Wenchang wrote:Cutting taxes is a way of raising the income of the people who you are having pay less taxes.
This is true, but there's only so far you can cut - even if you totally exempt someone making 10 bucks an hour he'll still be paying more than half of that for a one-bedroom apartment and much of the rest will likely go towards health insurance before you even factor anything else in. As you said in a previous post, tax rates have gone down for everyone in recent decades (though the top has seen much, much more "relief" than anyone else), but inequality has continued to soar, so other areas very much need addressing.
People's life expectancy, literacy, access to health care, access to food, pretty much whatever you like, are better than they were in previous decades, across the board. All of those things have improved for the poor, and for everyone else.
Overall this might be true, but as with taxes the effect has not been across-the-board; a quick bit of Googling found
this bit (which only goes back to the 70's), and more interestingly
this one (yes, it's from The Atlantic, but it got its numbers from the WSJ), which aside from the same overall trend as the previous chart shows that for poor women specifically life expectancy has actually gone down. The article notes that not every contributing factor can be reliably accounted for, but again, the bottom is obviously missing something that the top has (and I get the feeling that the answer is the obvious one).
There are plenty of plumbing jobs open, and plumbers make about twice the average U.S. wage, but people don't want to do the job. Why would they?
I'll take your word when it comes to demand, but if I had to guess in this particular case, I'd say 1) The training and certification required to become a plumber (not to mention having to own all your own tools/van/etc.) is too much of an initial time/money investment for many people to afford, 2) You'll still be paying through the nose for health insurance, even under the ACA, and 3) This particular profession, much like construction and others of the same ilk, offers no guarantee of work to be done; if the phone doesn't ring, you don't get paid. I can only assume that similar considerations apply for many of the jobs seeking more people, along with...
It's not like most unemployed people in the U.S. are dying in the streets or something, if they don't like a particular job, many of them will elect to be unemployed unless and until they can find a job they want.
As someone who's currently looking for work, I can attest that I've come up against literally hundreds of other applicants even when seeking a single part-time warehouse position, and this has happened more than once within a matter of weeks (and forget it if you try for an entry-level office position; they won't even consider you if you haven't already worked several years in their particular field). I'd be lying if I said I had no "basement" when it comes to the sorts of jobs I'd seek, but I don't think my standards are set particularly high, and I'd imagine the same is true for many people, especially those who, unlike me, have families to support and college loans to pay off (for the record, I do have a bachelor's degree). Hell, if McDonald's or Wal-Mart actually offered something resembling a living wage I'd be first in line to sign up to mop the floors.
No amount of desire not to be greedy or government policy is likely to change this.
As Mischief Maker noted in his post, at one point we managed to, if nothing else, take a fairly big bite out of the problem on the domestic front; mind you, I'm no isolationist, but I do think it would be nice if more people in positions of authority didn't leave every single facet of commerce to the whims of personal avarice. Again, I'm not versed enough in economics to draw a line anywhere in particular, but is it
that out of the question to ever consider the harm your decisions might inflict on both interested and disinterested parties on these matters?
Many math intensive jobs, say finance or software engineering are not that hard to find openings in, the problem is a shortage of people. It's not the case that a majority of people could do such jobs.
It's true that not everyone can be a computer programmer, but I'd once again add that, even in many places where people off the street could easily adapt the skills they have to an open position, new employee training barely exists anymore; if you can't be directly popped into an active slot your first day you might as well not even apply (and until they find this elusive perfect match their existing staff can simply do more work for no additional compensation, and if they don't like it, there's the door). That's not a matter of people not being available, that's just management not wanting to make even a minor investment in its workforce, and another direct consequence of unchecked "greed is good" - in another era, a company with an attitude like that wouldn't be able to keep anybody, but these days they've got waiting lists miles long, and not because they've somehow become more lovable.
And indeed, there have been numerous financial crises, all kinds of blow-ups, yet the size of the financial industry has grown. I don't think any of the things you describe can really explain very much of what has happened in the U.S. or world economy.
As I mentioned earlier, financial firms in particular have managed to get themselves into a cushy spot where their everyday goings-on are subject to less and less preventative oversight, but when they get too big for their britches and the sky starts falling the government is forced to step in and save them. Re-implementing Glass-Steagall and similar Depression-era legislation would, I think, be a prudent step to take; if you're too big to fail, break up and remain responsible for your own decisions.
Like I'm not sure how it's supposed to explain the move away from manufacturing jobs into service jobs
Maybe my line of thinking is too simplistic, but the path seems fairly clear from here: corporations don't want to pay domestic workers the wages/benefits/etc. they fought (and sometimes died) to obtain, so they move more and more of their operations to places where they can exploit workers to a much greater extent (or replace them with machines), eliminating higher-wage positions (and crippling the remaining ones by making them compete against their counterparts). Since workers can't instantly relocate half a world away like capital assets can, they're forced to take what's left of the jobs on offer, mostly low-wage service positions (which, as an added bonus for management, they can still classify as "temporary stops" for employees even when they remain there for years, and can thus demand more and more from them in terms of both tasks and availability, while paying them as if they were high schoolers looking for spare pocket change).
All this overseas production has made many of the things people take for granted, like clothing for instance, cheaper to produce, giving Americans more access to them and to other things.
That's just the thing, though - if you'll pardon another trip to Wal-Mart, whenever the company is asked how it can pay its employees so poorly they answer "our products are cheap enough that they can afford to shop here". That's what you call a vicious cycle; by paying you so little we can keep products cheap, simultaneously limiting your options in where you can spend your money (i.e. putting it right back into the company's pocket) and using that as an excuse to keep doing it. It's one step removed from the time-honored practice of paying workers not in cash but with credits to the company store, and siphons cash out of the larger economy to dump it directly into the McDuck silo, hence the record profits these outfits keep reporting (and doing absolutely nothing with).
It might if unemployed has ballooned as a result, but there's just not much evidence of that. You can look at historical data, from 1948 to today, the lowest unemployment we have on record is 2.9%, highest is 10.3%. Most years it's between 5-7%. In other words, pretty stable.
The thing that gets ignored in this area (and constitutes the kernel of truth in conservative yowling that Obama is "cooking" employment numbers) is how many of the jobs being created/worked pay even a minimal living wage; I don't know if any such study has been done on the topic, but I'd wager that many, many more of the employed these days are going into debt to pay their bills than was the case in the '50s or '60s, since wages haven't come close to keeping up with inflation for decades now (but the "overall" job numbers still look good on paper).
Meanwhile we've had to bail out U.S. auto companies, you think the high wages among union workers in those companies had absolutely nothing to do with those problems?
I certainly won't come out in favor of every perk any union has ever demanded, but in terms of which side of the labor/management equation has gained decidedly more ground (and assets) over the past 40 or so years while the other has been forced to retreat the second things get tight, I'd be very hesitant to place equal responsibility for any industry's financial woes on both sides. Again, if you have any hard numbers to offer on this front, by all means present them.