of engineering jobs alone.


... Seems like plenty of folks are trying to get into the
US to have those. H-1B visas ring a bell? Obviously we still have a
very competitive market for Engineering.


Sure. Engineering jobs are plentiful here. I want to partially retire
and my clients don't let me.

H-1B is abused. People often come in because making $35k/year is still
better than making $15k where they came from. This abuse is trivially
easy to stop and I have explained numerous times how. Sad to say but it
seems the only other person that seems to understand how or is willing
to even say it is ... Donald Trump :-(


... Have you had any better offers?


Yes. From Costa Rica.

So why are you still here? Is that a better place to do your job?


a. Engineering work is plentiful in the US.

b. Especially in view of the failed policies of the current
administration I'd be more than willing to emigrate to a nice place in
the Caribbean. But I have a family and not everyone has an easy time to
learn yet anotehr language. Which you have to or will remain a foreigner
forever.
* Which alludes to a VERY sore point.
Is there any other country in the world that does not require
immigrants to learn the local language?

I thought that literacy in English was a requirement to become a
naturalized citizen.

And you have to be a citizen to vote.

So why are ballots in dozens of languages?

For the same reason the leftists fight any attempt to require proof of
citizenship (and residency) to vote. Voter fraud.

 

[krw]

On Mon, 28 Sep 2015 14:12:57 -0700, Joerg <news@analogconsultants.com>
wrote:

On 2015-09-26 4:00 PM, krw wrote:
On Sat, 26 Sep 2015 08:17:08 -0700, Joerg <news@analogconsultants.com
wrote:

On 2015-09-24 10:00 PM, rickman wrote:
On 9/24/2015 8:23 PM, Joerg wrote:
On 2015-09-24 1:37 PM, rickman wrote:


[...]

... Seems like plenty of folks are trying to get into the
US to have those. H-1B visas ring a bell? Obviously we still have a
very competitive market for Engineering.


Sure. Engineering jobs are plentiful here. I want to partially retire
and my clients don't let me.

H-1B is abused. People often come in because making $35k/year is still
better than making $15k where they came from. This abuse is trivially
easy to stop and I have explained numerous times how. Sad to say but it
seems the only other person that seems to understand how or is willing
to even say it is ... Donald Trump :-(

My employer hires boatloads of H1B[*] programmers. I don't think
they're underpaid. The salaries range from $75K to somewhere around
$125K. Without H1Bs, all of the jobs would likely be somewhere else,
though they've started moving some of that work off-shore anyway (for
tax reasons, I'm sure).


Then you employer adheres to the letter of the law. That's what H1B is
supposed to do, bring in talent where we can't find suitable US engineers.

When I said "all of the jobs", I meant mine too. There likely
wouldn't be any presence in the US.

[*] All H1B job postings have to be displayed on company boards, along
with descriptions and salaries. These listings have from one to over
a hundred positions each, so there are a *lot* of jobs involved. The
number is sorta amazing since there are only 65K H1Bs allowed.


We had our ads everywhere, with the IEEE jobs board being one of the
most likely sources of good candidates. To our surprise we even found a
good analog guy though that (but needed more than one). Problem is, in
consequence another company lost a good analog guy because of us hiring
him away. So not importing one didn't help our country.

Our HR people are constantly complaining that they can't find the
right people. Obviously they're not willing to pay enough but you're
right, that would just shuffle the deck, from a national standpoint.
It wouldn't hurt the profession, though.

 

[Joerg]

On 2015-09-28 6:31 PM, Bill Sloman wrote:

On Tuesday, 29 September 2015 07:42:09 UTC+10, Joerg wrote:
On 2015-09-26 8:04 PM, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Sunday, 27 September 2015 01:05:57 UTC+10, Joerg wrote:
On 2015-09-24 9:34 PM, P E Schoen wrote:
"Joerg" wrote in message
news:d6jig8Fa1dpU1@mid.individual.net...
On 2015-09-24 1:37 PM, rickman wrote:

snip

Here is where we disagree. It is not the government's job to
create jobs. How wrong that usually goes has been extensively
demonstrated in socialist systems.

Centrally planned socialists systems. The modern socialist
systems in Germany and Scandinavia don't try to run the economy
from the centre - they are happy to let the free market direct
resources where they are needed.


Germany isn't socialist at all, their Social Democratic Party
doesn't have a real say since a long time. Mama Merkel rules there
and she sure ain't socialist.

But she is constrained by a constitution that puts trade unionists on
company boards. And she runs a coalition government with the

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democratic_Party_of_Germany

which is rather more socialist than her own Christian Democratic
Union, which is - in turn - rather more socialist than US Democrats.

It is. One of the many reasons I am not there anymore

Scandinavia is a different story where people can get taxed out of
their homes like it used to be in California until the taxpayers
revolted.

Not a story I've heard, but I'm not in the market for right-wing
anti-socialist propaganda. You really need to post a link to an
example of this terrifying behaviour.

That has nothing to do with propaganda. It is based on personal friends
whom I trust and who aren't very political.

They do provide some central planning to get the workers trained
and educated - which is too long-term and investment for the free
market - and they provide enough social welfare to keep the
unemployed fed, housed and healthy while thye are being retrained
for the next job, and to keep their kids well-fed and health
enough to take full advantage of the education on offer.

That mind-set does also persuade them that the free market does
require some regulation - left to it's own devices it goes into
boom and bust, with the weaker players being bankrupted in the
process until you end up with monopolies, which have to be
regulated to prevent them ripping off their customers.

True to some extent. Not so much because of boom and bust but
because sans regulation there'd be utter envornmental destruction.
But it must have limits.

Exactly. But that goes both ways. The US currently sets the limits a
lot closer to utter environmental destruction than the US media
admit.

You haven't read EPA rules lately. For example, we have one of the
strictest pollution control rule sets in the world. Of course, then
there are certain automotive companies who ...

If there aren't enough jobs each person has to become creative
and yes, sometimes like during a recession that requires taking
a job "below one's pay grade".

Not always that easy. When I've tried it, I've been knocked back
as "over-qualified" - "you'd just resign and go to a better job
as soon as the economy revives -"

Easily circumvented: Self-employment. Nobody ever asks me for my
educational background.

First find the people who will self-employ you. I found a few, but
never enough to keep me anything like busy.

In the beginning one has to work at it but that is the easy part. I've
explained to you how to go about that. Now I am at a point where I
sometimes jump for joy if a new project doesn't materialize. Else I
wouldn't know how to ease into retirement some day.

In the world of analog there is very little serious competition.

... Fundamentally, jobs are created by need for the products
and services they provide. But we already have plenty of
food, and there are lots of vacant houses, and plenty of
doctors and hospitals to provide health services. However,
people need money for these necessities, and no new jobs are
needed unless the demand skyrockets.

Then we must either increase our level of value creation in
the various jobs or lower our standard of living. I prefer the
first. I also strongly believe in living within ones means. We
must be willing to accept no-growth situations and concentrate
on what we already have, not what we want. Be thankful for it,
which at least in my prayers I am every day.

It is a normal course of events in human history that man
invents ever better method to achieve his goals with less and
less labor. Highly developed countries such as ours will be at
the top and, therefore, create the highest value additions.
xxxxx hours of work does not only result in a train with
hundred of cars full of tomatoes but instead it can result in a
shiny new aircraft. Which can then be exported for much more
money than canned tomatoes.

This naturally forces people to have to step up in their skill
sets. Here many groups lament that they are oh so
disadvantaged. Not buying it. We have to ask ourselves why it
is that Asians who often came with barely more that the clothes
on their bodies excel in making it and also score hightes in
SAT and other goals, by far. I know why that is.

Sure. Those Asians who have the enterprise to move to a new
continent are enterprising enough to do well when they get there,
and their kids shared their parent's enterprising attitude

There isn't much enterprising about fleeing in panic because
commies threaten to kill you. You simply flee.

Not everybody does, by any means. And the ones who make it to places
like Australia and the US usually had the wit to see the disaster
coming and got out ahead of the bulk of the fleeing hordes, which
makes it easier to get into the preferred destinations.

No, this has to do with family integrity and family values.
Precisely what conservatives teach.

Dream on.

It surprises me that you do not understand this. Talk to them about
their values. Then talk to others where life isn't going so well.
Chances are, you can only talk to the mom because dad (or the various
dads) hightailed it a long time ago. And then you know problem #1.

... And the government would literally have to remove all
regulations and give investors money to make the prospect of
running a business (especially manufacturing) in the US.

The government only has to make things competitive and this
does not require tossing all regulation. Some of the more
stupid ones, yes. Mandating a corporate tax rate that exceeds
even that in left-leaning countries is not the way to do that.
Jacking up the price of electrity to more than 2x of other
places is not the way to do that. Allowing a predatory tort law
isn't either. And so on. It's simple, really.

There is plenty of wealth to go around, but most of it is
stagnating in the hands of the top 1%. Reagan's corporate
tax cuts and trickle down economics proved disastrous, but
the economy turned around when he later provided tax cuts to
benefit the middle class, and then by the effects of the
collapse of the USSR, the IBM PC revolution in 1982, the
stock market/day trader phenomenon, and then the dot-com and
housing bubbles. But these mostly produced many millionaires
and billionaires, and short-term rich people who trickled
back down to the lower end of the middle class when their
excesses got the better of them.

The current administration is destroying the middle class piece
by piece.

It's not the current administration. The US has become
progressively more unequal since Reagan came to power, and much
as Obama would like to reverse the trend (as Clinton did, to some
extent) the Republican majority blocks pretty much every move.

Nonsense. This administration is the very reason that many
potential jobs did not materialize and many existing jobs vanished.
Such as almost all production jobs at my former employer that are
now on Costa Rica.

That doesn't make the decline of the US middle class any less a
long-term trend that started around 1980.

The real trend of that started about a year after Obama took office and
we all know the reasons. Well, at least most of us do.

Example: They tout that Obamacare "works" yet all it does is
flush people into yet another welfare system. Government
essentially pays most of the premiums and many other costs.
They started taxing the middle class health plans, the folks
that still pay their own way, which made their health insurance
even more expensive. Great wealth redistribution, ain't it?

Granting that the money sink in the whole deal - the health
insurance industry - had to be bribed to get the legislation
through Congress - it's not surprising that that it hasn't helped
health costs much. Since the primary aim was to extend health
cover, this isn't a strong criticism of Obamacare. Atul Gawande
thinks that Obamacare is having positive effects in practice, and
writes about it (well) in the New Yorker, so I'm inclined to
trust his opinion more than yours.

The reality is very different. The "poor" who get health care for
free have an easier life. Those with "normal" Obamacare plans faces
this:

a. They have a hard time finding a doc who will take them at all.

b. Their deductibles are so onerous that they often avoid docs
altogether and self-medicate. Because they don't have the money.

Great.

Not great. But US health care has been a carrot dangled in front of
potential employees for a long time, and the employers are resisting
any change that will weaken their bargaining power vis-a-vis their
employees with all the enthusiasm that US employers - in particular -
can muster, including an army of lobbyists.

Huh? It's free market here. If an employee is worth it he or she will be
able to negotiate a nice deal. If not then it's time to train oneself
towards something better or accept the facts as they are. Sure, there
have to be protections but if a government starts mandating all kinds of
perks there will be a simple consequence and that's what we are seeing.
The jobs will vanish, mostly to overseas. The labor force participation
rate drop under the current administration speaks loud and clear.

I personally met people who, in consequence, hung it up.

Every population includes special cases, who make fine anecdotal
evidence, but lack statistical effect.

Head in the sand again?

Cherry-picking convenient snippets of evidence while ignoring bulk
reality as evidenced by population-wide statistics is a
"head-in-the-sand" attitude.

Trying to persuade yourself otherwise is a fool's game.

I am able to see the writing on the wall. You may live too far away to
see it or you have the head in the sand about it so you won't see it.

They quit working so much and plopped themselves into
Obamacare. As a result of this and other failed policies our
labor participation rate fell by several percentage points.
That is really dangerous because even if we get a better
administration next time around, which I seriously hope, the
labor participation rate typically never bounces back.

Where? When?

US:
http://etfdailynews.com/2014/09/05/labor-participation-rate-drops-to-lowest-since-1978-dow-jones-industrial-average/


Which doesn't mention that the populations age structure isn't quite
what it was in 1978. It's not the whole explanation, but any honest
commentator would have mentioned it as a factor

That is not at all a factor. We have lots of youngsters who simply
cannot find a decent job. Yeah, many work, sort of. Helping at a
construction site, "temping", and so on. That's not a real job. Which is
one reason for the bumerang kid trend, "kids" who move back in with
their parents in the 30's and 40's and then show no tendency whatsoever
to leave again.

Finland (click on MAX):
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/finland/labor-force-participation-rate


No comment about why. Nokia is reputed to be having a difficult time
- it's a big firm and Finland is a small country.

Have you even looked at the data? The precipitous drop obviously
happened in the early 90's. When exactly did Nokia run into trouble?

And so on.

Sure. Clinging to statistics like a drunk clinging to a lamp pole,
more for support than illumination.

Ah, head in the sand again.

The middle class and the lower class need money so they can
spend it and stimulate the economy, rather than hoard it like
the top 1%. Like it or not, redistribution of wealth is
absolutely necessary for our nation's stability and survival.
It can still be done equitably (and not equally, as
right-wing-nuts seem to fear), but continued and growing
disparity will inevitably lead to collapse and violent
revolution. If every one of the 1% would lose 90%, or even
50%, of their present wealth, they would still be at least
multi-millionaires and would hardly have their lifestyles
diminished. But the 99% would see their wealth doubled and
tripled, yet only to levels equivalent to what was normal
during the 50s and 60s when we were truly prosperous and
everyone had a fair chance.


Most of the 99% would just fritter it away and then complain
again.

They aren't doing that in Australia. The savings rate has gone
up, and the administration is worried that this is causing the
economy to grow more slowly than they'd like.

Why is it that the "poor" I meet have trouble making rent yet
they drive Cadillac Escalades and the like, "need" 60" TV sets,
buy a $5 coffee every workday, have $200+/month family cell
plans, $100 gym membership, cannot live without a $80/most
cable TV, and so on? That's where the key problems are.

People who get their priorities wrong end up poor in most
cultures.

Yet that's the ones the leftists court with freebies. Leveraged by
the leverage that was already leveraged. They don't care who pays
for that because they ain't.

That's the demon leftists that exist only in your - and James
Arthur's - imagination.

The freebies that the leftists do offer - enough welfare to keep you
barely adequately fed and housed, and as much education as you can
take - aren't Cadillac Escalades and 60" TVs.

Go look at a typical household. Look at their phone. Heck, open your eyes.

[...]

Jobs that the unions, government or predatory lawyers have
driven out of the country will usually not come back.

In a modern economy, new technology and new products mean that
jobs are vanishing all the time, and being replaced by difference
jobs in different industries. Unions actually do serve as useful
social purpose -

Yeah, like forcing employers to employ firemen on electric
locomotives.

A single driver electric locomotive is rather dangerous if he
collapses on his dead-man's handle, as has been known to happen.

Oh man. I hope nobody ever let's you design a dead-man button.

[...]

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

 

On Monday, September 28, 2015 at 6:11:24 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

On Mon, 28 Sep 2015 15:04:13 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoo...@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Monday, September 28, 2015 at 5:42:09 PM UTC-4, Joerg wrote:
On 2015-09-26 8:04 PM, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Sunday, 27 September 2015 01:05:57 UTC+10, Joerg wrote:

They quit working so much and plopped themselves into Obamacare. As
a result of this and other failed policies our labor participation
rate fell by several percentage points. That is really dangerous
because even if we get a better administration next time around,
which I seriously hope, the labor participation rate typically
never bounces back.

Where? When?


US:
http://etfdailynews.com/2014/09/05/labor-participation-rate-drops-to-lowest-since-1978-dow-jones-industrial-average/

A bit old. Here's a current plot of the U.S.' labor participation rate:
https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1LEI

From 63% to 59%, a 6% plunge in working portion, not accounting for hours.
Thanks Barry!


Look at the bright side: we have so many government workers. 1.8 per
manufacturing worker! And the government workers have great pay and
benefits, and can't be fired!

If everybody worked for the government, we'd all be rich.

YES! And the more we tax each other to pay for it, the MORE we'll all have!

Man, we shouldda thought of this a long time ago.

Cheers!

James Arthur

 

[rickman]

On 9/28/2015 12:15 PM, John Larkin wrote:

Sloman is the major catalyst for endless, crude, off-topic,
hundreds-of-posts insult threads. Please ignore him.

If Sloman is a catalyst, there doesn't seem to be any shortage of
reactants!

--

Rick

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Wednesday, 30 September 2015 00:46:52 UTC+10, Joerg wrote:

On 2015-09-28 6:31 PM, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Tuesday, 29 September 2015 07:42:09 UTC+10, Joerg wrote:
On 2015-09-26 8:04 PM, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Sunday, 27 September 2015 01:05:57 UTC+10, Joerg wrote:
On 2015-09-24 9:34 PM, P E Schoen wrote:
"Joerg" wrote in message
news:d6jig8Fa1dpU1@mid.individual.net...
On 2015-09-24 1:37 PM, rickman wrote:

<snip>

But she is constrained by a constitution that puts trade unionists on
company boards. And she runs a coalition government with the

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democratic_Party_of_Germany

which is rather more socialist than her own Christian Democratic
Union, which is - in turn - rather more socialist than US Democrats.


It is. One of the many reasons I am not there anymore

Engineering opportunity 90% of motivation, ideological compatibility 10%.

Scandinavia is a different story where people can get taxed out of
their homes like it used to be in California until the taxpayers
revolted.

Not a story I've heard, but I'm not in the market for right-wing
anti-socialist propaganda. You really need to post a link to an
example of this terrifying behaviour.

That has nothing to do with propaganda. It is based on personal friends
whom I trust and who aren't very political.

In Scandinavia or California? And you got their version of the story - which might not have been what the council told you if you asked.

The reason why property rates are an efficient tax is that if you don't pay them, the council can take the house and sell it to recover what the owners owe.
This motivates the owners to pay up like few other incentives.

People who go bust and won't recognise that they have gone bust do tell pathetic stories - it's part of the mind-set that let them go bsut in the first case.

They do provide some central planning to get the workers trained
and educated - which is too long-term and investment for the free
market - and they provide enough social welfare to keep the
unemployed fed, housed and healthy while thye are being retrained
for the next job, and to keep their kids well-fed and health
enough to take full advantage of the education on offer.

That mind-set does also persuade them that the free market does
require some regulation - left to it's own devices it goes into
boom and bust, with the weaker players being bankrupted in the
process until you end up with monopolies, which have to be
regulated to prevent them ripping off their customers.

True to some extent. Not so much because of boom and bust but
because sans regulation there'd be utter envornmental destruction.
But it must have limits.

Exactly. But that goes both ways. The US currently sets the limits a
lot closer to utter environmental destruction than the US media
admit.

You haven't read EPA rules lately. For example, we have one of the
strictest pollution control rule sets in the world. Of course, then
there are certain automotive companies who ...

You have one of the most energy-intensive societies in the world. If you burn a lot of fuel, you have to be pickier about the levels of pollution in the combustion products than societies that burn less.

If there aren't enough jobs each person has to become creative
and yes, sometimes like during a recession that requires taking
a job "below one's pay grade".

Not always that easy. When I've tried it, I've been knocked back
as "over-qualified" - "you'd just resign and go to a better job
as soon as the economy revives -"

Easily circumvented: Self-employment. Nobody ever asks me for my
educational background.

First find the people who will self-employ you. I found a few, but
never enough to keep me anything like busy.

In the beginning one has to work at it but that is the easy part. I've
explained to you how to go about that. Now I am at a point where I
sometimes jump for joy if a new project doesn't materialize. Else I
wouldn't know how to ease into retirement some day.

Lucky you. I should have been more careful about the projects I found interesting.

> In the world of analog there is very little serious competition.

I do try and sell my analog skills on the local job market - people advertise for that kind of skill set every few weeks - but at 72 I'm not an attractive candidate. At least I don't get called in for interview.

Working on the committee of the local branch of the IEEE might - in theory - let me by-pass human resources - but it hasn't happened yet.

... Fundamentally, jobs are created by need for the products
and services they provide. But we already have plenty of
food, and there are lots of vacant houses, and plenty of
doctors and hospitals to provide health services. However,
people need money for these necessities, and no new jobs are
needed unless the demand skyrockets.

Then we must either increase our level of value creation in
the various jobs or lower our standard of living. I prefer the
first. I also strongly believe in living within ones means. We
must be willing to accept no-growth situations and concentrate
on what we already have, not what we want. Be thankful for it,
which at least in my prayers I am every day.

It is a normal course of events in human history that man
invents ever better method to achieve his goals with less and
less labor. Highly developed countries such as ours will be at
the top and, therefore, create the highest value additions.
xxxxx hours of work does not only result in a train with
hundred of cars full of tomatoes but instead it can result in a
shiny new aircraft. Which can then be exported for much more
money than canned tomatoes.

This naturally forces people to have to step up in their skill
sets. Here many groups lament that they are oh so
disadvantaged. Not buying it. We have to ask ourselves why it
is that Asians who often came with barely more that the clothes
on their bodies excel in making it and also score hightes in
SAT and other goals, by far. I know why that is.

Sure. Those Asians who have the enterprise to move to a new
continent are enterprising enough to do well when they get there,
and their kids shared their parent's enterprising attitude

There isn't much enterprising about fleeing in panic because
commies threaten to kill you. You simply flee.

Not everybody does, by any means. And the ones who make it to places
like Australia and the US usually had the wit to see the disaster
coming and got out ahead of the bulk of the fleeing hordes, which
makes it easier to get into the preferred destinations.

No, this has to do with family integrity and family values.
Precisely what conservatives teach.

Dream on.

It surprises me that you do not understand this. Talk to them about
their values. Then talk to others where life isn't going so well.
Chances are, you can only talk to the mom because dad (or the various
dads) hightailed it a long time ago. And then you know problem #1.

People with that kind of problem with "family values" aren't the ones who move countries.

We may be seeing the the same phenomena. You are complaining about the defects of the stay-at-homes, and I'm pointing out that emigrating is difficult enough to manage to filter them out.

... And the government would literally have to remove all
regulations and give investors money to make the prospect of
running a business (especially manufacturing) in the US.

The government only has to make things competitive and this
does not require tossing all regulation. Some of the more
stupid ones, yes. Mandating a corporate tax rate that exceeds
even that in left-leaning countries is not the way to do that.
Jacking up the price of electrity to more than 2x of other
places is not the way to do that. Allowing a predatory tort law
isn't either. And so on. It's simple, really.

There is plenty of wealth to go around, but most of it is
stagnating in the hands of the top 1%. Reagan's corporate
tax cuts and trickle down economics proved disastrous, but
the economy turned around when he later provided tax cuts to
benefit the middle class, and then by the effects of the
collapse of the USSR, the IBM PC revolution in 1982, the
stock market/day trader phenomenon, and then the dot-com and
housing bubbles. But these mostly produced many millionaires
and billionaires, and short-term rich people who trickled
back down to the lower end of the middle class when their
excesses got the better of them.

The current administration is destroying the middle class piece
by piece.

It's not the current administration. The US has become
progressively more unequal since Reagan came to power, and much
as Obama would like to reverse the trend (as Clinton did, to some
extent) the Republican majority blocks pretty much every move.

Nonsense. This administration is the very reason that many
potential jobs did not materialize and many existing jobs vanished.
Such as almost all production jobs at my former employer that are
now on Costa Rica.

That doesn't make the decline of the US middle class any less a
long-term trend that started around 1980.

The real trend of that started about a year after Obama took office and
we all know the reasons. Well, at least most of us do.

James Arthur sees all bad trends starting when a Democrat gets in power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spirit_Level:_Why_More_Equal_Societies_Almost_Always_Do_Better

puts the start of the decline in equality in the US around 1980, when Reagan came to power, and cites the statistics that show that the decline of the middle class has been progressing steadily - if not totally uniformly - since then.

The GFT - which happened under Dubbya's watch - didn't do anybody any good, but the decline of the US middle classes has been going on since 1980 and the GFT didn't do more than bend the curve a bit. It certainly didn't change the direction.

Example: They tout that Obamacare "works" yet all it does is
flush people into yet another welfare system. Government
essentially pays most of the premiums and many other costs.
They started taxing the middle class health plans, the folks
that still pay their own way, which made their health insurance
even more expensive. Great wealth redistribution, ain't it?

Granting that the money sink in the whole deal - the health
insurance industry - had to be bribed to get the legislation
through Congress - it's not surprising that that it hasn't helped
health costs much. Since the primary aim was to extend health
cover, this isn't a strong criticism of Obamacare. Atul Gawande
thinks that Obamacare is having positive effects in practice, and
writes about it (well) in the New Yorker, so I'm inclined to
trust his opinion more than yours.

The reality is very different. The "poor" who get health care for
free have an easier life. Those with "normal" Obamacare plans faces
this:

a. They have a hard time finding a doc who will take them at all.

b. Their deductibles are so onerous that they often avoid docs
altogether and self-medicate. Because they don't have the money.

Great.

Not great. But US health care has been a carrot dangled in front of
potential employees for a long time, and the employers are resisting
any change that will weaken their bargaining power vis-a-vis their
employees with all the enthusiasm that US employers - in particular -
can muster, including an army of lobbyists.

Huh? It's free market here. If an employee is worth it he or she will be
able to negotiate a nice deal. If not then it's time to train oneself
towards something better or accept the facts as they are. Sure, there
have to be protections but if a government starts mandating all kinds of
perks there will be a simple consequence and that's what we are seeing.
The jobs will vanish, mostly to overseas. The labor force participation
rate drop under the current administration speaks loud and clear.

Sure. The population is getting older, despite the fact that US health care fails a significant proportion of the US population.

Most civilised countries don't think that health care should be available to employers as a bargaining chip - they provide universal health care and let employers negotiate about salaries and conditions of work.

The US unwillingness to provide universal health care is both short-sighted and barbaric. On a par with tolerating female genital mutilation. I don't think much of infant circumcision for males either ...

I personally met people who, in consequence, hung it up.

Every population includes special cases, who make fine anecdotal
evidence, but lack statistical effect.

Head in the sand again?

Cherry-picking convenient snippets of evidence while ignoring bulk
reality as evidenced by population-wide statistics is a
"head-in-the-sand" attitude.

Trying to persuade yourself otherwise is a fool's game.

I am able to see the writing on the wall. You may live too far away to
see it or you have the head in the sand about it so you won't see it.

James Arthur sees a lot of "writing on the wall" which is visible to him because he's learned a lot of political dogma which is actually nonsensical.

They quit working so much and plopped themselves into
Obamacare. As a result of this and other failed policies our
labor participation rate fell by several percentage points.
That is really dangerous because even if we get a better
administration next time around, which I seriously hope, the
labor participation rate typically never bounces back.

Where? When?

US:
http://etfdailynews.com/2014/09/05/labor-participation-rate-drops-to-lowest-since-1978-dow-jones-industrial-average/

Which doesn't mention that the populations age structure isn't quite
what it was in 1978. It's not the whole explanation, but any honest
commentator would have mentioned it as a factor

That is not at all a factor.

Of course it's a factor, and any honest commentator would have quantified it's contribution. Age distribution tables lend themselves to that kind of exercise.

We have lots of youngsters who simply cannot find a decent job. Yeah, many
work, sort of. Helping at a
construction site, "temping", and so on. That's not a real job. Which is
one reason for the boomerang kid trend, "kids" who move back in with
their parents in the 30's and 40's and then show no tendency whatsoever
to leave again.

Your economy isn't yet out of the post-GFC recession.

Finland (click on MAX):
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/finland/labor-force-participation-rate

No comment about why. Nokia is reputed to be having a difficult time
- it's a big firm and Finland is a small country.

Have you even looked at the data? The precipitous drop obviously
happened in the early 90's. When exactly did Nokia run into trouble?

Have you looked at the data? The Finish figures in the link as posted show 68.3% labour participation in June 2015, and a rapid decline to 65.6% in August. The earliest figure on show is September 2014. Nothing about the 1990s at all.

If I switch the time-scale to "Max" the series does go back to the 1990's when it did peak a bit higher, but it has bounced up and down a few time since then.

There's no "precipitous drop".

And so on.

Sure. Clinging to statistics like a drunk clinging to a lamp pole,
more for support than illumination.

Ah, head in the sand again.

I'm afraid that your head is looking for what it wants to find, to the exclusion of what's there.

The middle class and the lower class need money so they can
spend it and stimulate the economy, rather than hoard it like
the top 1%. Like it or not, redistribution of wealth is
absolutely necessary for our nation's stability and survival.
It can still be done equitably (and not equally, as
right-wing-nuts seem to fear), but continued and growing
disparity will inevitably lead to collapse and violent
revolution. If every one of the 1% would lose 90%, or even
50%, of their present wealth, they would still be at least
multi-millionaires and would hardly have their lifestyles
diminished. But the 99% would see their wealth doubled and
tripled, yet only to levels equivalent to what was normal
during the 50s and 60s when we were truly prosperous and
everyone had a fair chance.


Most of the 99% would just fritter it away and then complain
again.

They aren't doing that in Australia. The savings rate has gone
up, and the administration is worried that this is causing the
economy to grow more slowly than they'd like.

Why is it that the "poor" I meet have trouble making rent yet
they drive Cadillac Escalades and the like, "need" 60" TV sets,
buy a $5 coffee every workday, have $200+/month family cell
plans, $100 gym membership, cannot live without a $80/most
cable TV, and so on? That's where the key problems are.

People who get their priorities wrong end up poor in most
cultures.

Yet that's the ones the leftists court with freebies. Leveraged by
the leverage that was already leveraged. They don't care who pays
for that because they ain't.

That's the demon leftists that exist only in your - and James
Arthur's - imagination.

The freebies that the leftists do offer - enough welfare to keep you
barely adequately fed and housed, and as much education as you can
take - aren't Cadillac Escalades and 60" TVs.

Go look at a typical household. Look at their phone. Heck, open your eyes.

The typical households that open their doors to me re my friends and relatives. You "visit the poor" who are badly off - in part due to earlier bad judgements - and need to invite you in in the hope of getting help.

Neither group is in any sense representative.

Jobs that the unions, government or predatory lawyers have
driven out of the country will usually not come back.

In a modern economy, new technology and new products mean that
jobs are vanishing all the time, and being replaced by difference
jobs in different industries. Unions actually do serve as useful
social purpose -

Yeah, like forcing employers to employ firemen on electric
locomotives.

A single driver electric locomotive is rather dangerous if he
collapses on his dead-man's handle, as has been known to happen.

Oh man. I hope nobody ever let's you design a dead-man button.

I reported what has happened with existing designs of dead-man's handle.

You snipped the the - real - example I quoted of a solo pilot who flew his plane into the ground, killing all 150 on board. He wasn't supposed to be a solo pilot, but had managed to lock his co-pilot (the captain) out of the cockpit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525

This is bad behaviour on your part. I'm surprised and disappointed.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney