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Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

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Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#801

Post by jlawson »

tsimionescu wrote: post #378
kukallan wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for the whole of Europe and I might be a sheep - but at least in Scandinavia, these far right parties are more of a symptom of the mainstream parties refusal to talk about problems related to immigration combined with US cultural influence. Sweden is no.1 in Europe when it comes to gun violence right now and only last year non-right political parties started discussing current crime waves link to integr…

Hard on crime and hard on immigration IS the far right. Sure, if the old parties had veered far-right, new far-right parties wouldn't have shown up. The problem are not the parties, the problem are the policies. Kicking immigrants out or licking them up will not improve the life of the local lower class, despite all the promises. It may improve the life of the rich, who won't have to fear bring mugged. But the reason…

You've got the class relationship with immigrants backwards.

Poor people are more likely to be victims of low-level crimes than rich people for a variety of reasons. When criminal immigrants come in, it's poor people they victimize.

It's also poor people who must compete with unskilled immigrants for jobs.

Rich people benefit from low-skilled immigration. They can isolate themselves physically from the bad immigrant neighborhoods, but also hire those immigrants to provide services for them. The immigrants will push down unskilled labor prices by the very simple laws of supply and demand. The immigrants will not compete on the labor market with the rich.

This is why the rich in the modern world have always been the ones pushing for more immigration, and the poor have always pushed against. Upper class businessmen and media people strut around like they're MLK but they really just want to pay their maid and gardener less.

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#802

Post by [deleted] »

krapp wrote: post #788
nradov wrote: post #775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes that's what I mean.

We live in the 21st century, not the 18th century. If liberty requires that access to guns be a universal and inalienable right, then the capacity to manufacture and provide guns must scale with the population, and a small arms manufacturing infrastructure is necessary now to supply 300 million Americans with the access to firearms that the Constitution deems necessary for the US to remain a free state. Otherwise lib…

[deleted]

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#803

Post by bumby »

jaywalk wrote: post #705
nradov wrote: post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The individual right to keep and bear arms is a natural right of all free people. It doesn't depend on the existence of the small arms industry. When the US Constitution was written there was hardly even an industry; most firearms were craft built.

If what you're saying were true, it would mean that manufacturing guns and/or ammunition for anything other than personal use could be made illegal without running afoul of the 2nd Amendment. Which is absurd.

Apparently, this can be pursued at the State level, so it may not be unconstitutional.

https://malegislature.gov/Bills/192/HD4192/Cosponsor

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#804

Post by MichaelRazum »

rsj_hn wrote: post #677
MichaelRazum wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree on the inflation measurement. Regarding your question there is a simple explenation. YES we are much much productive then before. BUT wages are decided by markets. No one is paying you your "fair" share if it is possible to hire someone cheaper. Its like a commodity in the end. Good devs or spezialized doctors get a very very good sallary, so it just depends on your "market value".

FYI, (non-farm) Labor productivity declined by 5.2% year over year: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/prod2.t02.htm If you break these numbers down, you see that total production increased by 1.2%, but it required 7.4% more labor to produce that extra 1.2%. Compensation went up around 3% but of course in real terms it declined -- it pretty much has to decline if you need more labor to produce the same amount of stuff.…

Sounds strange. What about this graph https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OPHNFB

I would argue that just based on the technological progress total average productivity per person should go up.

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#805

Post by [deleted] »

Maursault wrote: post #716
nradov wrote: post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The individual right to keep and bear arms is a natural right of all free people. It doesn't depend on the existence of the small arms industry. When the US Constitution was written there was hardly even an industry; most firearms were craft built.

> The individual right to keep and bear arms is a natural right of all free people. Gun advocates are always going too far. It's not enough that the Founders specifically and narrowly intended the 2nd Amendment to be a check on tyranny and intentionally exclusive of self-defense, it has to also include self-defense due to popular and intellectually dishonest misinterpretation. No, a right to keep and bear arms is not…

[deleted]

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#806

Post by beerandt »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #686
klyrs wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's weird in perspective. Snapchat's valuation doesn't give them buying power, but Apple has nearly 200B cash on hand -- they could theoretically buy and close down all of these manufacturers and test the hypothesis that Big Gun is causing all the shootings.

Theoretically, could Apple buy S&W and…just shut it down? Would the government allow it? Curious…

Most arms manufacturers have contracts with the government, including contracts to operate govt-owned ammunition factories.

Even smaller companies that don't make a product with a major govt/ military contract often have contracts as secondary suppliers of 3rd party or military spec'd parts, like scopes, mounts, triggers, etc.

A buyer could shut down a company that holds such a contract, but then it would just go back up for public bid.

Additionally, military standards for ammo are very high, and companies make money selling "factory seconds" (that don't meet military qa/qc, but are otherwise fine) to the public, which is an included perk of these govt contracts. And isn't a negligible fraction of required production.

So even a hypothetical buyer that would meet its contractual obligation to the govt would do so at an additional cost compared a company selling seconds and surplus manufacturing capacity.

In short, the market won't change without major policy change, no matter what major players might be hypothetically bought and shut down.

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#807

Post by [deleted] »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #746
csomar wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Same reason gun control wont happen no matter how many people get killed - ultimately its because gun manufacturers would lose money. This is ... derailing. If Americans didn't love guns, they wouldn't go and buy guns. There is close to 400 million unregistered firearm in the USA. I don't think it's only Republican's. The companies who make guns will try to protect their business but at this point they are just sec…

> A person with a gun is not necessarily dangerous. An idiot with a gun is. An idiot without is still as dangerous. just adding some facts here -- 1.2% of gun deaths were accidents https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/aug/21/jason-miya...

[deleted]

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#808

Post by [deleted] »

8note wrote: post #760
csomar wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Same reason gun control wont happen no matter how many people get killed - ultimately its because gun manufacturers would lose money. This is ... derailing. If Americans didn't love guns, they wouldn't go and buy guns. There is close to 400 million unregistered firearm in the USA. I don't think it's only Republican's. The companies who make guns will try to protect their business but at this point they are just sec…

A person with a fun is dangerous, whether they are an idiot not. It's the same as all code having bugs, regardless of whether the programmer was skilled

[deleted]

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#809

Post by habitue »

mellavora wrote: post #361
habitue wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other mandate of the Fed is getting full employment. Pumping money into the economy helps increase employment and there is a long way to go to get back to pre-pandemic levels on that metric. They believed the inflation was transitory, and were going to wait it out. Now it's very clearly not transitory, so they are taking action

Ah, the Phillips curve. I recommend you make some charts for yourself comparing US unemployment figures with CPI inflation and see if you can spot the curve. hint: https://www.hussmanfunds.com/wmc/wmc110404.htm spoiler: " there is in fact no strong "tradeoff" between unemployment and general price inflation, and almost certainly not an exploitable one. The Phillips Curve is essentially a statement that lower unemploy…

I was just explaining what the Fed's public reasoning has been. I am not knowledgeable enough to comment on the correctness of the theory.

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#810

Post by throwawaycities »

treis wrote: post #652
mwigdahl wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but the same inflation that was driving up mortgage rates was also reducing the real value of the balance of the loan. You can't just look at rates here.

We're talking about affordability here. And my point is that to determine if something is affordable you have to look at monthly payment and not the purchase price.

By that measure you also have to take into account that while you are renting to save up for the down payment you are paying a rent much greater in proportioning to your income. You are making a car payment much greater in proportion to your income. You also very likely are paying a student loan payment that did not exist for the 1970 home buyer. It is much more difficult to save up for even the down payment and more difficult to get approved for a home loan because you already have significant debt which the 1970 home buyer did not. In totality the debt driven economy makes homes less affordable…it’s not just about a monthly payment.
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