Why Income Inequality Matters

[Malacite]

Re: Why Income Inequality Matters

It's also worth pointing out that the Stock Market is again at an all-time high, as are corporate profits.

In fact, they've been soaring every since the recovery started - yet the jobs aren't coming along.

EDIT: While we're on the subject of the evils of corporations and infrastructure...


I saw this on The Daily Show earlier tonight and lost my shit.


More than HALF of U.S. rivers are too polluted to support life as shocking report reveals scale of water contamination | Engineering Evil

[Taskmage]

Re: Why Income Inequality Matters

It's also worth pointing out that the Stock Market is again at an all-time high, as are corporate profits.

In fact, they've been soaring every since the recovery started - yet the jobs aren't coming along.

Don't conflate corporate profits with expected returns on investment. Just because corporations are making money at their current levels of output doesn't necessarily mean that they can expect to make more money or even maintain that level of profit if they expand their operations by hiring more people.

[Malacite]

Re: Why Income Inequality Matters

Actually that's generally how it works - when corporations are doing well or better than expected, their value on the stock market goes up. This is usually from an "increase" in productivity.

But that's highly misleading because since there a number of factors that can contribute to that which aren't always shown, i.e. lay offs.

[Taskmage]

Re: Why Income Inequality Matters

Which isn't something I see a lot of evidence for, either. Actually, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data I found on Google public data (*), the unemployment rate has been on a steady decline since 2010, down to 7.6% from the 2009 peak of 10% unemployment, nearly halfway back down to the pre-recession rate of just under 5%. The same chart shows that the measured size of the labor force has actually been slowly rising, which punches a hole in the story I've been hearing about how discouraged workers exiting the work force account for a significant amount of the decline in the unemployment statistic. If discouraged workers are in fact leaving the work force, they seem to be being replaced at a faster pace by new workers entering the job market.

[Mezlo]

Re: Why Income Inequality Matters

EDIT: While we're on the subject of the evils of corporations and infrastructure...

This made me fall out of my chair laughing... literally...

[Malacite]

Re: Why Income Inequality Matters

The wording or the terrible link I posted? (I should have worded that better as it's a bit misleading now that I'm looking at it again)

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Which isn't something I see a lot of evidence for, either. Actually, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data I found on Google public data (*), the unemployment rate has been on a steady decline since 2010, down to 7.6% from the 2009 peak of 10% unemployment, nearly halfway back down to the pre-recession rate of just under 5%. The same chart shows that the measured size of the labor force has actually been slowly rising, which punches a hole in the story I've been hearing about how discouraged workers exiting the work force account for a significant amount of the decline in the unemployment statistic. If discouraged workers are in fact leaving the work force, they seem to be being replaced at a faster pace by new workers entering the job market.

Unemployment on the whole yes, but I'm simply stating that companies can "increase productivity" via layoffs which will be reflected in a higher stock value. The fact remains though that we're not seeing the kind of job growth we should, and that is largely due to 2 factors;

1) Congress being asshats and not streamlining more stimulus in the form of infrastructure, which is badly needed.

2) America's corporations sitting on something like 2~3 trillion dollars and not doing a damn thing with it, citing taxes as a reason for uncertainty... in other words, they're purposely cockblocking the economy because they don't want to have to actually pay their share of taxes or any other form of social justice. These asshats should all be in jail (and while we're at it, start letting out the people in for Pot already and just legalize and tax the hell out of it already. Prostitution too for that matter...)

[Taskmage]

Re: Why Income Inequality Matters

Unemployment on the whole yes, but I'm simply stating that companies can "increase productivity" via layoffs which will be reflected in a higher stock value.

There are all kinds of tricks they can use. The company my wife worked for previously had an unstated policy of keeping a high turnover rate in their techs and installers to maximize the number of people on the lowest pay scale. Which is ludicrous considering the lost productivity involved in constantly training new people rather than keeping the ones you have, but there it is. They also forbade overtime while refusing to hire enough personnel to complete the work in the allotted time. This kept the higher level employees working 80 hour weeks while being chastised for it, whereas violating the policy too much could be grounds for termination for newer people. See high turnover rate. On top of all that, the system that assigned jobs could allocate a 4 hour job to you when you only had 1 hour left in your day, and you could neither refuse or abort it. Utter clusterfuck of retarded policies aimed at "getting more for less" and trimming the bottom line.

[Taskmage]

Re: Why Income Inequality Matters

The fact remains though that we're not seeing the kind of job growth we should

idk, man. What kind of job growth do you think we "should" be seeing? Looking at the BLS data I linked earlier, the decrease in the unemployment rate and increase in absolute job numbers we've been seeing for the past two years are as fast or faster than the expansionary periods we saw during the 90s and the mid-00s. I don't think your fact is a fact.

[Malacite]

Re: Why Income Inequality Matters

There are all kinds of tricks they can use. The company my wife worked for previously had an unstated policy of keeping a high turnover rate in their techs and installers to maximize the number of people on the lowest pay scale. Which is ludicrous considering the lost productivity involved in constantly training new people rather than keeping the ones you have, but there it is. They also forbade overtime while refusing to hire enough personnel to complete the work in the allotted time. This kept the higher level employees working 80 hour weeks while being chastised for it, whereas violating the policy too much could be grounds for termination for newer people. See high turnover rate. On top of all that, the system that assigned jobs could allocate a 4 hour job to you when you only had 1 hour left in your day, and you could neither refuse or abort it. Utter clusterfuck of retarded policies aimed at "getting more for less" and trimming the bottom line.

Yes and I've seen all of that first hand and it was Hell on earth - basically why I quit my 1st job, I couldn't handle the management it was stressing the shit out of everyone.

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idk, man. What kind of job growth do you think we "should" be seeing? Looking at the BLS data I linked earlier, the decrease in the unemployment rate and increase in absolute job numbers we've been seeing for the past two years are as fast or faster than the expansionary periods we saw during the 90s and the mid-00s. I don't think your fact is a fact.

A LOT better than what we're seeing now. It's half democracy, half capitalism's fault. Like I said, politicians are stonewalling or just not even trying to get the kind of stimulus needed to get shit done and put people to work while a lot of the big businesses are literally sitting on piles of money doing nothing with it citing bullshit reasons and watching their stock values sky rocket.

Contrast that with Germany or China, who are both excelling right now (though for entirely different reasons) - Germany's gotten their shit together, in spite of all the bailouts and is booming again. They may even give Japan a run for their money for the #3 economy spot. China is exploiting their centralized govt (yay communism...) and pouring all kinds of resources into construction and green energy and it's paying off in spades (they still have a lot of political shit to deal with in the long run however and they're actually in quite a lot of debt as well, so anyone talking about China calling in the U.S.' debt with them doesn't know wtf they're talking about it's not happening, it would destroy China).

[Taskmage]

Re: Why Income Inequality Matters

Again, looking at these economic indicators, the growth we're seeing right now is among the fastest we've seen in 20 years. The economy is coming out of a shitty place and it isn't where we want it to be right now, but to say that however fast it's growing just isn't as fast as you want is completely arbitrary.

[Malacite]

Re: Why Income Inequality Matters

It could be going faster though, a lot faster if certain assholes would get their shit together.

But that's Democracy for you.