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The Fed plans to sharply boost unemployment

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Re: The Fed plans to sharply boost unemployment

#101

Post by throwaway9870 »

nine_zeros wrote: post #43

The CPI number is high because rents are high. Every other measure of CPI has dropped. But housing prices and rents just won't budge. This is a battle between the fed and sticky rent-seeking homeowners. Everyone else is a pawn. Our healthcare, livelihoods and families are mere collateral damage.

Please clarify what you mean by "dropped". If you are talking over a 12 month window, that is most certainly not the case:

https://www.bls.gov/cpi/

Ignoring CPI, inflation is rampant in many other areas such as agriculture (basically everything is up) and manufacturing of good (again, everything seems up, metal, paint, fasteners, etc.)

Re: The Fed plans to sharply boost unemployment

#102

Post by starkd »

afpx wrote: post #77
koheripbal wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling it a "race to the bottom" is a bit ironic, when these jobs have been going to the world's poorest people and those in most need of a job.

These jobs allow something like 60-100M households escape poverty every year. That's a good thing for everyone (except the Earth).

Economic activity is not inimical to humanity. Not in and of itself. That's a terrible way to think of your fellow man and our relationship to nature.

Re: The Fed plans to sharply boost unemployment

#103

Post by koheripbal »

salawat wrote: post #92
afpx wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These jobs allow something like 60-100M households escape poverty every year. That's a good thing for everyone (except the Earth).

At the price of perpetuating bottom dollar exploitive business models that could only exist in the abscensce of strong labor protections, qnd the export of negative externalities to the greater fool. The wotld as a whole does not benefit from this arrangement.

No post body was provided.

Re: The Fed plans to sharply boost unemployment

#104

Post by UtopiaPunk »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #68
jmoak3 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wages are too high, because our entire economy is built on the backs of available race to the bottom international labor. Demographics and the security situation is changing this, and the establishment (for better and worse) is absolutely freaking out. The world as we have lived it the past 30 years cannot exist if people doing labor can command a decent wage by USA standards, we’re going to have to recalibrate for a…

Or we could just automate more and innovate, instead of spending most of our time & energy & capital on leveraged speculation that the Fed will continue to endlessly pump up asset prices...

As an anti-capitalist, I would love a society where everyone benefited from unpleasant jobs being automated away. However, under capitalism, only the owners will benefit. That's because automation turns labor into property. That means the owners of property, capitalists, benefit.

If the value of automation were distributed differently it'd be great. If workers owned a company such as in a worker-cooperative structure, then the workers would be happy to focus less on stuff they don't like and focus on different things. Or a strong state could impose taxes on highly automated industries to fund a kind of universal basic income. But under our status quo, automation benefits the capitalists much more than the general population.

Re: The Fed plans to sharply boost unemployment

#105

Post by evancox100 »

gruez wrote: post #37
hedora wrote: post #20

> Fed Chair Jerome Powell made that amply clear this week when the central bank projected its benchmark rate hitting 4.4% ... ... In plain English, that means unemployment. The Fed forecasts the unemployment rate to rise to 4.4% next year What? The fed is setting benchmark unemployment rates now? That seems unlikely.

Seems like a clueless reporter assuming that "benchmark rate" was referring to unemployment rather than interest. The linked article shortly after that quote confirms this, by explicitly saying that the 4.4% rate was referring to the federal funds rate.

Actually it is just a coincidence, both numbers happen to be the same. Fed does not “set” unemployment rates but they are predicting the effect of the policy will be 4.4% unemployment by the end of 2023. Separately, the median forecast for fed funds rate by the end of 2022 is 4.4%. From Fortune:

“Officials expect the benchmark rate to rise to 4.4% by year end and 4.6% during 2023, according to the median estimate in updated quarterly projections published alongside the statement. … The updated forecasts also showed unemployment rising to 4.4% by the end of next year and the same at the end of 2024 — up from 3.9% and 4.1%, respectively, in the June projections.”

https://www.google.com/amp/s/fortune.com/2022/09/21/fed-rais...

Re: The Fed plans to sharply boost unemployment

#106

Post by prepend »

UtopiaPunk wrote: post #104
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or we could just automate more and innovate, instead of spending most of our time & energy & capital on leveraged speculation that the Fed will continue to endlessly pump up asset prices...

As an anti-capitalist, I would love a society where everyone benefited from unpleasant jobs being automated away. However, under capitalism, only the owners will benefit. That's because automation turns labor into property. That means the owners of property, capitalists, benefit. If the value of automation were distributed differently it'd be great. If workers owned a company such as in a worker-cooperative structure…

> That's because automation turns labor into property. That means the owners of property, capitalists, benefit.

I think customers also benefit. If a janitor costs $100/day and that’s automated away to a robot with $20/day costs that $80 will be passed on to the customer (just like every other technology innovation).

Re: The Fed plans to sharply boost unemployment

#107

Post by prepend »

echelon wrote: post #87
jmoak3 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wages are too high, because our entire economy is built on the backs of available race to the bottom international labor. Demographics and the security situation is changing this, and the establishment (for better and worse) is absolutely freaking out. The world as we have lived it the past 30 years cannot exist if people doing labor can command a decent wage by USA standards, we’re going to have to recalibrate for a…

Some of those on /r/antiwork seem to expect to build careers from McJobs and Starbucks. Instead of seeing these as part time jobs for high school and college students, their expectations are that these jobs can support an apartment rent in a big city without roommates. These types of complaints seem irrational or misguided. Many of their complaints do seem grounded in truth, however. America's low hanging fruit blue…

> There doesn't seem to be a lot of talk for the trade skill pipeline, which has me curious: why not?

I think it’s because these jobs are “hard” in that they require more than a day of training and you can’t use your phone at work. There’s a weird habit with people I know that since they can get $15/hour working at a McJob that doesn’t challenge them physically or mentally that it’s “good enough.”

Long term planning is required to learn to weld and make $45/hour.

Re: The Fed plans to sharply boost unemployment

#108

Post by VictorPath »

yuan43 wrote: post #89

Zero direct evidence for the title's claim was provided in the article. All the Fed is doing is to normalize interest rates. Deeply negative real yields (5% or more) are aberrations that history has shown to ultimately lead to catastrophe. Yet talking head and Dem Senator alike are treating rate normalization as financial Armageddon. Somebody tell me how at the very least a 0% real yield on cash is going to kill the…

> the central bank projected its benchmark rate hitting 4.4% by the end of the year

> "There will very likely be some softening of labor market conditions," Powell said

> The Fed forecasts the unemployment rate to rise to 4.4% next year, from 3.7% today

The fed changed its rate, forecast a change in unemployment due to that and said there was a "softening of labor market conditions". I guess that counts as "zero direct evidence" in your book for fed intentions. What does Powell need to do for you, walk up to factory gates and do a Donald Trump "you're fired"? I guess when Volcker jacked the rate up in the 1980s and unemployment shot up as well, there was no cause and effect there either.

Some commenter here have a positive or negative view of the rate hike, but either way, it is quite clear to most people, including CBS News, what the fed is intending.

Re: The Fed plans to sharply boost unemployment

#109

Post by steve76 »

echelon wrote: post #87
jmoak3 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wages are too high, because our entire economy is built on the backs of available race to the bottom international labor. Demographics and the security situation is changing this, and the establishment (for better and worse) is absolutely freaking out. The world as we have lived it the past 30 years cannot exist if people doing labor can command a decent wage by USA standards, we’re going to have to recalibrate for a…

Some of those on /r/antiwork seem to expect to build careers from McJobs and Starbucks. Instead of seeing these as part time jobs for high school and college students, their expectations are that these jobs can support an apartment rent in a big city without roommates. These types of complaints seem irrational or misguided. Many of their complaints do seem grounded in truth, however. America's low hanging fruit blue…

No post body was provided.

Re: The Fed plans to sharply boost unemployment

#110

Post by 50 »

UtopiaPunk wrote: post #72

An economic system that demands people must work to obtain food and housing, but also demands a certain percentage of the population needs to be unemployed is barbaric.

First capitalism takes our brain, then the state our flesh. It is therefore no surprise just how incredibly unintelligent it makes everyone.
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