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U.S. Payrolls Gain More-Than-Expected 200,000; Jobless Rate Falls to 8.5%

Inflation is the result of income growth outpacing productivity growth to which there is very little in the near term. However, households are undeniably feeling the pinch as indicated by the balance sheets of all households and non profit organizations .....

Not that complicated anymore. Just print a lot of money. Run huge deficits, and then make your own Federal Reserve the number one buyer of Treasuries. "Quantitative Easing" will get you inflation just fine. Hitched to reduced demand at the same time, cause incomes are falling, or folks losing jobs. Stagflation.

The only thing saving us is that Europe sucks worse right now.
 
Are you aware of what is happening in Greece ? Italy ? Ireland ? To their standards of living ? What does "austerity measures" mean to you ?

To begin with, the U.S. possess none of the fundamental characteristics that have plagued Italy, Ireland, or Greece, e.g. dependence on international trade (specifically demand for their exports) as a means to finance public expenditures. Furthermore, the single greatest threat to continual increases of U.S. exports is economic contraction from our largest importers.

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Comparative advantage was a neat thing for a long time. But now, an American can invent something, or take some brilliant idea, and if you blink its being made in China or Indonesia, etc., before we have one off the assembly line. What used to be a head start of a decade in now worth about 10 minutes.

Given the difficulties you are having understanding the cause behind a trade deficit, it makes little sense to cite product life-cycles without presenting credible evidence of shrinking growth and development phases in the first place. Do you have anything to substantiate your position? If not, there really is no point in responding.

Free and open trade now guarantees that our standard of living will be pulled down to that of the folks whose products we buy. You can see it ebb in the size of our trade deficits.

Nope! Open trade guarantees that we have the greatest selection and best prices for all goods produced in the world. Free trade is not a zero sum game!
 
And you have to ask why i call your posts on this topic incoherent?

Yeah. The only time we reduce our trade deficit is to put ourselves into a bigger recession than our trade partners. When your trade imbalance grows to the negative, you are losing your comparative advantage. We were in the $700 B per year range just prior to the Recession.

With a trade imbalance of that magnitude, our standard of living is going to go down. Further, we are on similar roads as Greece, Ireland, and Italy, in that our debt will mandate austerity measures. Yank a trillion off of our government credit card limit, and folks will have to make due with less.

So obvious I thought a blind man could see it. Apparently not :roll:
 
Wonderful job our Republican majority House has been doing eh? ;)
 
The only time we reduce our trade deficit is to put ourselves into a bigger recession than our trade partners.

What on earth are you rambling about? A reduction in the current account deficit was a result in a slowdown in international demand for U.S. products combined with an increase in personal saving.

When your trade imbalance grows to the negative, you are losing your comparative advantage. We were in the $700 B per year range just prior to the Recession.

Again, incoherent nonsense. U.S. comparative advantage is driven primarily by innovation and gains in knowledge.

With a trade imbalance of that magnitude, our standard of living is going to go down.

You are obviously confused; mercantilism died in the 19th century.
 
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What on earth are you rambling about? A reduction in the current account deficit was a result in a slowdown in international demand for U.S. products combined with an increase in personal saving.

Again, incoherent nonsense. U.S. comparative advantage is driven primarily by innovation and gains in knowledge.

You are obviously confused; mercantilism died in the 19th century.

When a Maytag plant in Iowa closes down because of foreign competition, or moves its production to Mexico, show us the comparative advantage benefit to those that lost the jobs. Show us what they are now doing with their advantage and how they are now earning more.

Likewise with the TV's we no longer make. And the cars. And the tools. Etc. Show us how we have collectively benefitted. Being able to buy something cheaper because it is made in China has an advantage as a consumer, but only for so long as I have income with which to consume.

Meanwhile, while our trade deficit was going off a cliff, we kept our economy propped up with bubbles. The first was the stock bubble caused by the dot-com boom. Quickly replaced by the housing bubble. But you can only play the shell game of selling property back and forth to each other for so long, and we sure found that out.

Because we have such a large trade deficit, indicative of a large erosion of our comparative advantage in the last 20 years, and had replaced our lack of competitiveness with an economy supported by too much borrowed money, we aren't pulling out of this mess like we have in the past. Actual unemployment now, if we used the same LFPR as we had when Obama took office, would be 10.9%. That libs are cheering because its reported at 8.5% means that we have 2.4 folks per every hundred that would have been bringing home paychecks when Obama was inaugurated, but are not now, reducing the standard of living in those homes, and we don't even count them anymore in looking to see if we are better or worse.

I am through with this libtard lunacy.
 
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Wonderful job our Republican majority House has been doing eh? ;)

Yeah, they call all the shots, don't they ? Stimulus fail. Obamacare fail. $1.5 Trillion deficits. Green energy boondoggle rabbit holes. $30 B negative equity in our GM stock. The list goes on ...........

....... oh wait !!! :roll:
 
When a Maytag plant in Iowa closes down because of foreign competition, or moves its production to Mexico, show us the comparative advantage benefit to those that lost the jobs. Show us what they are now doing with their advantage and how they are now earning more.

Unfortunately those who lost their jobs won't see much advantage, but everyone who buys a washing machine or dryer will, in the form of lower prices. Ask the Soviet Union, or Cuba, or North Korea how well closed economies work.
 
Likewise with the TV's we no longer make. And the cars. And the tools. Etc. Show us how we have collectively benefitted. Being able to buy something cheaper because it is made in China has an advantage as a consumer, but only for so long as I have income with which to consume.

This is a good point, but it leads to a deeper discussion about our standard of living and our consumptive and acquisitive habits.

You and I need income to continue living as we do. If we lost our access to income 100 years ago, to what would we likely turn in order to survive? I think the answer is farming. Living really, really simply. As a culture we feel above this. And it's become more difficult anyway, as it's hard to sell local produce in competition with large organic farms, let alone industrial food production which is heavily governmentally subsidized. So in some respect the lifestyle we should be able to rely on (self-sufficiency) has become so undermined by federal food production activities that it might not even be that much of an option anymore.

So when we lose our income but want to retain our standard of living, to where do we turn nowadays? The federal government, who will literally pay us to keep consuming. If we did today what we would have done 100 years ago, that self-sufficiency would detrimentally impact the bottom lines of many corporations. Dependence on government is profitable to large corporations, and therefore we have a growing government to render us dependent on them and make self-sufficiency non-feasible.
 
Unfortunately those who lost their jobs won't see much advantage, but everyone who buys a washing machine or dryer will, in the form of lower prices. Ask the Soviet Union, or Cuba, or North Korea how well closed economies work.

But that is a short lived advantage. You buy a washer and save $50, for a washer that will last 10 years. That's $5 per year benefit. Meanwhile, the Mexican that made it will be earning $500 or more per month with his "comparative advantage" than he otherwise would have, 12 months a year, for those 10 years.

I am not advocating a closed economy. I am debatiung that we have lost our comparative advantage, and any arguments which use it to ignore the mess we are in are stupid arguments. Not unlike you mentioning N. Korea. It is not hard to see.

When the results of opening up your trade barriers are ever growing trade deficits, evenutally reaching near to 5% of your GDP, you are getting pummeled on comparative advantage. There is essentially not enough other things where you are now having an increased advantage.
 
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............... So when we lose our income but want to retain our standard of living, to where do we turn nowadays? The federal government, who will literally pay us to keep consuming. If we did today what we would have done 100 years ago, that self-sufficiency would detrimentally impact the bottom lines of many corporations. Dependence on government is profitable to large corporations, and therefore we have a growing government to render us dependent on them and make self-sufficiency non-feasible.

Which is essentially what has happened over the last two decades. Having folks on unemployment for three years is a glaring example of how we have lost "comparative advantage", but yet subsidized our continued decline there with government handouts.

We are staring stagflation in the face. As I noted earlier, the only thing that is keeping us "relatively" stable right now is that Europe is in such a mess, and that we look better then they at this moment, so money is still coming here when it would otherwise seek other homes.
 
But that is a short lived advantage. You buy a washer and save $50, for a washer that will last $10 years. That's $5 per year benefit. Meanwhile, the Mexican that made it will be earning $500 of more per month with his "comparative advantage" than he otherwise would have, 12 months a year, for those 10 years.

I am not advocating a closed economy. I am debatiung that we have lost our comparative advantage, and any arguments which use it to ignore the mess we are in are stupid arguments. Not unlike you mentioning N. Korea. It is not hard to see.

When the results of opening up your trade barriers are ever growing trade deficits, evenutally reaching near to 5% of your GDP, you are getting pummeled on comparative advantage. There is essentially not enough other things where you are now having an increased advantage.

Of course we're not just talking about washers and dryers, but all products. When you erect trade barriers you are in effect raising the cost of goods and services (increasing inflation) and stifling free market competition. That is why Americans objected so strenuously to tariffs in the early days of the Republic when they were the government's primary source of revenue. It didn't work then and it won't work now.
 
Of course we're not just talking about washers and dryers, but all products. When you erect trade barriers you are in effect raising the cost of goods and services (increasing inflation) and stifling free market competition. That is why Americans objected so strenuously to tariffs in the early days of the Republic when they were the government's primary source of revenue. It didn't work then and it won't work now.

Again, this is exceedingly narrow-minded. No one is talking tariffs as applied in the earlier times of the Republic as a means of raising revenue. But we have lost our comparative advantages, and you are unable to counter that. When we impose egregious regulations on production and labor, via such as our EPA and NLRB and a host of other agencies, while we import products that cost less primarily because they are produced with no such added costs, we are destroying advantage. That argument is not to do away with our standards, but is pointing out the fact that liberals will not admit, mainly that excessive regulation, taxation, and redistribution will kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
 
It's interesting to watch a liberal debate for free trade against a conservative.
 
Of course we're not just talking about washers and dryers, but all products. When you erect trade barriers you are in effect raising the cost of goods and services (increasing inflation) and stifling free market competition. That is why Americans objected so strenuously to tariffs in the early days of the Republic when they were the government's primary source of revenue. It didn't work then and it won't work now.


How are tariffs affecting the countries that we export to? Like China? Seems that they are winning that war.

j-mac
 
It's interesting to watch a liberal debate for free trade against a conservative.

LOL ... with you. To further add to the irony, how much did we hear while W was President about "Republicans" sending jobs overseas, essentially by the claim that they were in the pocket of big business, and big business was relocating many jobs ? The movement of jobs is as much a part of our trade imbalance, and lack of comparative advantages in many of its definitions, as any other measure of where things that we buy are made, and why.

I did not mention the EPA before, but that is another agency that has hobbled us with absurdity, and its comparative disadvantages. Liberals are not arguing for "free trade", IMMHO, so much as they are trying to pretend that liberalism, and its negaitve impact on capitalism, and our economy, is not of any consequence.

Like it or not libs, the US is now at a comparative disadvantage. And liberalism is first and foremost what did it.
 
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Like it or not libs, the US is now at a comparative disadvantage. And liberalism is first and foremost what did it.

If your going to make an accusation like that why not be a little more specific. Please point out how liberalism has made the US uncompetitive.
 
If your going to make an accusation like that why not be a little more specific. Please point out how liberalism has made the US uncompetitive.

I believe his previous paragraph, and previous posts, mention that "When we impose egregious regulations on production and labor, via such as our EPA and NLRB and a host of other agencies, while we import products that cost less primarily because they are produced with no such added costs, we are destroying advantage"

We are at a competitive disadvantage worldwide when we handicap our own processes.
 
If your going to make an accusation like that why not be a little more specific. Please point out how liberalism has made the US uncompetitive.

Start here:

Number one job today is to create jobs
The number one job today is to create jobs. America only works when American's are working. And nothing would do more to balance the budget than to go from 9.2 percent back down to 4 percent unemployment, taking 5 percent of people off of unemployment, off of food stamps, off of Medicaid, put them back with a job, paying taxes, giving their family a future.

And I'll be candid. We did not need a deficit commission. We needed a jobs commission who talked with people who only create jobs. I am sick and tired of Congressional hearings, where people who have never created a job show up to explain what their theory is of doing something they have never done.

I am going to outline two large strategies that will move us towards job creation: an American Energy Plan and an Environmental Solutions Agency to replace the Environmental Protection Agency.
Source: Speech at 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference Feb 11, 2011

Unions want to take away right to secret-ballot elections
As unions cannot win many secret-ballot elections to organize workers, they have come up with a new solution. It's not to make the union more desirable. It's simply to take away the American worker's right to have a secret-ballot election. This would repeal reforms to protect workers from intimidation and extortion that go back to 1935. It's not an idle left-wing fantasy: it actually passed the House of Representatives in early 2007 with almost no public notice. Under the Orwellian name of the "Freedom of Choice Act," this legislation is backed by President Obama, who has vowed to sign the measure if passed by Congress, where it enjoys wide Democratic support. This the Democratic Congress and president are fighting to eliminate a fundamental American right just to make it easier for their union allies to acquire more members, more dues, and more power. And yet 89 percent of the American people don't want workers to lose their secret-ballot rights.
Source: Real Change, by Newt Gingrich, p. 35 Dec 18, 2007

Union leaders prefer protection over competition
In the United States, there exists a coalition of union leaders who prefer protection over competition; environmental extremists who value nature over the well-being and prosperity of their fellow citizens; and liberal intellectuals who distrust the fluidity and uncertainty of the market and prefer the orderliness of command bureaucracies. This liberal coalition complains about companies’ outsourcing jobs while insisting on corporate taxes that encourage companies to go overseas. They prefer that government impose on business obsolete, absurd work rules, even though these raise costs, lower productivity, and make America less competitive in the world market. These liberals believe in expanding regulation even when it fails to meet any cost-benefit test and clearly drives jobs out of the US. The Left refuses to reform litigation or create a better system of civil justice even though it knows the explosion of lawsuits makes it less desirable to create jobs and invest in the US.
Source: Gingrich Communications website, Newt Gingrich 2012 | Leadership Now, “Issues” Sep 1, 2007

Unions focus on politics; corporations on doing business
The media have in recent years become fixated on the questions of corporate contributions and what they call “soft” money for financing campaigns, but the truth is, nothing on the right is at all comparable to what the unions do. First of all, corporations are much less capable of being organized--each of them operates politically on its own--and they are, as profit-seeking institutions, much more inclined to seek accommodation with whoever is in power. Labor bosses, on the other hand, have a strategic view of politics and spend a great deal of time and effort developing long-term political muscle. By contrast corporate leaders focus mainly on their respective businesses and spend very little time of effort on politics. When major business leaders do for one reason or another concern themselves with Washington, they usually set up Washington offices or lobbyists and leave matters to them.
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p. 71-72 Jul 2, 1998

Newt Gingrich on Jobs

j-mac
 
Start here:



j-mac

Oh well if NEWT GINGRICH SAYS IT!

Don't worry iliveonramen you don't have to take him seriously.

He once used Conservapedia as a source. Shows you how deep down the rabbit hole of right wing partisanship he's gone.
 
So, 500K people retired or enrolled in collage in the last two months? Bull!


j-mac

Or decided to become a stay-at-home parent or became disabled or moved to another country or died or possibly other things that would take them out of those looking for work.
 
I believe his previous paragraph, and previous posts, mention that "When we impose egregious regulations on production and labor, via such as our EPA and NLRB and a host of other agencies, while we import products that cost less primarily because they are produced with no such added costs, we are destroying advantage"

We are at a competitive disadvantage worldwide when we handicap our own processes.

So...lets say we got rid of every regulation on the book (the most extreme case) you think that an American worker would be able to compete with the labor costs of China?
 
j-mac,

Unions jobs are a minority of jobs in the US. It's hard to demonize unions as the culprit when they make up such a small minority of private sector jobs.
 
Too much work to look for work, I like that!

Sure times are hard but people need to stop looking for a hand out and at least keep trying. Success is not assured but the opportunity to succeed is, that is the promise of America. If we don't have that then what do we have?

Why is everyone not looking for work automatically getting a hand out from the government? Maybe a family decided that one of the spouses makes enough to care for the whole family if they cut back on a few things, so one is staying home. Maybe the person is living in their parent's basement. You may not approve of this, but isn't that up to the parents who allow it? Maybe a person was able to make an arrangement with a family member or close friend to become a livein helper for room and board and possibly a little extra spending money (I have such a person living with me now), whether they are helping take care of children, helping take care of an elderly or disabled person, or just doing cleaning and/or maintenance tasks around the house.

It is also quite possible that some of those who went to college had just gotten out of the military (most can get unemployment right after getting out) and used their Post 9-11 GIBill to pay for school and provide money for expenses. Now they're no longer on unemployment, but wouldn't be getting anything they didn't earn.
 
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