US economy shrank 0.1% - first time in 3 years.

[s0me0nesmind1]

Originally Posted by Texashiker

Its simply amazing that we as a nation existed for a couple of hundred years by having factories and paying a liveable wage.

The above theory is that if something is made here, then its going to cost more. Ok? And?

How much money is floating around in the US? Where is that money concentrated? In the upper 1%.

If wages increase, and the amount of money in circulation does not increase, then we have an equal distribution of wealth. That 1% is then broken down to 5%, 10%,,,, and so on.

So what if wages go up? There is plenty of money out there for everyone.



Unions can be beneficial.

Ah - so you think when jobs come back, the top execs are going to say "Bawww right guiz, lets just give ourselves a nice hefty 10% paycut all around, who is with me?!"

Get fuckin' real. It won't happen. Like I said, I would love to see it, but it's wishful thinking until I see a damn good theory as to why.

[Genx87]

Do people understand a lot of these jobs arent coming back in the form they hope? There was a 60 mins segment on a few weeks ago discussing jobs are coming back from China. But they come back and a robot does them. You can erect all the walls in the world around our market but that wont stop the elimination of low skill jobs to robots.

[Texashiker]

Originally Posted by Ausm

I work in the Steel industry and typical starting wage for factory workers with no skill in my area is around 7.50 which caps out around 9 dollars/hour. Oh you do get an extra .15 cents for 2nd and .30 cents for 3rd shift.

What was unemployment like in those areas?

I dont guess those were union shops?

[nehalem256]

Originally Posted by Genx87

You can erect all the walls in the world around our market but that wont stop the elimination of low skill jobs to robots.

People have been losing jobs to machines for 100s of years. This is how productivity increases. And why now people can spend time building computers, tvs, etc instead of manually farming.

[BoberFett]

Originally Posted by Engineer

The deficit is bad, right?

Only when the other team is ahead.

[Matt1970]

Originally Posted by Texashiker

Its simply amazing that we as a nation existed for a couple of hundred years by having factories and paying a liveable wage.

The above theory is that if something is made here, then its going to cost more. Ok? And?

How much money is floating around in the US? Where is that money concentrated? In the upper 1%.

If wages increase, and the amount of money in circulation does not increase, then we have an equal distribution of wealth. That 1% is then broken down to 5%, 10%,,,, and so on.

So what if wages go up? There is plenty of money out there for everyone.



Unions can be beneficial.

Problem is there aren't enough of us willing to pay extra for Made In America. We made our choice long ago. We chose cheap disposable imported crap over American jobs.

[Ausm]

Originally Posted by Texashiker

What was unemployment like in those areas?

I dont guess those were union shops?

The Unemployment rate has been typically higher than the National rate due to the loss of High Production tooling manufacturing in the U.S. which started in the 80's. Luckily for the most part the Chinese workmanship is horrendous and this has keep shops open with a plethora of rework in order to get the tools operable.

The Unemployment rate for "peons" has never been high because if someone can survive that type of work until retirement it would be a miracle. The turnover is very high because the work is grueling.

With this in mind, some of the largest Plastic parts producers in my area are now getting their tools built in the U.S. because the cost of a Chinese manufactured tool with the inevitable reworked equated to little or no savings at all.

In regard to Unions, the quality of each Union varies from shop to shop.

Oh the peons I was referring to in my previous comment are low skilled workers who get the shittiest jobs in a factory.

[Jaskalas]

Originally Posted by Matt1970

Problem is there aren't enough of us willing to pay extra for Made In America. We made our choice long ago. We chose cheap disposable imported crap over American jobs.

Is it government's job to make that choice for us?

[mshan]

I believe this 4Q GDP report has one time anomalous factors that stock market is already looking past:

1) drought from summer and destruction of wheat and soybeans (soybeans are our major export to China. IIRC, Boeing aircraft and agricultural products are our major export to Europe)

2) Hurricane Sandy. Rebuild will act as economic stimulus going forward

3) hesitancy on part of corporations because didn't know who president was going to be and rhetoric over fiscal cliff and whether Congress would push us into recession early this year

"The sleeper piece of economic news that came out of nowhere this week was a dramatic fall in initial unemployment claims that really cranked up the rumor mill concerning the January employment report due next Friday. After puttering around in the high 300,000s for most of 2012, unemployment claims fell to 335,000 last week and 330,000 this week--both recovery lows. Even the four-week moving average made a breakout low to 351,750 claims. Seasonal adjustment factors were surely a big help and the timing of Martin Luther King Jr. Day could have caused some dislocations in the data. Still, the dramatic change did catch the market's attention."

...

"About the only good news about the GDP report for December is that expectations are exceptionally low with the average being 1.0% versus September's unusually strong 3.1%. The report will be a mess and easy to construe as negative. From my point of view, if consumption (which represents 70% of the report) is above 2%, I will be a very happy camper and the rest of the report is noise."

http://news.morningstar.com/articlen...aspx?id=582408

http://news.morningstar.com/all/dow-...h-quarter.aspx

"The hive mind of Davos has concluded that the financial crisis is done, finished. The new worry: a bubble in the credit markets.

There is no official declaration, or even a formal survey. But the chatter at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, is about the end of the financial crisis that began in 2008 and dragged on through last summer's spike in Spanish and Italian government bond yields. "There's a crystallization of thought that the financial crisis is over," says Scott Minerd, managing partner and chief investment officer of Guggenheim Partners, a Santa Monica (Calif.) firm with about $160 billion under management."

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1136...-world-bullish

[EagleKeeper]

Increase wages costs a company $$.

Companies increase prices to cover such costs.

Increased prices for consumer goods.

Who is paying for such?

[Ausm]

Originally Posted by EagleKeeper

Increase wages costs a company $$.

Companies increase prices to cover such costs.

Increased prices for consumer goods.

Who is paying for such?

Consumers?

[Engineer]

Originally Posted by EagleKeeper

Increase wages costs a company $$.

Companies increase prices to cover such costs.

Increased prices for consumer goods.

Who is paying for such?

Companies offshore jobs.

Companies have cheaper labor costs.

Company raises prices of goods anyway?

Who is buying company products? (answer: consumers with lower paying jobs who now use credit....and that's running out).

[Engineer]

Originally Posted by Genx87

Do people understand a lot of these jobs arent coming back in the form they hope? There was a 60 mins segment on a few weeks ago discussing jobs are coming back from China. But they come back and a robot does them. You can erect all the walls in the world around our market but that wont stop the elimination of low skill jobs to robots.

I wonder how many people (engineers, maintenance, etc) it takes to keep all of that stuff running and how many people it takes to build the equipment and program it in the first place? It's not a zero sum game.

A plant full of robots here making the stuff is still better than importing everything from outside.

[Genx87]

Originally Posted by Engineer

I wonder how many people (engineers, maintenance, etc) it takes to keep all of that stuff running and how many people it takes to build the equipment and program it in the first place? It's not a zero sum game.

A plant full of robots here making the stuff is still better than importing everything from outside.

Sure it takes engineers and a maintenance staff to run them. That part is great.

But when we discuss offshoring it is usually centered around manufacturing jobs. People who arent white collar and wouldnt get their jobs back when a robot will do it at a fraction of the cost.

So erecting a wall around our market in some futile effort to stave off the inevitable is a waste of resources. Over the next century we may need to rethink our approach to how an economy is structured when it comes to the people.

[dmcowen674]

Originally Posted by Engineer

US economy shrank 0.1% - first time in 3 years.

He won re-election, now you get to see the real numbers.

[eskimospy]

Originally Posted by dmcowen674

He won re-election, now you get to see the real numbers.

I'm interested to hear your theory as to what they were doing with the real numbers before.

[Genx87]

Originally Posted by eskimospy

I'm interested to hear your theory as to what they were doing with the real numbers before.

You had to ask lol

[Texashiker]

Originally Posted by Ausm

The Unemployment rate has been typically higher than the National rate due to the loss of High Production tooling manufacturing in the U.S. which started in the 80's. Luckily for the most part the Chinese workmanship is horrendous and this has keep shops open with a plethora of rework in order to get the tools operable.

With high unemployment wages go down.

You said the starting wage is around $7.50? What did that same job pay in the 1980s?

In the 1970s before the shipyards closed here in southeast Texas a welder could make $17 an hour.

Shipyards closed in the early to mid-1980s. 30 years later wages still have not returned to what they used to be. In the late 1980 and into the 1990s, welders were making something like $10 - $12 an hour.

Its just been within the past few years that wages in the metal working field here in southeast Texas have made it back to what people were making in the early 1980s. Even though wages have "almost" made it back, inflation has taken such a bite, that people have less buying power then they did 20 years ago.

[Ausm]

Originally Posted by Texashiker

With high unemployment wages go down.

You said the starting wage is around $7.50? What did that same job pay in the 1980s?

In the 1970s before the shipyards closed here in southeast Texas a welder could make $17 an hour.

Shipyards closed in the early to mid-1980s. 30 years later wages still have not returned to what they used to be. In the late 1980 and into the 1990s, welders were making something like $10 - $12 an hour.

Its just been within the past few years that wages in the metal working field here in southeast Texas have made it back to what people were making in the early 1980s. Even though wages have "almost" made it back, inflation has taken such a bite, that people have less buying power then they did 20 years ago.

Starting wage for the lowest skilled factory jobs in the early 80's were are 3.50/hr with 1 week vacation after 2 years, 2 weeks vacation after 5 years and 3 weeks after 20 years which are typically the same as they are today in regard to vacation time.

[Franz316]

It makes you wonder how the stock market is near all time highs while the real economy is treading water.

Where is the massive disconnect coming from, the FED's policies?

[s0me0nesmind1]

OH YEAH? Back in my day, we had to walk FIFTEEN miles in the snow EVERY DAY.

[Matt1970]

Originally Posted by Jaskalas

Is it government's job to make that choice for us?

No but plenty of people think it's Government job to right the wrongs of the choices we made.

[Texashiker]

Originally Posted by Ausm

Starting wage for the lowest skilled factory jobs in the early 80's were are 3.50/hr with 1 week vacation after 2 years, 2 weeks vacation after 5 years and 3 weeks after 20 years which are typically the same as they are today in regard to vacation time.

So in relation to minimum wage, wages have stayed about the same.

[Matt1970]

Originally Posted by Ausm

The Unemployment rate has been typically higher than the National rate due to the loss of High Production tooling manufacturing in the U.S. which started in the 80's. Luckily for the most part the Chinese workmanship is horrendous and this has keep shops open with a plethora of rework in order to get the tools operable.

That started in the 70's right at the same time we started running trade deficits.

Did anyone see the movie "Tucker: The Man and His Dream"? The whole court room laughed at the notion of our car stereos being made in Japan.

Look where we are now....

[eskimospy]

Originally Posted by Genx87

You had to ask lol

I doubt Dave will share with us his idea about the secret vault where they kept the Real Economic Info. It's probably right next to where they kept the Real Polls where Romney won.