It's just an example. There are other similar arrangements as well, I'm sure. What are the purposes of such elaborate intermediate mechanisms when there are basically no limits to political spending, anyway?
It's just an example. There are other similar arrangements as well, I'm sure. What are the purposes of such elaborate intermediate mechanisms when there are basically no limits to political spending, anyway?
ivwshane
Lifer
- May 15, 2000
- 32,571
- 15,460
- 136
Trade deficits aren't created by consumers, they are created by businesses and government. Guess who run businesses and get elected? It's not your average consumer.
So again, consumers didn't magically start purchasing foreign goods that didn't yet exist. US businesses got lazy and let foreign companies make better products and consumers bought them, it wasn't just about being cheaper. That's how the free market works that you righties are always praising.
Matt1970
Lifer
- Mar 19, 2007
- 12,320
- 3
- 0
You don't even see your own contradiction here so you? Either way, Americans ignored all warnings and common sense, for whatever reason, and chose foreign goods, either for price or for quality. Just because they chose to purchase them because of quality, which I disagree with, they for the most part created the deficits.
This is certainly not something for us to be proud of. All the high paying skilled jobs have gone to other nations.
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See the chart below, from Morgan Stanley:
Greece... a nation with nearly 30% unemployment... is used in a statistic of yours to bash the U.S. job market.
Portugal's GDP per capita is a mere 40% of the U.S.'s.
Spain, Italy... great examples of how a country should be managed, don't you think?
This is just yet another outrage and anger inducing article without much actual substance behind it.
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If you took the European nations and combined their job market and salary data along with such nations as Monaco, Liechtenstein, & Luxembourg, European stats wouldn't look so hot anymore.
Likewise if you took the U.S. stats and carved the New York & L.A. metropolitan areas out of it, U.S.'s numbers suddenly look amazing!
Anger-inducing articles are just that. And they succeeded.
Is the microstate of San Marino included in Italy's figures? If not, then that's also carve Silicon Valley out of the U.S. stats.
But such a fair comparison doesn't anger up the blood...
Likewise if you took the U.S. stats and carved the New York & L.A. metropolitan areas out of it, U.S.'s numbers suddenly look amazing!
Anger-inducing articles are just that. And they succeeded.
Is the microstate of San Marino included in Italy's figures? If not, then that's also carve Silicon Valley out of the U.S. stats.
But such a fair comparison doesn't anger up the blood...
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OverVolt
Lifer
- Aug 31, 2002
- 14,278
- 89
- 91
Yea except if you live in Sweden you don't care about Monaco.
And NY and LA are boosting the numbers, not decreasing them. Bastions of wealth inequality and all that.
Someone making $80k a year barely getting by in NYC makes the US look good in terms of median income when people imagine making $80k in their low cost of living areas in their 4,000sq/ft house on 5 acres. Of course a fix'r upper is like $1.4million in San Fran.
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The highest GDP per capita city in the U.S. is Washington D.C. at $150k/person. Silicon Valley is around $75k/person. Carve those jobs out and the median salary in the nation decreases, meaning a lot of the jobs across the rest of the nation are no longer classified as "low paying". NYC's metropolitan area is $65k/person for about 20,000,000 people, those sway the numbers too.
The bigger swing is on the European side, Monaco is like $160k/person, Leichtenstein $140k/person, Luxombourg @ $115k/person. If those numbers are added in, that sways Europe's numbers. Not including those is like carving out Wall Street from the U.S. data.
And I'm not sure how Norway is at $100k/person (has to be an oil boom I'm assuming). Yet they were not even listed as part of the chart. Think adding in their data isn't going to swing the numbers of Europe? It is like excluding Alaska from U.S. data.
Just combining, say, Germany and Spain's numbers, Spain suddenly has a shit-ton more of "low paying" jobs. It's like separating out Mississippi's data and analyzing it separately from California's data.
However you want to rationalize it, this is not even close to an apples-to-apples comparison between the U.S. and Europe. So much so it's not even an apples-to-oranges comparison. This is an Apples-to-Peanut Butter comparison.
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OverVolt
Lifer
- Aug 31, 2002
- 14,278
- 89
- 91
That would be true except most of the job growth since 2008 has been in low wage sectors. We lost good jobs and replaced them with shitty ones.
If there were a more historically normal mix of jobs you'd be right but it just so happens that things are so bad comparing apples to peanut butter still illustrates the same point anyway. Peanut butter and apple by the way, is pretty delicious
Yes there are a lot of low paying jobs in the U.S. But if you want to make comparisons to Europe, you need to create equivalent comparisons.
State by state in the U.S., the richest states are at about $60k/person, while the lowest are at $30k/person.
Want to make comparisons to Europe? Let's include Ukraine which was at a grand total of $4k/person prior to the civil war.
Germany is at $45k while it's next door neighbors Czech Republic is at $18k/person, Poland at a whopping $13k/person. That is massive inequality that is not found between any two random states in the U.S.! From the poorest U.S. state to the richest it is a jump of just 100%. Here we have large populous neighbors with a 350% difference.
If California's data is to be combined with Mississippi's data, then let's see how Germany plus Ukraine pan out. But that's not quite a fair comparison either because they are not governed by the same government. But the point is, when looking at European countries you are examining regional pockets. When looking at the U.S. you are examining a vast expanse of many regions combined into one set of data. Is it any surprise Canada is listed as the third worst developed nation?
State by state in the U.S., the richest states are at about $60k/person, while the lowest are at $30k/person.
Want to make comparisons to Europe? Let's include Ukraine which was at a grand total of $4k/person prior to the civil war.
Germany is at $45k while it's next door neighbors Czech Republic is at $18k/person, Poland at a whopping $13k/person. That is massive inequality that is not found between any two random states in the U.S.! From the poorest U.S. state to the richest it is a jump of just 100%. Here we have large populous neighbors with a 350% difference.
If California's data is to be combined with Mississippi's data, then let's see how Germany plus Ukraine pan out. But that's not quite a fair comparison either because they are not governed by the same government. But the point is, when looking at European countries you are examining regional pockets. When looking at the U.S. you are examining a vast expanse of many regions combined into one set of data. Is it any surprise Canada is listed as the third worst developed nation?
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I am not talking about purchasing power or the decline in wages. My point is that due to the number of variables involved and the information presented in this thread it is entirely possible to have these trends happen independently of an increase in low paying jobs. The math allows for low paying jobs to comprise 25% of our workforce during the periods of time preceding the rise in the wealth gap.
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