Live data from Hacker News

1 in 4 Americans are jobless or earning poverty-level wages, new study finds

cbsnews.com

181–186 of 186 posts

Re: 1 in 4 Americans are jobless or earning poverty-level wages, new study finds

#181
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BLS is the federal government. Congress and the president have the entire data set produced by BLS. They also have state-level data and more. There are no statutes explicitly tied to U3. Click through all the links at the bottom of this report: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

I mean using it as what's commonly associated with unemployment. There aren't any requirements to use U3, but the DOL uses it instead of U6. I think most people's idea of unemployment is closer to other measures than it is to U3.

U6 includes underemployment. It's definitely not what most people think of as unemployment. It doesn't adjust for participation rate. Participation can be misleading because while there are definitely discouraged workers the size of the workforce varies naturally as people retire, become disabled or take time off for families. U3 helps track demand for employment and anyone outside the labor force isn't demanding work.

That being said, the closest single metric to follow isn't any of the indices. Try prime age employment-population ratio.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=y51M

Re: 1 in 4 Americans are jobless or earning poverty-level wages, new study finds

#182

Doesn't matter. They have access to unprecedented levels of free pornography so they're too pacified to be a threat to the ruling class.

That's a bit harsh, innit?

I wish it were harsh to say that.

Re: 1 in 4 Americans are jobless or earning poverty-level wages, new study finds

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I know, I called them out as an exception, PBS is decent too. I was referring to "American [mainstream] news." I recognize I wasn't clear, so my bad.

Definitely an exception. Here are some good sources: CBS News: https://www.cbsnews.com/ NY Times: https://nytimes.com/ Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/ Wall Street Journal: https://wsj.com/ PBS News Hour: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/ Boston Globe: https://www.bostonglobe.com/ Philadelphia Inquirer: https://www.inquirer.com/ Finantial Times: https://www.ft.com/

The FT isn’t American. As for the others, they are mostly terrible, at least when compared to German, Swiss, and French media.

Re: 1 in 4 Americans are jobless or earning poverty-level wages, new study finds

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone who votes republican doesn't believe that. Maybe some republicans simply think realistic solutions are not those you believe will work.

I’m from a Republican family in a culturally conservative part of the upper Midwest. It’s disappointing to see the national level Republican Party so diminished as to be seemingly nihilistic. Unless it falls in the bucket of tax cuts or deregulation, there seems to be so little positive vision of what the future should look like.

Maybe the idea is the government shouldn't be in the business of saying what they future should look like?

The government keeps the roads fixed and the playing field level and the country safe. People, as individuals say what the future looks like.

Re: 1 in 4 Americans are jobless or earning poverty-level wages, new study finds

#185
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting about the progressive taxation. My quick look at income tax rates in the US is that there is a lot of progressiveness in the income ranges of the top 5% rather than through the income levels that the bell curve of Americans live in. I am not an expert or spent anytime I must say so I'm not arguing just my first look. What income range do you define as middle class? And What's lower class in the US…

One difference from here than other developed countries is that America has a lot of rich people. Not just super rich that you hear about on the news, but tons of millionaires. The software salaries at FAANG are true, but basically every industry has a cream at the top that makes absurd money compared to what they would make in other countries. Doctors, dentists, lawyers, military contractors, salesmen, stock traders…

Thank you I appreciate the comment back and with facts and figures and back to your original point it is totally not possible to bring the things that American progressives want without lifting taxes - there are not just enough of the 'rockstars' you mention above to pay for those services even if they paid huge percentages of tax which wouldn't be ideal for the regressiveness of doing so.

It's only going to be done with all tax payers increasing their contribution (or maybe all but the lowest).

Re: 1 in 4 Americans are jobless or earning poverty-level wages, new study finds

#186

Some things are already starting to give way pretty loudly, and others are yet to come. You simply cannot maintain a democratic society (for whatever nominal value of democracy you want) with these levels on inequality and non-shared misery. I’m not sure what the next decade holds for the US, but it’s either gonna be some major-scale reinvestment and redistribution or it’s gonna get pretty damn unstable.

As soon as the vaccine is distributed on a mass scale, things will start to become normal. Stability is directly proportional to the strength of economy. When people struggle, they take up on the streets. Not to take away anything from the BLM movement (I support it obviously), but my guess for its stronghold and how it became mainstream is because of the pandemic. 2 months into the pandemic in May 2020, a lot of ang…

Of course it was because of the pandemic.

Too bad people are more focused on social identities than poverty. If the unrest was more about poverty there would be a lot more people involved, and people would have a harder time painting it as thing for restless black people. If the demonstrations were about poverty, and every group could see “people who look just like me” I bet there would be more success.

Post reply on HN