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US Job Openings Decline to Lowest Level in More Than a Year

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Re: US Job Openings Decline to Lowest Level in More Than a Year

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S Federal Receipts as a Percent of GDP measures total government revenue relative to the size of the economy, serving as a standardized way to track the federal tax burden over time. Although the top marginal tax rate in the 1950s indeed exceeded 90%, federal receipts hovered around 17% of GDP; this was nearly identical to current levels, because loopholes and high income…

The total tax intake is fairly unambiguous. Personal tax bill for the vast majority of people is also quite clear. But when you get to the top 0.1% or whatever it is, things like "income" and "tax" get ambiguous. I suppose a lot of the ultra rich don't have much earnings, at best cap gains, and even that can be offset, boxed and off-shored ad nauseam. Maybe instead of looking at the ultra rich we could look at what G…

>But when you get to the top 0.1% or whatever it is, things like "income" and "tax" get ambiguous. I suppose a lot of the ultra rich don't have much earnings, at best cap gains, and even that can be offset, boxed and off-shored ad nauseam.

But the denominator isn't "income", it's GDP. That's far harder to "offset, boxed and off-shored ad nauseam".

Re: US Job Openings Decline to Lowest Level in More Than a Year

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My hotter take: we're in an economic death spiral. There isn't enough juice that can be squeezed short of mass wealth redistribution to reinvigorate the economy, and what is out there is locked up in stocks that don't translate to revenue. Slashing rates will just skyrocket prices and over inflate our monetary supply, and further tax cuts will only whittle away what's left of government services and social safety net…

My hotter take: We've been in a depression since '08 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=cMV

>excluding current transfer receipts

Why was this metric chosen? What does showing that current transfer receipts grew show we're "in a depression"?

Re: US Job Openings Decline to Lowest Level in More Than a Year

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question was how many American-made products you own. You are aware we do make many things in America today, right? > Then, they offshored and automated the high value work. Huh? American workers are more productive than ever, and vastly more productive than workers anywhere else in the world.

The US service economy is ~83% of GDP. Manufacturing only makes up 8% of jobs in the US. Why do I care about US made products? Corporations are offshoring services and knowledge work, manufacturing has been gone for some time and will not be back. If it does come back, it'll be mostly automated, lights out facilities (like China). So! I think it makes a lot of sense to impair the offshoring of these service and knowl…

You want Americans doing non-competitive work in an increasingly competitive global economy?

Why?

Re: US Job Openings Decline to Lowest Level in More Than a Year

#186

Makes sense. I know of multiple companies that reduced their headcount by a factor of 10 after Opus 4.5. Their new business model is basically: CEO + CTO + CFO + hundreds of Opus 4.5 agents.

Genuinely, what would be the point of having a CEO?

Who else is going to run the models?

Re: US Job Openings Decline to Lowest Level in More Than a Year

#187
post #122

Corporate America is such a weird place. They rather hire immigrants than retrain or educate existing workforce. Everything about the US economy is plug and play then discard. And if they can’t plug and play, they will just scrap the whole thing. That’s exactly what’s happening right now.

Look at the incentives and you'll see it's not weird at all.

Re: US Job Openings Decline to Lowest Level in More Than a Year

#188
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This could be true, but it isn't obviously true (to me). (I dispute a little bit the idea that there are many new workers in the [25, 30) demo.) There are 37M workers 55+, but only 20M in the 16-24 range: https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat18b.htm (2024 numbers)

Nobody in either of those cohorts is in the BLS "prime age" group which is [25, 55). The incoming cohorts that are now 15 to 25 are larger than the outgoing cohorts that are 45 to 55.

Ah, that makes sense. Thank you.

Re: US Job Openings Decline to Lowest Level in More Than a Year

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question was how many American-made products you own. You are aware we do make many things in America today, right? > Then, they offshored and automated the high value work. Huh? American workers are more productive than ever, and vastly more productive than workers anywhere else in the world.

The US service economy is ~83% of GDP. Manufacturing only makes up 8% of jobs in the US. Why do I care about US made products? Corporations are offshoring services and knowledge work, manufacturing has been gone for some time and will not be back. If it does come back, it'll be mostly automated, lights out facilities (like China). So! I think it makes a lot of sense to impair the offshoring of these service and knowl…

There's more to manufacturing than just rebuilding factories. You need everything from supply chains (which are going to include some foreign materials in many cases), to people who want to work in a factory in 2026, to consumers who want to pay extra for domestically made products.

It's not as easy as saying "just tax imports" or "just tax offshoring" because that hits the average folks who are barely getting by, as every cost gets passed down to the consumer.

I live in a country that used to be heavily industrialized (back in the previous regime when the goal was to be self-sufficient). In the 90s we lost most of the domestic industry as the factories got privatized and opening foreign trade enabled cheaper foreign products to flood the market. Most factories were sold off or just went out of business.

There's been some success with small businesses doing manufacturing domestically but it's mostly niche and not near what it used to be back when every house had at least some domestically made clothes, furniture, electronics...

Labor is expensive, market small, taxes high, and lately even high energy costs and rising import fees on materials from abroad. Plus of course the fact that people can't afford to pay 5-10x for the same thing made domestically when they can barely afford the thing at 1x the price.

Re: US Job Openings Decline to Lowest Level in More Than a Year

#190
post #58
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t really do tariffs like this before Trump. At least not for a long time.

And never this sweeping: like when Japanese car manufacturers were threatening Detroit, the president negotiated with Congress and the response was targeted, not a random shotgun on other countries and industries.

Reagon and Congress directly negotiated with the Japanese auto manufacturers. They were threatening major tarrifs.

This lead to the 1981 automobile voluntary export restraint.

https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c8719/c8719.pdf

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