America the Shithole

[motonoggin]

[Highmark]

Yet so many want to migrate here.    

[motonoggin]

Just now, Highmark said:

Yet so many want to migrate here.    

Maybe because that's the only way to escape American bombing, killing, and meddling in their home countries.

[motonoggin]

[motonoggin]

[Highmark]

1 minute ago, motonoggin said:

Maybe because that's the only way to escape American bombing, killing, and meddling in their home countries.

 

[Momorider]

Half less than $30K fuck 80% of the world don't make 20% of that  

[motonoggin]

1 minute ago, Highmark said:

 

 

[Highmark]

Ludicrous Economic Numbers: 40% Of Americans Make Less Than The 1968 Minimum Wage

Tim Worstall , CONTRIBUTOR Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Occasionally, in the more politicised corners of the economic conversation, we come across numbers that create that double take, that looking into the fourth wall, of amazement. Not so much that someone could get the number itself wrong, but that they could put it forward with a straight face, could actually believe it themselves. And so it is with a discussion of how badly the American economy has been doing in recent decades over at Salon. Just anyone with any basic awareness of the general numbers would know that this is wrong.

The quote is here:

Since the late 1970s, labor productivity in the U.S. has risen 259 percent. If the fruits of that productivity had been distributed according to the post-World War II shared prosperity social contract the average person’s income would be more than double what it is today. The actual change?

Median income adjusted for inflation is lower today than it was in 1974. A staggering 40 percent of all Americans now make less than the 1968 minimum wage, adjusted for inflation. Median middle-class wealth is plummeting. It is now 36 percent below what it was in 2000.

To walk through the errors here. Sure, productivity has risen. And average wages haven't risen as much (although there's a fascinating little fight within that story, you only get this result if you use two different inflation measures, one to measure productivity, another to measure wages. If you use the same one then most of the difference goes away). But there's two points here: the first being that if productivity has risen asymmetrically then we'd expect wages to have done so too. Software engineers, in 1974, were not notably more productive than other skilled labour, now they quite obviously are. That the 19 people at WhatsApp had created near $20 billion of value in a couple of years is a pretty good indication of high productivity in that field. And yes, the wages for software engineers have risen substantially faster over this period than wages in general. And very much more than those of burger flippers, where it's not obvious that there's been all that much change in productivity at all. The second is that it's not wages that need to be compared, but total productivity. Including pensions benefits, health care insurance costs, payroll taxes and so on. And when we include that and use the correct inflation measure then actually, average wages have risen pretty much with productivity over the period.

Then we get to the assertion that median incomes haven't risen after inflation over this period. That isn't actually true, although it would be true to say that the one we usually measure hasn't risen all that much. But the one we do usually measure is median household income and that doesn't include the effects of that compensation over and above wages, nor does it include benefits from the government (SNAP, Section 8, EITC) and so on. And further, the average number of people in an American household has fallen over this time, quite substantially. Add these all in and the per capita total income looks a great deal better. And that wealth is lower in the rubble of a housing collapse, given that most middle class wealth is in housing equity, isn't going to be something that surprises anyone.

The one that really stands out though is this:

A staggering 40 percent of all Americans now make less than the 1968 minimum wage, adjusted for inflation.

 

That's just not true. That's not even close to being true, it's so far from being true that it's amazing that anyone could believe it in fact. So, I set about trying to find out where it came from. And the best I can do is this at Zero Hedge:

40% Of US Workers Now Earn Less Than 1968 Minimum Wage

But do note this comes with an important caveat:

So that means that more than 40 percent of all U.S. workers actually make less than what a full-time minimum wage worker made back in 1968.

At Salon we're clearly being asked to believe that hourly wages are lower than that '68 minimum for 40% of current workers. Rather than what the claim actually is, which is that people working part time don't make much money over the course of the year. Which is, if you'll forgive me, not a finding that makes me blush at the iniquity of modern society.

That full time hourly wages don't work this way we can check here. The upper limit of the first quintile is around $14 an hour, higher than that upgraded '68 minimum wage. And yes, quintile means 20%. We can also check the intuition that they've got to be talking about part timers and the like here. 40, 45% of all workers, earn less over a year than that '68 minimum full time full year would have earned them. Which, given that 20% of people or so work part time, some goodly portion of that first quintile of full time workers make less than it, is where our 40% or so figure comes from.

My point though isn't really about these specific numbers. It's that many of the numbers that are thrown around in the political debate are really not true, or if true not in the manner that they're being offered in. And of course that means we need to be very careful of people arguing about what public policy should be on the basis of these dodgy numbers.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/02/07/ludicrous-economic-numbers-40-of-americans-make-less-than-the-1968-minimum-wage/#74f8dfb64d8a

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[ICEMAN!]

Trump’s whole campaign was based on selling the fact that’s America sucks

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[JEFF]

wow. the world is going to end. 

[steve from amherst]

3 minutes ago, JEFF said:

wow. the world is going to end. 

That's usualy what happens when the sky falls.

[Whiskey Tango Foxtrot]

I stray away from the political propaganda, and cat fights ....

Moto, you're off your rocker...

[motonoggin]

1 hour ago, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot said:

I stray away from the political propaganda, and cat fights ....

Moto, you're off your rocker...

Telling the real history of America = political propaganda...

[Cold War]

3 hours ago, motonoggin said:

Lmao.  So true.

[motonoggin]

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[Sleepr2]

7 hours ago, motonoggin said:

Maybe because that's the only way to escape American bombing, killing, and meddling in their home countries.

Yeah , that’s it , you get more pathetic each day