If working (and even middle) class real wages have been stagnant for a generation+, which they have been, then why in the world did we increase the labor supply by 10s of millions of immigrants? How would that not suppress wages? And the big corps - especially agribusiness with the Latin Americans and the tech corps with Asians - have been all for it. Look at how hard Zuckerburg and the rest of Silicon Valley are pushing for amnesty. They must have big hearts, ROFL.
If 80% of the US faces near-poverty or no work then that sounds like a labor disaster. The first thing I'd do is... look out for the American worker and shut down immigration. There's no difference from the worker's prospective if his job is shipped out or if somebody is shipped in to take it. The only conclusion I can come to is that racism now trumps all in the Left's mind and this line of thinking is unacceptable.
"don't be a single parent. It's that simple."
this is just another lie by Repugs. Plenty of households contain a married couple where there are no kids and neither person has a (good) job.
So baby mama and her two kids have an unemployed baby papa in the house, but he's unemployed, how does they fix unemployment? how does that kill her public assistance for her 2 kids?
"look out for the American worker and shut down immigration"
American companies have been killing mfg and jobs (that illegal immigrants weren't working at) for 35 years. Illegal immigration takes jobs at the very bottom of the pay scale. Illegal immigrants aren't taking ty jobs from retail, junk food, wal-mart.
If the median salary had kept up with GDP since 1975 (about the time the VRWC got organized after the PROGRESS of the 1960s), it would be in the low $90Ks, not in the low $50Ks.
btw, Ms of MXs were pushed off their MX-govt-subsidized, subsistence farms by NAFTA, which forbade MX from subsidizing its farmers so MX would be a market for US-taxpayer-subsidized corn and wheat. Yes, NAFTA's "free trade" caused Ms of desperate MXs to come to US to feed their families.
Last edited by boutons_deux; 01-15-2014 at 10:17 AM.
NAFTA was an international scam, just as all "free trade", supported by both parties and the international corps/bankers who own them. Agreed.
Too bad Perot wasn't elected 20 years ago.
But you can't seriously argue that the increase - the huge increase in the post WW2 generations - in single motherhood has had no effect on children and families.
the Repug "single mothers making babies to live well" racist scam is aimed at blacks, but:
http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data...13,185/432,431
A quarter of whites, 2/3 of blacks, 2/5 of Hispanics, and 35% overall. It will only increase, and single mothers are a net cost. I don't get how this is a good thing, unless the goal is to socialize the cost of raising children as much as possible by taxing men and married women - those that can afford it, that is.
I can only assume that this is the goal. The big winner of course is the state, who becomes the prime educator of young minds, which was Marx's goal from the get go. So it's no wonder that leftists defend - and even promote - single motherhood. It's probably the best tool they have.
"becomes the prime educator of young minds, which was Marx's goal from the get go"
taxpayer-funded public and mandatory education has been the goal and practice of the US govt, Repug and Dem, local, state, and Fed, almost from birth. Why don't you call that Marxist?
"Government-supported and free public schools for all began to be established after the American Revolution. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_United_States
Having a man in the house is no damn good if he has no job, or a low-paying part-time job. The family, like 100Ks now, would still be poor and on public assistance.
Poor women CAN'T work because for-profit day care consumes all their earning. Some advanced, adult countries provide tax-payer funded day-care so parents can work.
Marx Was Right: Five Surprising Ways Karl Marx Predicted 2014
Marx's analysis of capitalism correctly predicted more than a century ago:
1. The Great Recession (Capitalism's Chaotic Nature)
The inherently chaotic, crisis-prone nature of capitalism was a key part of Marx's writings. He argued that the relentless drive for profits would lead companies to mechanize their workplaces, producing more and more goods while squeezing workers' wages until they could no longer purchase the products they created. Sure enough, modern historical events from the Great Depression to the dot-com bubble can be traced back to what Marx termed "fic ious capital" – financial instruments like stocks and credit-default swaps. We produce and produce until there is simply no one left to purchase our goods, no new markets, no new debts. The cycle is still playing out before our eyes: Broadly speaking, it's what made the housing market crash in 2008. Decades of deepening inequality reduced incomes, which led more and more Americans to take on debt. When there were no subprime borrows left to scheme, the whole façade fell apart, just as Marx knew it would.
2. The iPhone 5S (Imaginary Appe es)
Marx warned that capitalism's tendency to concentrate high value on essentially arbitrary products would, over time, lead to what he called "a contriving and ever-calculating subservience to inhuman, sophisticated, unnatural and imaginary appe es." It's a harsh but accurate way of describing contemporary America, where we enjoy incredible luxury and yet are driven by a constant need for more and more stuff to buy. Consider the iPhone 5S you may own. Is it really that much better than the iPhone 5 you had last year, or the iPhone 4S a year before that? Is it a real need, or an invented one? While Chinese families fall sick with cancer from our e-waste, megacorporations are creating entire advertising campaigns around the idea that we should destroy perfectly good products for no reason. If Marx could see this kind of thing, he'd nod in recognition.
3. The IMF (The Globalization of Capitalism)
Marx's ideas about overproduction led him to predict what is now called globalization – the spread of capitalism across the planet in search of new markets. "The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe," he wrote. "It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere." While this may seem like an obvious point now, Marx wrote those words in 1848, when globalization was over a century away. And he wasn't just right about what ended up happening in the late 20th century – he was right about why it happened: The relentless search for new markets and cheap labor, as well as the incessant demand for more natural resources, are beasts that demand constant feeding.
4. Walmart (Monopoly)
The classical theory of economics assumed that compe ion was natural and therefore self-sustaining. Marx, however, argued that market power would actually be centralized in large monopoly firms as businesses increasingly preyed upon each other. This might have struck his 19th-century readers as odd: As Richard Hofstadter writes, "Americans came to take it for granted that property would be widely diffused, that economic and political power would decentralized." It was only later, in the 20th century, that the trend Marx foresaw began to accelerate. Today, mom-and-pop shops have been replaced by monolithic big-box stores like Walmart, small community banks have been replaced by global banks like J.P. Morgan Chase and small famers have been replaced by the likes of Archer Daniels Midland. The tech world, too, is already becoming centralized, with big corporations sucking up start-ups as fast as they can. Politicians give lip service to what minimal small-business lobby remains and prosecute the most violent of an rust abuses – but for the most part, we know big business is here to stay.
5. Low Wages, Big Profits (The Reserve Army of Industrial Labor)
Marx believed that wages would be held down by a "reserve army of labor," which he explained simply using classical economic techniques: Capitalists wish to pay as little as possible for labor, and this is easiest to do when there are too many workers floating around. Thus, after a recession, using a Marxist analysis, we would predict that high unemployment would keep wages stagnant as profits soared, because workers are too scared of unemployment to quit their terrible, exploitative jobs. And what do you know? No less an authority than the Wall Street Journal warns, "Lately, the U.S. recovery has been displaying some Marxian traits. Corporate profits are on a tear, and rising productivity has allowed companies to grow without doing much to reduce the vast ranks of the unemployed." That's because workers are terrified to leave their jobs and therefore lack bargaining power. It's no surprise that the best time for equitable growth is during times of "full employment," when unemployment is low and workers can threaten to take another job.
In Conclusion:
Marx was wrong about many things. Most of his writing focuses on a critique of capitalism rather than a proposal of what to replace it with – which left it open to misinterpretation by madmen like Stalin in the 20th century. But his work still shapes our world in a positive way as well. When he argued for a progressive income tax in the Communist Manifesto, no country had one. Now, there is scarcely a country without a progressive income tax, and it's one small way that the U.S. tries to fight income inequality. Marx's moral critique of capitalism and his keen insights into its inner workings and historical context are still worth paying attention to. As Robert L. Heilbroner writes, "We turn to Marx, therefore, not because he is infallible, but because he is inescapable."
Today, in a world of both unheard-of wealth and abject poverty, where the richest 85 people have more wealth than the poorest 3 billion, the famous cry, "Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains," has yet to lose its potency.
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/ne...ign=newsletter
I remember taking this Rolling Stone sociology class when I was 19: "Marx was right, but the Soviets and Mao filled in the blanks wrong. Gulags and 100 million dead... Next time, comrades!"
Our (the Western) government doesn't do the duties that they were set up to do. Keep manufacturing from being shipped off shores, and keep foreign labor immigration from suppressing wages. Whoops. That was by accident of course; purely an obvious flaw of capitalism.
I'll give you 2 predictions that came before Marx:
De Touquville's prediction
Franklin's prediction: America as a land of cheap and seemingly endless land vs a relatively small population, therefore naturally high wages, so restrict immigration. Wait, America's a land of immigrants!
Then you'll say that I haven't proven Marx wrong. And I haven't, because he's not wrong on these topics. That's because Marx viewed all economies as a member of the global economy. Sound familiar? Funny that Marx and the central bankers/global corps sound the same. Remove the nation - state and Marxist economics rules. Think they don't know this today? ROFL. But don't worry, the useful idiot Marxists from Rolling Stone will save you from the genius Marxists at the global banks/corps.
"Funny that Marx and the central bankers/global corps sound the same."
WTF?
Marx placed the power of the economy and wealth in the hands of The People (c), while the financial sector wants to, and mainly does, control the financial system, excluding, exploiting, wealth-sucking The People.
Chomsky is an admitted "anarchist" because he sees anarchy as breaking down of exploitative power systems as the one now dominating the world financial system, NOT as the world being a post-apocalyptic anarchy, with Ms of Mad Maxes and his enemies running around.
"The People" Run by "The Party", or whatever name the elite want to give themselves. Same game, different name. A global economy run by... well me, of course. Cause We know best. And We've got the guns. Call it Marxism or Globalism. Do the international bankers dine with Marxists? Two roads to the same place.
Yes, Marxism assumes that at the end of the global revolution the government will become unnecessary, superfluous and will fade out once it has destroyed capitalism. Not Mad Max anarchy, but a natural egalitarian evolution to a classless global society. It's a religion.Chomsky is an admitted "anarchist" because he sees anarchy as breaking down of exploitative power systems as the one now dominating the world financial system, NOT as the world being a post-apocalyptic anarchy, with Ms of Mad Maxes and his enemies running around.
4in5 in poverty
how many unemployed that cant get unemployed benefits?...the ones that dont get recorded part of the unemployment rate...the forgotten people
If anybody thinks that 80% of the US lives in poverty then you are dumber than a sack of bricks.
Half Of All Uninsured Americans Live In Just 3.7 Percent Of U.S. Counties
Half of all uninsured Americans live in just 116 of the country’s 3,143 counties, according to a new analysis by the Associated Press. That trend also holds for the young and uninsured — half of whom live in just 108 counties — making outreach and enrollment efforts in these counties particularly important for the Affordable Care Act.
Many of the counties with the largest numbers of uninsured Americans are in high-poverty regions. For instance, nearly one in five of Los Angeles County’s 10 million residents have incomes below the Federal Poverty Line (FPL), and about five percent of all uninsured Americans live in LA.
a Commonwealth Fund study found that 42 percent of Americans living below the poverty level are in states that haven’t expanded Medicaid. Texas, Louisiana, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Mississippi, and Georgia all have uninsurance rates significantly higher than the national average, and approximately 20 percent of Americans residing in these states have incomes below the poverty line. These states are also at the bottom of public health rankings, leading one doctor to call existing economic and health disparities in America “death by zip code.”
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014...ured-counties/
Dear Xenophobe, corporate-pushed NAFTA forbids MX govt from subsidizing subsistence MX farmers so BigAg could flood MX with cheap, subsidized corn.
Ms of those US-corporate-victimized poor MX farmers fled to USA to try to support their families.
The stagnation of US household income is not from downward pull of undoc immigrants from the downward push by employers in the war on employees to benefit capital.
"have been all for it. Look at how hard Zuckerburg and the rest of Silicon Valley are pushing for amnesty."
maybe so, link?
the big tech companies have been pushing hard to raise the qty of H1b visas so they can import highly educated Indians and other Asians to take the jobs of higher paid Americans.
Again, corporations wage their relentless War on (US) Employees so capital can have a higher return. Bottom-end undoc immigrants are not the primary problem, except for nativists, xenophobes.
Last edited by boutons_deux; 02-06-2014 at 12:04 PM.
I am xenophobic, as I am a rational person. To your last sentence, both can be true.
undoc immigrants fill mostly nasty, manual labor jobs, like imported labored does in any industrialized economy. The US has long been a service economy. The dominant factor in stagnation of incomes has been from employer downward push.
xen·o·pho·bic
/,zēnә'fōbik, ,zenә-/zenә'foʊbɪk/
▶adj.
having or showing an intense or irrational dislike or fear of people from other countries:
the xenophobic undertones of this argument.
New Oxford American Dictionary © 2010 Oxford University Press
Closing the gap
America’s labour market has suffered permanent harm
Listen to the numbers
Even so, recent research suggests the unemployment rate is saying something important. It’s just that the message is a depressing one: America’s labour supply may be permanently stunted. If so that would mean that the economy is operating closer to potential—using all available capital and labour—than generally thought, and that there is less downward pressure on inflation than the Fed has assumed.
Figuring out the gap between actual and potential output is tricky because potential, always hard to discern, is more uncertain than usual. In a recent report Lewis Alexander of Nomura Securities, a bank, calculated the output gap using three different labour market indicators (see chart). The proportion of people with jobs plunged from 63% of the population in late 2007 to below 59% in 2009. It has barely budged since, suggesting the output gap has not closed at all. The unemployment rate, in contrast, is 1.1 percentage points above its estimated “natural rate” of 5.5%, suggesting most of the output gap has disappeared. Finally, if one looks just at those who have been unemployed for less than six months, the output gap appears to have closed completely.
Deciding which measure to use involves determining why so many people have left the labour force. The labour participation rate (measuring those in work or looking for it) is down to 63% from 66% in 2007. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) attributes just a third of that decrease to discouraged workers who have temporarily stopped looking for jobs. The remainder it ascribes to demographics, as ageing baby boomers retire early, or to people who have gone jobless for so long they have permanently given up looking. This is one reason the CBO has sharply revised down its estimate of America’s potential, and with it, the size of the output gap, which it now puts at a little over 4% of GDP. Had its estimates of the economy’s potential not shrunk since 2008, that gap would be 10% of GDP.
Thus, with each passing month, more of the unemployed are drifting to the fringes of the labour market than re-entering it. More monetary and fiscal stimulus may have saved them a few years ago, but are of much less help now.
Policymakers will need to put more effort into making the long-term unemployed once again employable. Barack Obama recently persuaded several hundred companies to pledge not to discriminate against them.
Unfortunately that will probably not be nearly enough.
http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21596529-americas-labour-market-has-suffered-permanent-harm-closing-gap
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