Rant against the Chrysler "Detroit" Ad...

[CADsortaGUY]

No, do tell. Send me a PM if you must. I've never been banned, not even for a day, so I've never had to start a second account. However, I'd be fascinated to hear your theories on my alter egos.

Off topic, but perhaps you're thinking of another forum where someone co-opted one of your alter egos. As I remember it, you eventually found out that was Conjur, however. Speaking of whom, whatever happened to Conjur? Good times.

No, not about an alter ego. Probably already said too much.

I wonder where conjur ended up...

 

[Bowfinger]

No, not about an alter ego. Probably already said too much.

Meh, suit yourself. If you're afraid of me reporting you, that's not my style. As best I can remember I've never reported anyone to a mod for any reason. I tend to prefer mockery.

I wonder where conjur ended up...

I seem to remember him saying something about going to China, but I have no idea why and my memory may be faulty on that.

 

[BoberFett]

What does this obfuscation have to do with your original statement that 6% for 30 years is due to deficit spending? Spending in isolation doesn't create jobs, if that's what you're getting at.

Gov't deficit spending is spent on all sorts of things other than wages of course, come on. Services and administrative costs outside of labor are pretty high in bureaucracy, obviously. Besides, we had some of the most aggressive gov't spending in history between 2000 and 2010, a period that didn't exactly historically differ too far off the norm for other 10 year periods. Gov't spending is entirely dependent on where it's spent. To prop up industries temporarily, almost exclusively during a bust, is OK if said industry poses a systemic risk, like the auto bailout that probably did save 750K-1M jobs. But those are rare occurrences, the exception, and should never be used in perpetuity. And they weren't used like that between 1980 and 2008.

What are you saying? That service and administrative costs aren't wages? You don't think administrators get paid wages?

While I think Marx was way off base when it comes to the exploitation of the worker tripe, the basis of his labor theory of value is correct. The value of any product is the sum of all labor required to produce it. Follow the supply chain of anything back far enough and it's cost is largely the cost of labor. In a capitalist society there's a percentage that ends up as profit on investment, but otherwise it's mainly wages. Even using numbers from the US government itself, around 2/3 of GDP ends up as wages and other compensation. So take that $14T borrowed over 30 years and assume 2/3 of it ended up as wages and benefits. That's roughly $300B/year. Given a median US wage averaging $45K since 1980, and assuming 20% for additional employee benefits/expenses for a total cost of $54K/job and that $300B/yr is completely funding well over 5M jobs. Given our current labor force size thats 3% to 4% of all employees. So you take that 3-4% and tack it onto your 6% and you've got 9-10% unemployment.

And you know damn well that debt spending is the pulling forward of productivity. Borrowed money can be invested intelligently or wasted, but no matter how you slice it you're spending tomorrow's dollars today. So yes, deficit spending is responsible for keeping unemployment down.

 

[First]

What are you saying? That service and administrative costs aren't wages? You don't think administrators get paid wages?

When the gov't provides a service like Medicare to someone, the dollars transferred to Americans has nothing to do with what wages Medicare employees are paid. Administrative costs include everything from IT infrastructure to property leases to paper. None of that has anything to do with wages.

While I think Marx was way off base when it comes to the exploitation of the worker tripe, the basis of his labor theory of value is correct. The value of any product is the sum of all labor required to produce it. Follow the supply chain of anything back far enough and it's cost is largely the cost of labor. In a capitalist society there's a percentage that ends up as profit on investment, but otherwise it's mainly wages. Even using numbers from the US government itself, around 2/3 of GDP ends up as wages and other compensation. So take that $14T borrowed over 30 years and assume 2/3 of it ended up as wages and benefits. That's roughly $300B/year. Given a median US wage averaging $45K since 1980, and assuming 20% for additional employee benefits/expenses for a total cost of $54K/job and that $300B/yr is completely funding well over 5M jobs. Given our current labor force size thats 3% to 4% of all employees. So you take that 3-4% and tack it onto your 6% and you've got 9-10% unemployment.

Well for one, you're making a weird assumption here, that all the federal employees in the U.S. account for a significant % of the employment and that if they were all taken away, that it would have a very adverse impact on the unemployment numbers. Except I'm pretty sure everyone here sees that federal employees need to exist in large #'s, with that definition varying widely. So the only contention is how many should exist, and that number is what's quite small.

For example, there are currently over ~ 155M people in the workforce, a total of ~ 19.5M government employees in the entire country, and only less than 3M of which are federal employees. Those 3M gov't employees are less than 2% of the total workforce, and the $14T in debt is a federal deficit that obviously isn't the same as state or local debt (and very little of which actually goes to states).

Your assumptions about how much wages account for of GDP make general sense but honestly I wasn't able to google any good results or find any BLS info on it. Even if it were 2/3rds wages, a certain % of those 66% (of $14T) of federal gov't wages would still necessarily exist in the first place as I said in the previous paragraph, meaning a sizable chunk of your 3%-4% number of federal employees (call it 3.5%) would exist regardless of a handful of "wasted" trillions because it means next to nothing to an economy that has accumulated a couple hundred trillion over the past 30 years, $14T of which was debt. There's simply no way you can claim that accounted for any terribly significant impact on the unemployment rate. Bottom line, you're probably talking less than 1% of jobs impacted by part of that $14T in debt.

And you know damn well that debt spending is the pulling forward of productivity. Borrowed money can be invested intelligently or wasted, but no matter how you slice it you're spending tomorrow's dollars today. So yes, deficit spending is responsible for keeping unemployment down.

It isn't though, as my numbers just showed. Federal employees will always exist, so just because we spend too much for a few years doesn't suddenly mean that had any significant impact on the unemployment rate over the past 30 years. The numbers don't add up to what you think they do.

 

[Craig234]

Your chart is hand-picked data that uses an arbitrary metric (1979 "level" means nothing) and shows no granularity at all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_Income_Distribution_1967-2003.svg

No granularity? Let's see some data on the top 0.01% versus others, not the 'top 5%'.

 

[BoberFett]

When the gov't provides a service like Medicare to someone, the dollars transferred to Americans has nothing to do with what wages Medicare employees are paid. Administrative costs include everything from IT infrastructure to property leases to paper. None of that has anything to do with wages.



Well for one, you're making a weird assumption here, that all the federal employees in the U.S. account for a significant % of the employment and that if they were all taken away, that it would have a very adverse impact on the unemployment numbers. Except I'm pretty sure everyone here sees that federal employees need to exist in large #'s, with that definition varying widely. So the only contention is how many should exist, and that number is what's quite small.

For example, there are currently over ~ 155M people in the workforce, a total of ~ 19.5M government employees in the entire country, and only less than 3M of which are federal employees. Those 3M gov't employees are less than 2% of the total workforce, and the $14T in debt is a federal deficit that obviously isn't the same as state or local debt (and very little of which actually goes to states).

Your assumptions about how much wages account for of GDP make general sense but honestly I wasn't able to google any good results or find any BLS info on it. Even if it were 2/3rds wages, a certain % of those 66% (of $14T) of federal gov't wages would still necessarily exist in the first place as I said in the previous paragraph, meaning a sizable chunk of your 3%-4% number of federal employees (call it 3.5%) would exist regardless of a handful of "wasted" trillions because it means next to nothing to an economy that has accumulated a couple hundred trillion over the past 30 years, $14T of which was debt. There's simply no way you can claim that accounted for any terribly significant impact on the unemployment rate. Bottom line, you're probably talking less than 1% of jobs impacted by part of that $14T in debt.



It isn't though, as my numbers just showed. Federal employees will always exist, so just because we spend too much for a few years doesn't suddenly mean that had any significant impact on the unemployment rate over the past 30 years. The numbers don't add up to what you think they do.

You seem to be missing my point. Just because the federal government isn't issuing a paycheck directly to an employee doesn't mean that federal spending isn't ending up in someone's paycheck. When the feds cut a Medicare check, there are doctors, nurses, administrators, IT staff, paper manufacturer employees from CEO to manager to janitor, pharmaceutical company employees, medical device manufacturing companies, and a myriad of other people who get paid wages for it.

Just because those people aren't federal employees doesn't mean they aren't earning their living on hundreds of billions of dollars in yearly deficit spending.