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True Rate of Unemployment

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Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#341

Post by tedmiston »

runako wrote: post #304
sokoloff wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capital gains taxes are assessed on nominal gains not real gains. If I bought $100K of stock in 1999 and sold it in 2026 for $200K, I gained no real wealth from that transaction. What I could purchase today for $200K could have been bought for $100K in 1999 because of inflation. Yet, I’d owe capital gains on the $100K of nominal gain I experienced. This is part of the reason that long-term capital gains are taxed at…

> If I bought $100K of stock in 1999 and sold it in 2026 for $200K This is because you invested incredibly poorly. The S&P is up ~500% over that period, plus decades of dividends. Long-term capital gains are taxed at a lower rate because rich people have more influence over the tax code than people who earn most of their income from working.

whoosh

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#342

Post by tedmiston »

steveBK123 wrote: post #245
runako wrote: post #11

Anybody who believes ~30% of the workforce was functionally unemployed in 1999 does not know what those words mean, or was not an adult in 1999. I get what they are trying to convey, but the stronger message is the more straightforward: there are too many jobs that do not pay enough to live on.

Right, unless this is counting some broad definition of "underemployed" its obviously off by a large multiple. What is interesting though is that, despite whatever they are trying to convey about how high their made up rate is.. we are at a lower rate of unemployment than the entirety of 1995-2019?

Did you read the post at all?

Their definition is clearly stated in the first paragraph:

    Using data compiled by the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the True Rate of Unemployment tracks the percentage of the U.S. labor force that does not have a full-time job (35+ hours a week) but wants one, has no job, or does not earn a living wage, conservatively pegged at $26,000 (in 2025 dollars) annually before taxes.

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#343

Post by wat10000 »

alyeska2 wrote: post #328
wat10000 wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to this, around 6% of workers had multiple jobs in the 90s, versus 5% or a bit above today: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12026620 Frankly, the biggest reason for these sentiments is straight up false nostalgia. The 90s wasn't some utopia. There were plenty of shit jobs. People struggled. Notice how none of the positive vibes are backed up by numbers. It's just "people owned houses and cars by worki…

I didn't back up my statements with numbers because I'm old enough to have lived through the times I'm talking about and it's as obvious how much things have changed in my lifetime, but here: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/median-house-prices-vs-inco... shows houses have gone from 3.5x median income to 6x median income since 1985. Or here's a source that makes the comparisons via number of hours worked, showing tha…

Living through it doesn't save you from having a selective view due to only seeing a tiny, tiny portion of the country, or just rose-tinted glasses.

I've seen The Simpsons argument brought out a lot and it's weird to me. Homer isn't just a power plant worker, he's a nuclear safety technician, which pays quite well. Despite (somehow) having a really good job and a pretty moderate lifestyle (no childcare costs, modest and rare vacations, eating out infrequently, no fancy toys or extracurricular activities) and having substantial financial assistance in buying their house, the family is portrayed as financially struggling.

I'm not convinced about the usefulness of those numbers either. The figure for houses is probably useful. Used cars seem much less so. Modern cars last way longer. The average age of cars on the road today is almost double what it was then. The average price is going to be skewed upward by people with more money buying used cars that still have a ton of life left in them. Cheap used cars are still available and you probably get a much better car today even at the cheap end of the scale. For tuition, I'd like to see how financial aid changes the picture, since it seems like colleges these days engage in massive price discrimination by listing high tuition that few students actually pay in full.

Certainly some major things have become more expensive, but "there really wasn't such a thing as 'a job that doesn't pay enough to live on'" is way over the top.

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#344

Post by cucumber3732842 »

ElProlactin wrote: post #326
cucumber3732842 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The vast majority of Americans aren't calling for a new Gilded Age, although that's sort of what they're getting now, which is a big reason so many Americans are dejected and angry. I'd be interested to see the economic mobility stats for the gilded age. Because the vibe I get is that it was better than today for the people who wanted to work hard and were flexible but there were also a ton less opportunities to jus…

> Because the vibe I get is that it was better than today for the people who wanted to work hard... The "vibe" you get? You were there? I'd point out that during the Gilded Age, women were largely excluded from the work force, blacks were forced into sharecropping and tenant farming while under threat of racial violence including lynching, Chinese workers were forced into the most dangerous jobs and then punished for…

So you're saying that the mobility was a direct result of oppressing minorities? That's certainly a take. (See, we can both play this stupid game.)

At the end of the day most of those downtrodden minorities you think you care about ultimately wound up creating successful ethnic communities, before we adopted, at the behest of people like you, central policy that dismantled them starting in the mid 20th century.

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#346

Post by 8note »

afpx wrote: post #104

Tangential question: how do you actually find and hire people? I have a decent amount of disposable income [1], and I often want to pay people to help with things I’m not particularly skilled at. The problem is that I have no idea how to reliably find the right person or even how to structure the arrangement once I do. I have lots of examples, but here’s a recent one. A device failed, and replacing it would have cost…

traditionally the answer is guilds, with masters, journeymen, and apprentices

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#347

Post by 8note »

wat10000 wrote: post #271

This stuff drives me nuts. Everybody’s like “omg did you know that the unemployment rate doesn’t count people who stopped looking for work?!” Yes, I did know that, from the ten thousand times people said the same thing before you did. I also know it because I can read and BLS is completely up front about how their numbers are calculated. There isn’t even a single official rate. They put out six different numbers that…

> But why does it always have to be framed as, they’re lying to you?

the most obvious answer is that the not-included groups are usually not reported, and when general media and politicians repeat the numbers, they are treated as gospel rather than with nuance.

sure, you know that the "unemployment" number has little to do with employment at all and its a name just as good as "the orange number" but most people who talk about "the unemployment rate" actually treat it as if its unambiguously the unemployment rate.

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#348

Post by surcap526 »

runako wrote: post #11

Anybody who believes ~30% of the workforce was functionally unemployed in 1999 does not know what those words mean, or was not an adult in 1999. I get what they are trying to convey, but the stronger message is the more straightforward: there are too many jobs that do not pay enough to live on.

[dead]

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#349

Post by ElProlactin »

bpodgursky wrote: post #340
ElProlactin wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really so amusingly sad. A single person with no children making $22,500 before tax does not come away with $49,000 after tax and transfers. Look it up, dude. I assume you saw the CBO distribution-of-income report and didn't actually read it. The distribution-of-income figures look at HOUSEHOLD averages. So you're talking about families with children, retirees, etc. who are getting EITC, the child tax credit,…

Are you illiterate or just a bot? My original post said: a household with 2 kids and two adults.

You wrote:

> I said in the original post a person with $22,500 BEFORE TAX

A person is not a household of 4 people. You can't even keep your comments straight, but in either case, you're just wrong.

A 4 person household (2 adults, 2 kids) with $22,500 in income isn't "walking away" with ~$50,000. With 2 kids, this household is receiving a bunch of credits and mostly non-cash transfers that don't function like cash because they can't be spent freely.

And if you think a family of 4 living on $22,500 who is "doubling that" with mostly non-cash credits and transfers is living a good life, you're completely out of touch with reality.

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#350

Post by anotherhue »

stdbrouw wrote: post #143
anotherhue wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you want a capital-P Professional, but one who is willing (and permitted) to do direct consulting. That's pretty much lawyers and doctors, then nothing for about 80% of the distribution because those people are W2 and have neither the time nor the leeway to do solo consulting. Then you're into the ultra-specialist fields, at which point they have an agent. So I would say, you don't want to find a person,…

This seems like the opposite from what the OP is describing. There is a lot of affordable expertise going around, you just have to find it, and it's extremely frustrating because often you can't! Almost by accident we found out there's a fantastic seamstress living near us, who does it just as a hobby while attending college. She can fix almost any item of clothing for barely any money. A friend of mine is a woodwind…

I think you're making my point though, all of those connections required "knowing a guy", and the odds that for all the problems you might need expertise for, you won't know enough guys.

And it sounds like they did the work 'under market' which implies they don't do very much of it.

For your experience to be generally available for all people and all skills, I think you need a market.

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