WhipperSnapper
Lifer
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You're making a huge and very simplistic assumption--that comparative advantage applies unconditionally as an absolute. This Paul Craig Roberts op-ed based on testimony he gave before Congress questions that assumption. Apparently it really does depend upon certain conditions and there is also a possibility of what's called Absolute Advantage:
http://www.vdare.com/roberts/050520_hearing.htm
You have to also consider the invisible and conveniently ignored back-end costs and who ends up reaping the benefits of the lower labor costs. If the prices for goods and services decreases by 25% but your wages decrease by 40%, are you better off?
From a supply-and-demand standpoint, foreign outsourcing dramatically increases the supply of labor relative to the demand for labor, which means that the price point for labor, which you could also regard as purchasing power or standard of living you can afford on the wages, must decrease. Basically, the savings on the cost of labor are going to the wealthy and workers end up receiving a smaller percentage of their contribution to the act of wealth production. Sure, prices can go down--but so will wages. Here in the U.S. we've seen alleged productivity increases but stagnant wages (along with Malthusian driven inflation).
They can live off of it--with a third world standard of living, sure. They aren't getting the kind of percentage of their contribution to the act of production that Americans are used to receiving.
You're assuming that they have lots of capital in their country and that better opportunities that afford an American middle class lifestyle are available. This is not necessarily so.
I agree. I also agree that there's no right to health care, etc. However, I believe that it's good to be employed and to have health care. The issue is not one of individual rights, but rather, "As Americans, what is in our rational selfish economic interest?"
In this context, the issue is whether we should expose ourselves to global labor arbitrage and the poverty of the third world and whether that's in Americans' rational selfish economic interest. As a general principle what you say sounds like basic common sense in a free market economy but when viewed within the context of the issue of global labor arbitrage whether or not it's good for Americans becomes an issue.
WhipperSnapper
Lifer
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Are you really that certain? The U.S. economy lost about 212,000 jobs in June (the 62,000 that were reported plus the 150,000 the economy needed to generate to keep pace with the nation's third world rate of population explosion).
Surely some folks, those who are in fields with tremendous barriers to entry, say fields where you need to have a couple years of experience to get hired and where getting that entry level job in the first place constitutes a tremendous barrier, will be OK unless their field contracts, but for most folks it's a problem.
WhipperSnapper
Lifer
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It's happening right now. One of the big differences is that the Internet allowed the offshoring of knowledge-based college-education-requiring work. Another is that we now have large H-1B and L-1 programs to displace Americans. We also have mass immigration, both legal and illegal.
That's what's different from the Sixties and years past. That's also why in spite of alleged productivity increases wages aren't increasing.
Some people are just going to have to lose their jobs and/or careers themselves before they'll start to question the free market and meritocracy dogma that they've religiously latched onto. Worked for me.
WhipperSnapper
Lifer
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The inflation is caused by Malthusian biology. Because the amount of resources in the world is finite, as the population increases and as the demand for those resources increase, they becoming increasingly scarce and the prices have to increase. This has nothing to do with outsourcing or global labor arbitrage directly.
Not much we can do about what happens in other countries, but we'd be better able to weather this problem if we had a stronger economy and if our own population weren't exploding at a runaway, third world pace.
Actually, we're already producing twice as many attorneys as what the job market can support, so for many lawyers there aren't any jobs in their field. Also, lawyers need a strong economy because poor people really can't pay for lawyers. Perhaps there will be bankruptcy work for lawyers for a while, until the middle class is gone.
WhipperSnapper
Lifer
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Basically the balance of trade is coming back to us in the form of the foreigners purchasing our hard assets--real estate and business capital. We're trading our solid wealth for ephemeral consumer goods and services. We're impoverishing ourselves. As Warren Buffet put it, we are Squanderville.
http://www.tradereform.org/content/view/731/52/
WhipperSnapper
Lifer
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Shouldn't efficient be a synonym for productivity--the amount of wealth or value a worker is able to produce per time unit?
When you say "cheap" what exactly are you referring to? Relative purchasing power (as in low purchasing power) or an absolute figure? Since wages are all relative to their purchasing power and costs, I assume that by "cheap" you mean low purchasing power or low wages relative to costs. How the heck could that be in worker's selfish interest? It's good to have jobs but who wants a third world poverty-wage job? The issue is what can we do to maximize middle class and upper middle class jobs.
I question whether or not this trend has continued in this current century. Over the past two years it seems like unemployment and underemployment have increased while wages haven't kept pace with inflation. GDP per capita might be increasing on paper but it would seem to be going to the wealthy class.
You mean compared to back in the Sixties and Seventies when a single person could support a family and own a house without a college education?
Can the firms grow? If the U.S. labor has less purchasing power then that means lower sales and thus fewer new hires. Also, if the labor is dirt cheap overseas then why would the companies want to expand in the U.S.?
Studies funded by...large businesses? The wealthy? Bought-and-paid for politicians?
Why don't you persuade us that foreign outsourcing and global labor arbitrage (which also includes H-1B and L-1 visas and mass immigration) is in Americans' rational selfish interest.
Can you explain how, when the supply of labor increases dramatically relative to the demand for labor or the supply of capital that utilizes labor, why the price point (wages, the fraction of a worker's contribution to the act of wealth production that he receives as payment) will not decrease?
So far no politicians, economist, or media pundit has been able to answer that and few even dare to address the issue. However, if they could, you can bet that they would be shouting the logic of global labor arbitrage from the rooftops.
In our case, we've had a huge increase in the supply of labor coming from Mexico, China, India, and other countries relative to the demand for labor generated by the American economy. It's real easy to do the economic math and to figure out what has to happen to the percentage of a worker's contribution to production that he receives as wages.
Come back and tell us how you view all of this after you've been unemployed or underemployed and involuntarily out of field (and now unemployable in your would-be field) for a couple months.
Such as?
How is someone supposed to do that if they already have student loans and/or a mortgage? Also, we only live for a finite number of years and the amount of time needed to retrain and reeducate is relatively very time consuming.
Can you tell us what these fields are that will be able to provide solid middle class jobs with benefits and a sense of job security for the tens of millions of Americans who need them? Only so many people can enter the nursing field before there's an oversupply of labor. Also, lots of college educated Americans have been laid off and unable to find work in their fields and we're producing oversupplies of college-educated people in many areas, including in areas for advanced and professional degrees (Ph.D. scientists--massive oversupply, lawyers, MBAs, etc.).
So what should Americans retrain and reeducate for? Our politicians and the media are selling education to Americans as an opiate of the masses and the dumb sheep are just gobbling it right up. In reality, solid, rational economic policies are the solution to our economic problems and not education for non-existent job positions.
The U.S. economy lost 212,000 jobs last month (the 62,000 that were reported plus the estimated 150,000 we need each month to keep up with population growth). If you know of booming fields with a low barrier to entry for entry-level applicants that can soak up the tens of millions of Americans who need jobs, please let us know. (I bet bankruptcy-related work is a good field right now, at least until all of the middle class has gone bankrupt.)
It's compelling anecdotal evidence.
Please do educate us. You've made many unsupported statements but haven't provided us with persuasive reasoning. Please persuade us using economic logic. I'd like to see an argument that addresses the question I posed earlier and that makes mention of words like "supply of labor", "demand for labor", and "price point". Please explain how an increase in the supply of labor relative to demand will increase the price point or keep it steady.
Engineer
Elite Member
- Oct 9, 1999
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Click me.
Coincidence that wages dropped with this being the first recovery in US history that resulted in a net loss of manufacturing jobs...I think not. It appears that the loss of jobs to outsourcing, especally manufacturing jobs, has indeed effected salaries of the average person during this decade.
Cheap labor so that people can buy more useless crap at 'discounted' prices. Excellent!!
Some idiot in this thread used the analogy of US worker = Mercedes (cost-wise), so why should corporations use such expensive labor when they can pick from the labor pool of China?
How about if they benefit from selling goods/services in the US WHERE THEY CAN DEMAND MERCEDES PRICES, then they should certainly hire from the pool from whence they drink. Go sell a decent Dell computer in China, you think that they could command the same selling price?
Some idiot in this thread used the analogy of US worker = Mercedes (cost-wise), so why should corporations use such expensive labor when they can pick from the labor pool of China?
How about if they benefit from selling goods/services in the US WHERE THEY CAN DEMAND MERCEDES PRICES, then they should certainly hire from the pool from whence they drink. Go sell a decent Dell computer in China, you think that they could command the same selling price?
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Lifer
- Jun 3, 2002
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In context of our discussion, efficiency is indeed = cheap labor. Unless there is another aspect of efficiency that leads firms to hire labor abroad?
"Cheap" quite obviously refers to cost of labor for a domestic firm (domestic in this context = United States). That is, if a U.S. firm (say, in California) has a comparative advantage in producing grapes, and South America has a comparative advantage in producing roses (this is true, btw, depending on the season), they will trade. The concept of comparative advantage applies to labor just as much as it does to grapes and roses. Even if the U.S. has an absolute advantage in both, you can still trade if the other country has a comparative advantage, allowing them to specialize in the production of their good. This is international economics 101.
As far as the other contentions in your above paragraph, I have no idea what you're going on about.
The overwhelming evidence shows that GDP per capita, including the middle class, and GDP generally have risen between 2000 and 2007 (I don't have all the data from this year, which obviously has so far been a recessionary period for the most part). Data with links:
Real GDP growth in percentage-terms:
2008 2.50 0 0 0
2007 1.50 1.90 2.80 2.50
2006 3.30 3.20 2.40 2.60
2005 3.20 3.00 3.20 2.90
2004 4.10 4.10 3.20 3.10
2003 1.50 1.80 3.10 3.70
2002 1.00 1.30 2.20 1.90
2001 1.90 0.60 0.40 0.20
2000 4.10 4.80 3.50 2.20
http://indexmundi.com/united_s..._real_growth_rate.html
Real GDP per capita (based on PPP):
2000 34773.783 4.75 %
2001 35505.428 2.10 %
2002 36340.275 2.35 %
2003 37685.028 3.70 %
2004 39811.632 5.64 %
2005 41969.756 5.42 %
2006 44118.008 5.12 %
2007 45845.477 3.92 %
2008 46541.179 1.52 %
http://indexmundi.com/united_s..._per_capita_(ppp).html
As soon as I can find any data online for the increase in real GDP for the middle class, I'll link it for you. As far as keeping up with inflation is concerned, I?ve listed the real numbers for you to view above. Also remember that core CPI is generally considered to overstate inflation by roughly 1% on average, further showing that real GDP per capita has outpaced inflation on the aggregate without any doubt up until perhaps the last few months.
This was never really 100% true, save for rare exceptions, and ignores the reality that every example of a growing and prosperous industrialized country in human history has started from a point where low skilled laborers (i.e. no college education) were better off early on in that country?s history, but worse off as the country grew more prosperous. I hope you wouldn?t argue that we shouldn?t be striving to raise the educational bar in this country. Besides, you can quite easily own multiple properties, even in states like NY and CA where property values are high, with nothing but a $50,000/yr job, assuming you have excellent credit and leverage your assets properly by refinancing to save rather than to consume heavily. The overall standard of living today is vastly, vastly superior to what it was in the 60's and 70's, too. So that line of reasoning is out the window as well.
Cheap labor in the U.S. has less leverage than higher skilled labor, yes. This shouldn't be an indictment, however, as that means that the population is increasingly receiving HS and college diplomas at a higher rate, a good thing. We shouldn?t strive for the days when you could potentially own a home with minimal education, that?s backwards reasoning. Besides, as I said, all industrialized societies naturally move toward this higher educational equilibrium, we're seeing it with the huge burgeoning middle class of the Chinese, whose labor is now much more expensive than India, because they have finally moved up a whole other higher level of standard of living.
In any case, the incentive for firms to hire more labor in the U.S. is simple and quite clear. For example, Michael Dell, a small business owner in the 1990?s, was able to be more profitable due to lower wage rates via outsourced labor, allowing him to expand his domestic labor force to deal with all the new wonderful additional needs that his increased cash flow and production required of him; for example, he had to expand his accounting department for all the additional accounts payables and accounts receivables he must record, or expand his infrastructure (which is tax deductible here in the U.S.). Perhaps most importantly, don?t overlook the immense benefits of outsourcing on domestic prices; the money firms save on foreign labor can now be passed onto domestic consumers in the U.S. in the form of lower prices on consumer products. This form of foreign labor competition between firms increases domestic purchasing power.
Btw, this isn?t to say that foreign labor forces won?t simultaneously increase as the domestic firm grows. But since domestic labor forces ALSO increase, it?s a moot point. On the whole, the American consumer and laborer (one and the same an overwhelming majority of the time) both benefit.
A flood of labor into the U.S. or a foreign source of labor from abroad has indeed shown to lower domestic labor salaries, and I have never argued otherwise. However, that is merely one slice of the overall picture. Reality is that the savings firms incur from being able to hire cheap foreign labor is directly passed to American consumers in the form of cheaper prices for domestic goods. Reality shows that there is an increase in technological progress and know-how as international trade (of goods and/or labor) increases. Reality shows that these lower prices and better tech more than offset the decrease in domestic salaries from a glut of labor, increasing the overall purchasing power per dollar of Americans.
There certainly is an increase in demand for higher skilled labor in the U.S. But I assume you won?t make the ridiculous argument that the U.S. should strive for lowering the standards for education/skilled labor.
Again, not germane to the actual crux of the argument or heart of the matter. Btw, how the hell do you know that I haven?t? That?s insulting to say the least (but again, completely irrelevant if you have basic reasoning skills).
Please. If you have a college education you can get a masters in several lucrative fields in 2-3 years. A JD in 3-4 years depending on whether you?re full time. If that?s time consuming then all education is equally time consuming and there would be no point. It?s not brain surgery and all it requires is hard work and no excuse making, something that is rewarded in the U.S. above all else.
This is pure nonsense. People with JD?s, MBA?s, PhD?s, etc. on the whole live at worst a middle class lifestyle, usually quite better than that (there are some exceptions with those in research, usually those with PhD?s, but this has always been true of acamedians, who overwhelming aren?t in it for the money). Here?s the breakdown for you:
Doctorate degree: $81,400
Professional degree: $91,300
Masters degree: $54,500
College degree: $45,400
http://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/p23%2D210.pdf
And this is from a 2002 survey. Salaries have increased since then. Here?s a contemporary breakdown (July 2007) of what college persons can expect to make:
Chemical Engineering $59,361 +5.4%
Computer Engineering $56,201 +4.8%
Electrical Engineering $55,292 +3.2%
Mechanical Engineering $54,128 +4.6%
Computer Science $53,396 +4.1%
Civil Engineering $48,509 +5.4%
Economics $48,483 n/a
Management of Information Systems $47,648 +4.2%
Finance $47,239 n/a
Accounting $46,718 +2.3%
Business Admin/Mgmt $43,701 +3.9%
Marketing $40,161 +6.1%
Political Science/Government $34,590 +5.9%
History $33,768 +3.3%
English $32,553 +5.3%
Sociology $32,033 +3.5%
Psychology $31,631 +4.7%
http://money.cnn.com/2007/07/1...ing_salaries/index.htm
List these ?rational economic policies? please.
It?s more like 100,000-120,000 to keep up with population growth. And it is no surprise whatsoever that the U.S. economy is losing jobs, that?s what happens during recessions. Whatever your point is here, it needs to be clarified.
As I just listed above, every single undergraduate major in the country is seeing their year-on-year salaries increase. College educated people are seeing their salaries increase above the pace of inflation. Hopefully you now see this reality.
Hopefully the data provided will get you to rethink your position.
All answered above.
WhipperSnapper
Lifer
- Oct 30, 2004
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Oh, I don't deny the concept of comparative advantage, just whether or not it applies as an unconditional absolute. For a sample of an argument questioning whether comparative advantage is an absolute, I refer you to former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Paul Craig Roberts's statement for a U.S.-China Commission hearing. (Roberts, who served in the Reagan Administration, is far from a socialist or Marxist.):
http://www.vdare.com/roberts/050520_hearing.htm
But are those GDP numbers real and who is getting the GDP? The wealthy or the middle class? Are you going to tell us that all of the news reports about massive jobs losses and wages not keeping pace with inflation and productivity gains are imaginary? This article in Business Week suggests that much of the alleged GDP growth is imaginary:
http://www.businessweek.com/ma...ent/07_25/b4039001.htm
One of the big issues right now is whether or not the U.S. market can provide college-education-requiring knowledge-based solid middle class jobs for all of its college graduates. In other words, if you double the number of people with college degrees in a certain field, will that double the number of jobs available for them in that field at currently prevailing wages? Lost lower middle class blue collar jobs can't be replaced by knowledge-based jobs that don't exist in sufficient quantities.
But will that additional labor be based in the U.S. and how is the U.S. going to pay for all of the foreign labor? I don't see any reason why many white collar functions such as accounting can't be done for less money in India. Heck, even patent law functions (it doesn't get much more college-educated than that) are being sent overseas.
In the case of Dell, was the increase the number of accounting jobs domestically sufficient to replace all of the lost jobs in other areas? Also, wasn't much of Dell's growth related to the overall growth of the market for personal computers and was much of that growth based on displacing other companies? It's possible that a company could enjoy a net gain in American jobs while manufacturing overseas by displacing competitors from the market while the overall net number of domestic jobs in the field decreases as a result.
If prices for goods and services decrease that means that wages can be decreased even further domestically and abroad as people would be willing to work for even less money. The basic supply-demand of and for labor arithmetic remains the same. The question you're evading is why businesses would have to pay workers the same share of the value of their contribution to the act of wealth production that they the market dictated they had to pay before the amount of labor increased dramatically. Your only real argument is the dubious argument that in the past, "in reality", prices have decreased more than wage decreases. It's difficult to quantify or to take seriously alleged gains that might result from "technological progress" attributed to unrestricted international trade that would not occur with regulated international trade and/or a zero-dollar trade deficit policy.
Even at a time when the nation's economy has lost about 1.4 million jobs for the year? (The 438,000 that were reported plus the 900,000 needed to keep pace with population explosion.) Will that alleged increase in demand for educated labor be enough to absorb everyone displaced from other fields who are able and willing to obtain the education and will those people be better off afterwards after factoring in the time and monetary costs of obtaining that education than they would have been had the jobs they would otherwise be doing not been subject to global labor arbitrage in the first place? Where are you getting this information about an increase in demand for educated labor? Are those increases merely employers ramping up their standards in a tight labor market where they can pick and choose employees or is the education actually needed for the act of production?
Based on my experience with this debate, the people who claim that global labor arbitrage is good for Americans tend to be pretty secure in their jobs and often disconnected from the realities of the labor market. If the boots don't fit then don't wear them.
A JD? Our nation is currently producing a tremendous oversupply of attorneys and many cannot find work as attorneys and end up involuntarily-underemployed-out-of-field and lose the entire value of their degrees. If you look at ABA statistics for the number of people registered to practice law it adds up to about 750,000 last I looked a couple years ago, but at a rate of about 40,000 new attorneys per year (probably less than the real number) if you assume a 40 year career, we're producing attorneys at a rate where 1.6 million will need to be supported by an economy that currently supports 750,000.
My point was that college education is expensive, and, by implication, that the loss of jobs in various fields might not be good for Americans even if they have the opportunity to gamble time and money on further college education. (What if you can't find a job or if there's a glut of people who had the same idea to retrain for the alleged hot market or what if the market in that field collapses?) I suspect that the vast majority of people who are pushed to retrain and reeducate as a result of job and career losses would have been far better off had their fields not dried up in the first place. Furthermore, many of these retrainees will be older and will suffer massive age discrimination. It's possible to obtain college education and end up unemployed while facing unforgiving student loan debt.
I can't speak for MBAs though I know they're a dime-a-dozen since those degrees aren't real hard to get (2 years and/or night school). However, I do have first-hand knowledge of the legal and scientific job markets. As I mentioned earlier, we already have a tremendous oversupply of lawyers, including even patent lawyers (engineering or advanced science degree + law). As for scientists, if Ph.D. scientists are doing so well then how do you explain the existence of postdoctorates? A postdoc is a low-wage gypsy scientist position for Ph.D.'s who couldn't find solid middle class jobs after their nine or ten years of college education. Just go to your local large research university and see if you can find some American postdocs to talk to for evidence of their existence.
Presumably those numbers refer to people who are EMPLOYED in those fields and not all of the people who are qualified to work in those fields who couldn't find work in those fields. Does the income data for Computer Science average out the incomes of those who are unemployed or who are underemployed-and-out-of-field? Does it include the $0 income for unemployed computer scientists when the computer science average salary is calculated? Also, the income data by degree doesn't necessarily reflect the state of the entry-level job market today; the people earning the high incomes that raise the averages could be older people who entered the job markets years ago when those markets were less competitive (before everyone and his brother went to college). It would be more illustrative if the Current Population Survey would break the stats down by age and the percentage of people with various degrees in various income categories.
We need to end mass immigration, expel all of the H-1B and L-1 visa holders, ending the work visa programs, and we need to erect trade barriers to prevent global labor arbitrage along with enacting a zero-dollar trade deficit policy. All of the education in the world will not help if the the global market for labor dictates a third world standard of living.
The point was that there seems to be a correlation between our problems with global labor arbitrage and the American labor market as well as a lack of booming fields with abundant middle class jobs.
Perhaps for the ones who are employed in their fields.
The problem with the alleged data is that it seems inconsistent with the monthly jobs reports (we're losing boatloads of jobs, including white collar jobs...but wages are going up and people can find other jobs if they only retrain and reeducate) and with global labor arbitrage, the logic of which you still haven't been able to refute.
You'll have to try again since you failed to explain, why, even though front-end prices might decrease, wages won't be driven further down than the cost increases when the worldwide market for labor dictates a third world standard of living as the price point for labor. You couldn't directly address the economic argument and were left to make assertions about how, in the past, "in reality" it proved to be better for Americans.
First
Lifer
- Jun 3, 2002
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This is where Roberts gets it wrong, though, IMO. He says Ricardian theory is based on the assumption of perfect capital mobility, yet says economists are wrong for pointing out foreign shifts in TOT? If pointing out shifts in the terms of trade is irrelevant in his eyes in explaining imperfect capital mobility, I cannot for the life of me understand what the point of international trade would be to begin with. That?s the whole point.
Though, I must say that Roberts seems to be a bit of a kook; he is a 9/11 truther, which says something awful about his reasoning skills. That said, being a 9/11 truther doesn?t mean you can?t make good economic sense. IMO, Roberts gets it wrong on Ricardo.
Those are inflation-adjusted numbers, and even if they weren?t they still far outpace inflation on the aggregate. Inflation hasn?t been nearly that high, especially when the Fed quickly cranked interest rates back up after the dot-com bust.
And that BusinessWeek article makes little sense from what I can gather. Why would GDP numbers be imaginary? They are there for any economist or, hell, any laymen to add up and study. GDP is simple and open to study for anyone that is truly interested in digging deep. It?s a simple equation; Y = C + I + G + NX.
This assumes some sort of vortex where suddenly there is a dumping of millions of college-graduates into the labor supply. That doesn?t happen. The gradual increase in the number of college graduates is accompanied by a gradual increase in the number of available jobs. That?s why increasing GDP (i.e. output) and population size every year (and of course allowing businesses to outsource labor) is so important; so more and more educated people have more and more opportunities to be employed at these firms. Again, look at the numbers; 95% employment and increasingly higher and higher salaries for college graduates and up.
No, they can?t. Again, if this were the case than why would firms in the U.S. hire anyone in the U.S.? How on earth does the U.S. labor force continue to increase every year (controlling for population growth, it still increases every year btw)? Miracles? No, quite obviously there are jobs that U.S. workers are more qualified to do, usually the high-skilled jobs that require specialized knowledge or language skills.
Except if any of this were true it would show in the numbers; but it doesn?t. The numbers show that the more you can lower costs as a firm, the more workers you can hire domestically, on average, with variations depending on the industry. i.e. lower skilled labor industries will hire more for abroad, and vice versa for higher-skilled labor industries, with some exceptions in both cases. The low unemployment rates, increasing salaries for skilled labor, and increasing real GDP (and GDP per capita) all present a reality completely counter to your theories. You can?t reason away numbers.
No, it doesn?t, and this paragraph really doesn?t even make all that much sense. This shows a fundamental lack of understanding of what makes firms tick and the market place function. A reduction in consumer prices is a form of increasing purchasing power all else held equal. In no world would wages simultaneously decrease, nominally or otherwise, unless inflation were runaway bad as it was 25+ years ago.
It?s not at all difficult to understand that technological progress and reduced consumer prices have outpaced the reduction in wages from a flooding of the marketplace with cheap labor. All one has to do is look at real GDP, real GDP per capita, low unemployment, increasing salaries for skilled labor (college and up), etc. etc. etc. All support my viewpoint and directly contradict yours.
A dubious collection of arithmetic to be sure. And, btw, merely a snapshot of a recession, ignoring the aggregate increases in standards of living over the past 8 years (which haven?t been world beating, but by no means have they stagnated).
Again evading the actual substance of the argument completely.
First, link your numbers.
Secondly, please explain why JDs are able to command superb salaries on the aggregate? Why are professional degrees like JDs routinely making well over $100K in large cities, and why does it continue to increase. If you can?t address the numbers, don?t bother with made-up economics.
Again, all these concerns don?t actually show up in the numbers. Your half-baked theories are, again, those of someone who isn?t the least bit interested in addressing the realities delineated here.
The numbers say otherwise. Your personal experiences are entirely irrelevant if you don?t bother looking over the rest of the population; you know, all 300M+ of them.
The employment rate is 95%! And has roughly stayed that way for many, many years. Do a Google search or something.
Look, I can?t help that you don?t understand what the unemployment rate is and what it measures. Look up frictional and structural unemployment, then compare that to how the unemployment rate is calculated. All of this is taken into account in the statistics I?ve listed. Read the Census Bureau surveys listed, they show an across-the-board increase in salaries, as does the CNN survey. If someone isn?t working for a given amount of time, they are eventually considered unemployed.
Spoken like a true believer with little to no understanding of economics. These are simply horrible ideas and honestly not worth my time.
Those who aren?t employed in their fields are considered unemployed after a certain amount of time (3 months or something, I forget). Since we know the employment rate is roughly 95%, we know for a fact your contention isn?t based in any verifiable reality.
Your logic is completely devoid of fundamental economic understanding. It doesn?t make any sense whatsoever, frankly.
Because everything you said makes absolutely no sense. Again, you just don?t have any idea what you?re talking about here. Nothing you?ve said is based in reality because
1) You don?t know what unemployment measures or what frictional/cyclical unemployment is, which is why you tried (and failed) to refute that salaries for college graduates were increasing, directly contradicting your assertion that the well has dried up for them.
2) Don?t have any idea with comparative advantage, TOT, or Ricardian trade entails. You say something about arbitrage but can?t explain it.
3) You claim numbers that clearly say ?REAL GDP? aren?t adjusting for inflation. I don?t even know where to begin with that.
Utterly incorrect. anybody who has a job, any job, is considered to be employed. Underemployment isn't considered as a factor in the calculations, at all.
If it were, all the people who have degrees in sociology, history, art, philosophy & etc who work in any of the "real" jobs they have would be considered unemployed, and all of the people who worked in computer tech prior to the dotbust and now do something else would also be considered to be unemployed.
Much the same applies to your stats about the salaries of college grads- those who actually work in their fields are getting more, but that doesn't say what % of grads are placed in their fields, at all, or what happens in those fields over time.
The laws of supply and demand do not act instantaneously, and don't account for the issue of continuity in many endeavors, which is why market saturation with qualified applicants doesn't have the effects one would expect if they did.
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Lifer
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Please precisely delineate where I said otherwise.
Because there is virtually no verifiable evidence that underemployment is significant enough to begin with to make a statistically significant difference. Please list studies showing compelling evidence that underemployment is statistically significant, and I'll reconsider my position depending on the strength of that evidence.
I didn't say every single person in the U.S. who isn't employed is considered unemployed. Those who don't qualify to be included in the labor force obviously include children, retired persons, etc. And reality is that the unemployment rate takes this into account, including ALL the factors WhipperSnapper listed. Please look up participation rate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participation_rate
No, the same does not apply to my stats. The unemployment rate differentiates between frictional and structural unemployment, so if you are looking for a job out of college (as the vast, vast majority of grads are) then the Census Bureau will be able to capture that in their surveys and be able to more accurately assess those people that should be considered unemployed and those that should be included in the actual labor force to begin with. These sorts of employment measurements are nothing new and are a universal standard in virtually every industrialized nation.
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