The BLS doesn't use straight CPI-U to calculate real compensation per hour, they use CPI-U-RS, which is a research metric, which ended in 2010 and extrapolate via the same slope for Q1 2011 the values.
I didn't compare all of the percentage differences between the two indexes, but it appears to be lower slightly than CPI-U and there are details on the BLS website.
But bottom line, two major whammies for workers.
Q4 2010 had a strong rise in inflation and then in Q1 2011 the BEA/BLS revised downward actual wages...
Basically that's a major worker squeeze in terms of how far their meager earnings go.
I highly recommend renting this DVD. It has an idea that I was pushing, heavily for over two years and will mention it again.
That is to take this unemployed, especially the long term unemployed and put them together to form startups and fund them.
Let them even compete against the very companies who fired them in the first place. It's ridiculous for you know with that many unemployed, there are all sorts of skill levels that could be formed into startups.
Hollywood can think it, I, a lowly blogger person can think it. How come this isn't a policy?
It's not the same as Canada due to the numbers, the low skills levels and using America to shutter off their labor oversupply. That's not good and it's clearly lowering wages for U.S. unskilled labor by these numbers.
So, sure some slack but if it was at the level of Canada slack. This is a flood and just out of control and negatively impacting our economy.
Wow, ok, I now have a formal request. How about writing an article on transfer pricing, overviewing some of the findings and justify a VAT, which is none too popular because some on the left try to claim it's that flat tax as well as it is regressive, and of course the right who doesn't believe in any taxes. ;)
But seriously, you're writing some great information and if you could formulate your thoughts and references into a cohesive piece, I'll help you format it and put it up as an article. Email me offline, through the contact form.
Transfer pricing is extremely complex as a topic and very few even know about it, much less have a handle on it. So a goal would be to boil the BEA down to Blogger/Speak/English to teach, explain.
The issue is immigration, but migration across our southern border should be given more slack than other immigration - because of the historical and cultural factors that bridge that border and always have and always do.
I don't think that it is 'racist' to demand that immigration must be restrained in periods of high unemployment. None other than Cesar Chavez - veteran of the U.S. Navy and organizer of the United Farm Workers - objected to unrestrained immigration as an anti-labor policy.
Canada, Europe, Australia and many others have implemented immigration policy on the basis of due consideration for unemployment for many, many years.
We should never allow ourselves to be presented as basing our policy proposals on anything other than common sense regard for a full employment policy. I don't think that we should allow ourselves to be seen as treating Mexico and Mexicans as the great culprits, when Mexican people, after all, have been crossing the border for hundreds of years.
I once met a man in Los Angeles who had been born in a wagon crossing the desert sometime around 1900 - he sincerely had no idea whether he had been born in the U.S. or in Mexico. There were no clear border demarcations.
We cannot justly or sanely imagine that our border with Mexico is anything like a clearly demarcated natural or cultural frontier.
Our policy with Mexico should be based on more consistent regard for our erstwhile 'Good Neighbor' policy. Mexicans should be honored as neighbors, exactly as should Canadians. Why not?
Australian dollar is at unprecedented high, average household debt is 150% of household debt for U.S., and, they may be looking into the maw of a collapsing housing price bubble. Government stats can be read as showing rising savings, but actually represent rising debt service.
Dobbie recommends TARIFFS, criticizing the entirety of "classical" economic theory (including, I believe, "free" trade theory).
Meanwhile, I wondered, what about Australia's public debt? Remember, it was negative not too long ago! So, I did some googling research.
CIA figures show Australia's gross public debt (2010) as up to a little over 1/5 of GDP, U.S. at 3/5 of GDP, while Japan is at 225% of GDP (and that's pre-Tsunami)! But these figures (the ones usually cited) are not as reflective of reality as figures for net public debt.
Here's a great link to an excellent paper (PDF), focused on Australia but also on G7 and the topic of gross versus net public debt.
But we tend to forget in these discussions what I believe may be of huge importance, namely, the effects of transfer pricing. There is much more awareness of these issues than there was just ten years ago, but work cited here by Lorraine Eden is still a very solid introduction to the topic, IMO.
Following is the Abstract from Eden, L. (2000/2001). Transfer pricing, intra-firm trade and the BLS international price program [PDF download]. Availalble at --
Most governments keep balance of payments statistics on exports and imports, by value, and construct international prices indexes in order to deflate these statistics. How can intrafirm trade, trade between related parties, bias the construction of these international price indexes? Does transfer pricing, the prices of products traded between related party firms, bias the export and import price indexes in any predictable fashion? If firms manipulate transfer prices to avoid taxes or tariffs, what is the appropriate transfer price to use in constructing export and import price indexes, in theory and in practice? These issues are important because related party trade is huge, representing half of US imports and one-third of US exports, and perhaps a third of worldwide merchandise trade flows. This paper explains how transfer pricing and intrafirm trade can bias the construction of export and import price indexes, outlines and evaluates the various prices that could be used to construct these indexes, and makes some recommendations for the international price program run by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
We can easily see with minimal investigation that transfer pricing is the key to solvency of nations in a world of globalized trade, which surely must bear some relation to Adam Smith's concept of the "wealth of nations."
What is the substantive law that applies here in the U.S.? It is Title 26, § 482, and the key is that the Secretary of the Treasury is authorized to make rules that apply very broadly to two or more parties (e.g., U.S. importer and offshore supplier) provided that the two parties are "owned or controlled directly or indirectly by the same interests." Do you suppose there is any room here for legal fees to be paid, or for lobbyists to quietly intervene? (For Washington, D.C., to continue as practically the only growth area in the country?)
My suggestion is that we need a 15% across-the-board tariff (or call it a 'VAT', I suppose, if that suits the WTO better) for these reasons:
1. Instead of trying to collect money later based on complex rules, all subject to dispute in tax courts and interpretation by IRS auditors, let's get a reasonable amount up front.
2. Of course, the import price may be manipulated downward but then how does the importer (or some entity farther along the supply chain) avoid the squeeze that the less paid per item up front, the greater the net taxable income?
3. The across-the-board tariff (or 'VAT') should replace all the special preferences and subsidies, thus eliminating opportunities for political corruption and also providing the necessary stable and predictable business environment that fosters true free enterprise capitalism.
4. Let's say that all the multi-nationals settle for the minimum import price that the IRS will allow and then somehow avoid paying their corporate taxes. Okay, we (U.S.) still have received enough income to at least assure that domestic tax-paying producers are not in effect subsidizing, against their own interests, foreign competition that effectively pays no taxes or duties of any kind.
5. We (U.S.) have them in a squeeze play. Somewhere in the game, we should be able to tag out the cheaters.
6. The "free" trade trolls (noted by Robert Oak) will object that the public will have to pay more. That is one of several arguments used over and over that always amount to that no corporation should ever pay any taxes, imposts or fees of any kind.
7. As for the argument that corporate taxes amount to double taxation, since dividends and such are presumably taxed -- we could allow corporate taxes a pass-through to the benefit of long-term investors who pay taxes within the U.S., thus rewarding savings and investment rather than gains from casino-like trading scams.
8. Finally, they say, China will retaliate. Good for them! They have been showing a lot of sense for some years now in their trade and monetary policies, more that us (U.S.)! Also, our action would bolster their confidence in their holding of U.S. government notes. Let all nations adopt the 15% across-the-board tariff and stop the ongoing trade wars that enable political corruption!
I note here that economist Phil Dobbie (BT Australia) openly and unabashedly recommends TARIFFS, questioning the entirety of "classical" economic theory (which, I believe, includes standard WTO "free" trade theory). That is from the link here at EP to Steve Keen's Debtwatch --
Great write up. All I can add is that a Fortune 500 company that I worked for was part of groups lobbying Congress for more H-1B visas while, at the same time, they were laying off over 100 engineers. It's all about cheap labor and American workers are paying the price.
Speaking of incredible stories, Naked Capitalism had one showing Cisco Systems managed to get a whistleblower, arrested, yes perp walk, handcuffs, in Canada. Basically locked him up because he brought a civil suit.
In a rare move, [Justice Robert]McKinnon stayed extradition proceedings against Peter Adekeye, a British computer entrepreneur who once worked for Cisco Systems, Inc.
The judge said U.S. prosecutors acted outrageously by having the respected executive bizarrely arrested in Vancouver on May 20, 2010 as he testified before a sitting of the American court he was accused of avoiding.
He called Adekeye’s ordeal something out of a novel by Joseph Heller, the author of Catch-22.
The RCMP took Adekeye into custody as he was testifying before a special U.S. hearing at the Wedgewood Hotel about the very case that supposedly required his urgent extradition.
Adekeye was perp-walked through the hotel lobby to a waiting police wagon.
“This speaks volumes for Cisco’s duplicity,” the judge said, adding the company had “the unmitigated gall” to try to use the criminal process to humiliate and force Adekeye to abandon a civil suit.
Adekeye was held in custody for 28 days and forced to remain in Canada until this week under strict bail conditions because of the false and misleading material from the U.S., McKinnon said.
This is one scary story and while Cisco Systems runs ads about how there are no borders, they are one evil corporation.
Folks, please write in a comment how much they raised your premium, how much they cut benefits and which state you are in.
Thanks for sharing this but they must have these state committees bought and paid for because nothing happens to rein them in at the state level.
I mean give me a break! The CPI numbers are easily available and one can get regional and state inflation numbers assuredly if they call up the BLS, BEA and simply ask.
No where near these rate increases, so claiming it's due to rising health costs is pure bunk, not justified, yet no agency, no committee, no state is stopping these insurance companies.
Pretty astounding right? We've had a pattern of "stories", which suck the air out of the news cycle and are a distraction. Seems the only way to really get someone out of office is to catch them with their pants down.
You might also rant about Weiner being investigated by the ethics committee. Seriously? You lose your congressional seat for sexting these days?
Of course they will claim it's about going after someone for lying, but it's not, nope, the minute a public official is exposed as doing anything but the missionary position once a month, mandatory heterosexual and at least engaged....the press explodes.
No committee on creation of a national trade policy or maybe a committee to analyze what really works to get the jobs market moving and what policies are needed, out of Congress, by expert testimony from economists who are actually credible...
no, can't have that. How about hearings televised on CNN about crumbling infrastructure? No, no way. We cannot even get Greece hitting CNN in the U.S.
Nope, but they can debate ad nauseum Sarah Palin or Weiner's Woodie.
Pretty damn ridiculous. Then they'll say it's the cover up, the lie, instead of the act. B.S. we catch these politicians every single day lying their heads off on economic related topics.
Why are they not arrested for casting votes per the direct request of some lobbyist? Now that's a worthwhile prosecution.
We all know Edwards is a sleezeball, no shit, he does that while his wife has terminal cancer, nuf said.
But how about going after some of these campaign contributions from foreign organizations, funneled through domestic ones? I'm thinking of NASSCOM and China...
hello, that was supposedly not legal to buy our Congress from foreign interests...
All they have done is loophole the law, the $$ is coming from outside the U.S.
BTW: Nothing more ironic than to watch Elliot Spitzer doing a straight faced news report on Weiner. Yet another person who did some criminal prosecutions surrounding white collar crime, fraud, finance...
being caught with his pants down and whoosh, out of power.
You cannot let these people have a Smooth-Hawley argument that this caused the Great Depression because it is simply not true. Trade back in 1929 was just a small fraction of GDP, the U.S. was primarily a domestic economy. Also, while the tariffs were too high, they were not that much higher than before.
This argument has been disproved many a time. Philosophical arguments are not economics. Or Political arguments are not economics either.
If i was a business, this doesn't sound bad at all. I could go to china, use ripped off software and computers, equipment, everything cheaper, plus cheap labor, and make a boat load. What does Dell care if their security software is a rip off of Norton? they only care because it's 80% cheaper!
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan raised my premium by 43% this year. I had to go with a much higher deductible and less service. I have no sympathy for workers who complain about a $20 increase - try a $350 increase per month. Because grouped insured workers don't know the true cost of their own health care, they aren't aware of the extent of the greed of the insurance industry. What we need is a level playing field where everyone has health insurance, and everyone pays their own costs (yes, employers should compensate). And while we're at it, do away with the high risk categories - we're all high risk at some point in our lives, and those that work dangerous jobs - well society needs firefighters, police officers, and coal miners. We need to stop dividing ourselves and realize that we are strongest when we're in one huge group.
I started out to say, "Yes, and the importance of the Lehman Bros. collapse cannot be overstated."
But then I cited Lucas and added something about how disappointed I was with the biased conjectures in his 2011 Milliman lecture (just the PDF), which had been recommended to me by a friend. I felt that I had to justify and explain my criticism of a Nobelist.
Exports - I like that approach because exports are measurable and measured. Lucas says nothing about trade except that he states as though gospel the old thing that Smoot-Hawley was a substantial cause of the Depression.
I can let Lucas have his Smoot-Hawley argument, and I still say that he is silly with his premise that some kind of hypothetical quantitative measure of the extent of social democracy in one nation compared to others can be presumed to be the only significant causative correlation with a differential in per capita real income.
Even sillier is Lucas' premise about the failure of what he considers to be correct Fed action to put a neat end to recession. He makes a conclusion out of his premise that the cause of that failure is anti-business sentiment held by the American public. His premise mistakes public disgust with business criminality/political corruption for anti-business sentiment. He ignores the prominent evidence of the Republican victory in 2010.
Here's my proposal offered as an alternative to the Lucas analysis: differences between U.S. and comparison group per capita real income were due to U.S. domestic crude oil production, now mostly played out. (Exhaustion of a non-renewable resource.) My thesis is much more subject to verification than Lucas', and references more objective measures -- although I have not investigated and presented them in charts and all.
NOTE: Norway is like Number Two in per capita real income globally and Number One in the EU, but since when is that? Since, specifically, about 1990 when price of crude oil went up! It is generally acknowledged that most of Norway's high per capita income rating is the direct result of oil production. AND, oil income goes into (oh, oh, Nobelist Lucas!) ... you guessed it ... WELFARE!
Lucas emphasizes that "policies do matter," but that hardly makes them comparable! IMO, all governmental social policies are well-intended in any democracy, but it may be that the efficiency of implementation of policies matters more than the nature of the policies themselves. For example, it is one thing to legislate full employment, but something else again to effectuate it. (Perhaps there is an exception to the rule: democratic nations that are disintegrating or have become dominated by foreign powers may enact social policies that are definitely NOT well-intended!)
Anyway, what I say to Lucas is this: NATURAL RESOURCES MATTER! (And Lucas fails to consider that!)
I think we should follow trends in Canada, if we want to continue the comparison-analysis on which Lucas relies so heavily. That's where we may be able to discover or rationally formulate a meaningful macro-economic generalization about the relations among social (welfare) policy, natural resource exploitation and exhaustion, and, per capita real income. Of course, we also would need to consider all this in the context not only of econometrics but also of demographics (population growth or stability).
you're all over the map, but generally these people who want to tear apart socialism, social safety net can't read charts or look at the statistics. Germany also has a strong export driven economy.
My suspicion is that Lucas is cherry-picking his data. Would a Nobelist do such a thing?
Where are Australia and New Zealand? Where are Russia and Yugoslavia? Where are Kuwait and Saudi Arabia? (Of course, government stats are notoriously hard to find for Saudi Arabia.) Where are Tunisia and Brazil, Mexico, India, South Korea, Sweden, Finland and Norway? But, of course, the data have been cherry-picked to make a point.
Even granting that Lucas' graph is based on reliable and valid measures of real income per capita (comparable across cultures and nations), the graph actually shows that the gap arose in the 1940s, moderating by about 1950 and continuing on from that time, with perhaps a stabilizing trend for the last three decades of the 20th Century.
The chart stops at the year 2000, long before the Great Recession! Apparently, Lucas thinks that the 'natural' course of things, projecting from the year 2000, would be that the gap would disappear ... and perhaps it soon will, or already has, by way of a decline in U.S. productivity. The comparison that should have been pursued in detail (dropping the others) would be U.S. compared with Canada, but that would be embarrassing to Lucas' thesis -- because Canada hasn't and isn't really experiencing the Great Recession as we are --
But let's say, okay, there was such a gap stabilizing in the 1970s and continuing for three decades. Lucas' opinion that this gap has been caused by "European" tax and regulatory structures and represents a "larger welfare state" (p. 10, and, "policies do matter", p. 11), is still nothing but (as Lucas acknowledges) just his opinion, pure and unsupported by impartially presented evidence. Lucas hardly represents any kind of consensus even among his elite peer-group of Nobelists in economics!
So, here's a proposal: the gap was due to U.S. domestic crude oil production, which has now mostly played out.
The BLS doesn't use straight CPI-U to calculate real compensation per hour, they use CPI-U-RS, which is a research metric, which ended in 2010 and extrapolate via the same slope for Q1 2011 the values.
I didn't compare all of the percentage differences between the two indexes, but it appears to be lower slightly than CPI-U and there are details on the BLS website.
But bottom line, two major whammies for workers.
Q4 2010 had a strong rise in inflation and then in Q1 2011 the BEA/BLS revised downward actual wages...
Basically that's a major worker squeeze in terms of how far their meager earnings go.
I highly recommend renting this DVD. It has an idea that I was pushing, heavily for over two years and will mention it again.
That is to take this unemployed, especially the long term unemployed and put them together to form startups and fund them.
Let them even compete against the very companies who fired them in the first place. It's ridiculous for you know with that many unemployed, there are all sorts of skill levels that could be formed into startups.
Hollywood can think it, I, a lowly blogger person can think it. How come this isn't a policy?
It's not the same as Canada due to the numbers, the low skills levels and using America to shutter off their labor oversupply. That's not good and it's clearly lowering wages for U.S. unskilled labor by these numbers.
So, sure some slack but if it was at the level of Canada slack. This is a flood and just out of control and negatively impacting our economy.
Not only should you read this post, even those the BLS release was earlier today, bear in mind April's jobs report said 244,000 were created.
So, this is God terrible considering it's not incorporating May's report.
Wow, ok, I now have a formal request. How about writing an article on transfer pricing, overviewing some of the findings and justify a VAT, which is none too popular because some on the left try to claim it's that flat tax as well as it is regressive, and of course the right who doesn't believe in any taxes. ;)
But seriously, you're writing some great information and if you could formulate your thoughts and references into a cohesive piece, I'll help you format it and put it up as an article. Email me offline, through the contact form.
Transfer pricing is extremely complex as a topic and very few even know about it, much less have a handle on it. So a goal would be to boil the BEA down to Blogger/Speak/English to teach, explain.
62% should not be confused with 100%.
The issue is immigration, but migration across our southern border should be given more slack than other immigration - because of the historical and cultural factors that bridge that border and always have and always do.
I don't think that it is 'racist' to demand that immigration must be restrained in periods of high unemployment. None other than Cesar Chavez - veteran of the U.S. Navy and organizer of the United Farm Workers - objected to unrestrained immigration as an anti-labor policy.
Canada, Europe, Australia and many others have implemented immigration policy on the basis of due consideration for unemployment for many, many years.
We should never allow ourselves to be presented as basing our policy proposals on anything other than common sense regard for a full employment policy. I don't think that we should allow ourselves to be seen as treating Mexico and Mexicans as the great culprits, when Mexican people, after all, have been crossing the border for hundreds of years.
I once met a man in Los Angeles who had been born in a wagon crossing the desert sometime around 1900 - he sincerely had no idea whether he had been born in the U.S. or in Mexico. There were no clear border demarcations.
We cannot justly or sanely imagine that our border with Mexico is anything like a clearly demarcated natural or cultural frontier.
Our policy with Mexico should be based on more consistent regard for our erstwhile 'Good Neighbor' policy. Mexicans should be honored as neighbors, exactly as should Canadians. Why not?
(Just one post script today!)
Australian dollar is at unprecedented high, average household debt is 150% of household debt for U.S., and, they may be looking into the maw of a collapsing housing price bubble. Government stats can be read as showing rising savings, but actually represent rising debt service.
Dobbie recommends TARIFFS, criticizing the entirety of "classical" economic theory (including, I believe, "free" trade theory).
Meanwhile, I wondered, what about Australia's public debt? Remember, it was negative not too long ago! So, I did some googling research.
CIA figures show Australia's gross public debt (2010) as up to a little over 1/5 of GDP, U.S. at 3/5 of GDP, while Japan is at 225% of GDP (and that's pre-Tsunami)! But these figures (the ones usually cited) are not as reflective of reality as figures for net public debt.
Here's a great link to an excellent paper (PDF), focused on Australia but also on G7 and the topic of gross versus net public debt.
www.treasury.gov.au/documents/1496/PDF/01_Debt.pdf
Great stuff currently here at EP on trade issues. Not the least of being the hilarious world map at the top of Robert Oak's column!
Public Citizen: Eyes on Trade
Citizens for Equal Trade
TradeReform.org
_______
But we tend to forget in these discussions what I believe may be of huge importance, namely, the effects of transfer pricing. There is much more awareness of these issues than there was just ten years ago, but work cited here by Lorraine Eden is still a very solid introduction to the topic, IMO.
Following is the Abstract from Eden, L. (2000/2001). Transfer pricing, intra-firm trade and the BLS international price program [PDF download]. Availalble at --
http://www.bls.gov/osmr/abstract/ec/ec010020.htm
Also, there is an excellent article at Wiki --
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfer_pricing
Also, from the OECD --
http://www.oecd.org/topic/0,3699,en_2649_33753_1_1_1_1_37427,00.html
We can easily see with minimal investigation that transfer pricing is the key to solvency of nations in a world of globalized trade, which surely must bear some relation to Adam Smith's concept of the "wealth of nations."
What is the substantive law that applies here in the U.S.? It is Title 26, § 482, and the key is that the Secretary of the Treasury is authorized to make rules that apply very broadly to two or more parties (e.g., U.S. importer and offshore supplier) provided that the two parties are "owned or controlled directly or indirectly by the same interests." Do you suppose there is any room here for legal fees to be paid, or for lobbyists to quietly intervene? (For Washington, D.C., to continue as practically the only growth area in the country?)
My suggestion is that we need a 15% across-the-board tariff (or call it a 'VAT', I suppose, if that suits the WTO better) for these reasons:
1. Instead of trying to collect money later based on complex rules, all subject to dispute in tax courts and interpretation by IRS auditors, let's get a reasonable amount up front.
2. Of course, the import price may be manipulated downward but then how does the importer (or some entity farther along the supply chain) avoid the squeeze that the less paid per item up front, the greater the net taxable income?
3. The across-the-board tariff (or 'VAT') should replace all the special preferences and subsidies, thus eliminating opportunities for political corruption and also providing the necessary stable and predictable business environment that fosters true free enterprise capitalism.
4. Let's say that all the multi-nationals settle for the minimum import price that the IRS will allow and then somehow avoid paying their corporate taxes. Okay, we (U.S.) still have received enough income to at least assure that domestic tax-paying producers are not in effect subsidizing, against their own interests, foreign competition that effectively pays no taxes or duties of any kind.
5. We (U.S.) have them in a squeeze play. Somewhere in the game, we should be able to tag out the cheaters.
6. The "free" trade trolls (noted by Robert Oak) will object that the public will have to pay more. That is one of several arguments used over and over that always amount to that no corporation should ever pay any taxes, imposts or fees of any kind.
7. As for the argument that corporate taxes amount to double taxation, since dividends and such are presumably taxed -- we could allow corporate taxes a pass-through to the benefit of long-term investors who pay taxes within the U.S., thus rewarding savings and investment rather than gains from casino-like trading scams.
8. Finally, they say, China will retaliate. Good for them! They have been showing a lot of sense for some years now in their trade and monetary policies, more that us (U.S.)! Also, our action would bolster their confidence in their holding of U.S. government notes. Let all nations adopt the 15% across-the-board tariff and stop the ongoing trade wars that enable political corruption!
I note here that economist Phil Dobbie (BT Australia) openly and unabashedly recommends TARIFFS, questioning the entirety of "classical" economic theory (which, I believe, includes standard WTO "free" trade theory). That is from the link here at EP to Steve Keen's Debtwatch --
Keen interviews economist Phil Dobbie of BT Australia (audio files)
Great write up. All I can add is that a Fortune 500 company that I worked for was part of groups lobbying Congress for more H-1B visas while, at the same time, they were laying off over 100 engineers. It's all about cheap labor and American workers are paying the price.
Speaking of incredible stories, Naked Capitalism had one showing Cisco Systems managed to get a whistleblower, arrested, yes perp walk, handcuffs, in Canada. Basically locked him up because he brought a civil suit.
This is one scary story and while Cisco Systems runs ads about how there are no borders, they are one evil corporation.
Folks, please write in a comment how much they raised your premium, how much they cut benefits and which state you are in.
Thanks for sharing this but they must have these state committees bought and paid for because nothing happens to rein them in at the state level.
I mean give me a break! The CPI numbers are easily available and one can get regional and state inflation numbers assuredly if they call up the BLS, BEA and simply ask.
No where near these rate increases, so claiming it's due to rising health costs is pure bunk, not justified, yet no agency, no committee, no state is stopping these insurance companies.
Pretty astounding right? We've had a pattern of "stories", which suck the air out of the news cycle and are a distraction. Seems the only way to really get someone out of office is to catch them with their pants down.
You might also rant about Weiner being investigated by the ethics committee. Seriously? You lose your congressional seat for sexting these days?
Of course they will claim it's about going after someone for lying, but it's not, nope, the minute a public official is exposed as doing anything but the missionary position once a month, mandatory heterosexual and at least engaged....the press explodes.
No committee on creation of a national trade policy or maybe a committee to analyze what really works to get the jobs market moving and what policies are needed, out of Congress, by expert testimony from economists who are actually credible...
no, can't have that. How about hearings televised on CNN about crumbling infrastructure? No, no way. We cannot even get Greece hitting CNN in the U.S.
Nope, but they can debate ad nauseum Sarah Palin or Weiner's Woodie.
Pretty damn ridiculous. Then they'll say it's the cover up, the lie, instead of the act. B.S. we catch these politicians every single day lying their heads off on economic related topics.
Why are they not arrested for casting votes per the direct request of some lobbyist? Now that's a worthwhile prosecution.
We all know Edwards is a sleezeball, no shit, he does that while his wife has terminal cancer, nuf said.
But how about going after some of these campaign contributions from foreign organizations, funneled through domestic ones? I'm thinking of NASSCOM and China...
hello, that was supposedly not legal to buy our Congress from foreign interests...
All they have done is loophole the law, the $$ is coming from outside the U.S.
BTW: Nothing more ironic than to watch Elliot Spitzer doing a straight faced news report on Weiner. Yet another person who did some criminal prosecutions surrounding white collar crime, fraud, finance...
being caught with his pants down and whoosh, out of power.
You cannot let these people have a Smooth-Hawley argument that this caused the Great Depression because it is simply not true. Trade back in 1929 was just a small fraction of GDP, the U.S. was primarily a domestic economy. Also, while the tariffs were too high, they were not that much higher than before.
This argument has been disproved many a time. Philosophical arguments are not economics. Or Political arguments are not economics either.
If i was a business, this doesn't sound bad at all. I could go to china, use ripped off software and computers, equipment, everything cheaper, plus cheap labor, and make a boat load. What does Dell care if their security software is a rip off of Norton? they only care because it's 80% cheaper!
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan raised my premium by 43% this year. I had to go with a much higher deductible and less service. I have no sympathy for workers who complain about a $20 increase - try a $350 increase per month. Because grouped insured workers don't know the true cost of their own health care, they aren't aware of the extent of the greed of the insurance industry. What we need is a level playing field where everyone has health insurance, and everyone pays their own costs (yes, employers should compensate). And while we're at it, do away with the high risk categories - we're all high risk at some point in our lives, and those that work dangerous jobs - well society needs firefighters, police officers, and coal miners. We need to stop dividing ourselves and realize that we are strongest when we're in one huge group.
I started out to say, "Yes, and the importance of the Lehman Bros. collapse cannot be overstated."
But then I cited Lucas and added something about how disappointed I was with the biased conjectures in his 2011 Milliman lecture (just the PDF), which had been recommended to me by a friend. I felt that I had to justify and explain my criticism of a Nobelist.
Exports - I like that approach because exports are measurable and measured. Lucas says nothing about trade except that he states as though gospel the old thing that Smoot-Hawley was a substantial cause of the Depression.
I can let Lucas have his Smoot-Hawley argument, and I still say that he is silly with his premise that some kind of hypothetical quantitative measure of the extent of social democracy in one nation compared to others can be presumed to be the only significant causative correlation with a differential in per capita real income.
Even sillier is Lucas' premise about the failure of what he considers to be correct Fed action to put a neat end to recession. He makes a conclusion out of his premise that the cause of that failure is anti-business sentiment held by the American public. His premise mistakes public disgust with business criminality/political corruption for anti-business sentiment. He ignores the prominent evidence of the Republican victory in 2010.
Here's my proposal offered as an alternative to the Lucas analysis: differences between U.S. and comparison group per capita real income were due to U.S. domestic crude oil production, now mostly played out. (Exhaustion of a non-renewable resource.) My thesis is much more subject to verification than Lucas', and references more objective measures -- although I have not investigated and presented them in charts and all.
NOTE: Norway is like Number Two in per capita real income globally and Number One in the EU, but since when is that? Since, specifically, about 1990 when price of crude oil went up! It is generally acknowledged that most of Norway's high per capita income rating is the direct result of oil production. AND, oil income goes into (oh, oh, Nobelist Lucas!) ... you guessed it ... WELFARE!
Lucas emphasizes that "policies do matter," but that hardly makes them comparable! IMO, all governmental social policies are well-intended in any democracy, but it may be that the efficiency of implementation of policies matters more than the nature of the policies themselves. For example, it is one thing to legislate full employment, but something else again to effectuate it. (Perhaps there is an exception to the rule: democratic nations that are disintegrating or have become dominated by foreign powers may enact social policies that are definitely NOT well-intended!)
Anyway, what I say to Lucas is this: NATURAL RESOURCES MATTER! (And Lucas fails to consider that!)
I think we should follow trends in Canada, if we want to continue the comparison-analysis on which Lucas relies so heavily. That's where we may be able to discover or rationally formulate a meaningful macro-economic generalization about the relations among social (welfare) policy, natural resource exploitation and exhaustion, and, per capita real income. Of course, we also would need to consider all this in the context not only of econometrics but also of demographics (population growth or stability).
you're all over the map, but generally these people who want to tear apart socialism, social safety net can't read charts or look at the statistics. Germany also has a strong export driven economy.
Ooops, sorry, bad link for "University of Washington" ...
but the link is given correctly at the top of my first or original reply (reply titled "Robert Lucas on Lehman Brothers").
Link there is the URL.
My suspicion is that Lucas is cherry-picking his data. Would a Nobelist do such a thing?
Where are Australia and New Zealand? Where are Russia and Yugoslavia? Where are Kuwait and Saudi Arabia? (Of course, government stats are notoriously hard to find for Saudi Arabia.) Where are Tunisia and Brazil, Mexico, India, South Korea, Sweden, Finland and Norway? But, of course, the data have been cherry-picked to make a point.
Even granting that Lucas' graph is based on reliable and valid measures of real income per capita (comparable across cultures and nations), the graph actually shows that the gap arose in the 1940s, moderating by about 1950 and continuing on from that time, with perhaps a stabilizing trend for the last three decades of the 20th Century.
The chart stops at the year 2000, long before the Great Recession! Apparently, Lucas thinks that the 'natural' course of things, projecting from the year 2000, would be that the gap would disappear ... and perhaps it soon will, or already has, by way of a decline in U.S. productivity. The comparison that should have been pursued in detail (dropping the others) would be U.S. compared with Canada, but that would be embarrassing to Lucas' thesis -- because Canada hasn't and isn't really experiencing the Great Recession as we are --
Reuters report on Canada's recession
But let's say, okay, there was such a gap stabilizing in the 1970s and continuing for three decades. Lucas' opinion that this gap has been caused by "European" tax and regulatory structures and represents a "larger welfare state" (p. 10, and, "policies do matter", p. 11), is still nothing but (as Lucas acknowledges) just his opinion, pure and unsupported by impartially presented evidence. Lucas hardly represents any kind of consensus even among his elite peer-group of Nobelists in economics!
So, here's a proposal: the gap was due to U.S. domestic crude oil production, which has now mostly played out.
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