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readingatwork posted:If manufacturing comes back and (more importantly) unions can flex their power again the lower and middle classes will make more money which would allow them to absorb any price increases. Manufacturing isn't "coming back" because it never actually went anywhere. We produce twice as much now as we did in the 70s with one third of the labor. A manufacturing boom would create a few tens of thousands of jobs at most, which is literally a drop in the bucket compared to the number of jobs the US economy produces every month. Even if all of those were high paying jobs, it wouldn't move actual wage growth one bit. It can't be said enough that US manufacturing is not and has not been declining. US manufacturing is strong and has been strong for decades, we just don't need factory workers.
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Mar 2, 2017 19:42
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I'm not sure the data really backs up her conclusion entirely. This is manufacturing output vs. employment in the US, both indexed against 1997 since it's the cutoff that Houseman uses in this interview:  Growth in manufacturing had clearly been rising dramatically for some time (1987 is as far back as the output series goes) despite no meaningful change in employment. Moreover, the employment metric here is thousands of persons, so that straight line is actually a gradual decline once population growth is taken into account. Without doing more research I'm willing to take the computer industry growth aspect of what she's saying at face value for 2000 and beyond, but it's pretty clear there's more going on here in general. Edit- And it's also worth pointing out that that massive drop from 2000 until now represents only about 3% of the total labor force over the course of 16 years. Paradoxish fucked around with this message at 22:17 on Mar 3, 2017 |
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Mar 3, 2017 22:10
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Helsing posted:This was addressed in the interview. The increase in output is attributable to the rapid development of the electronics industry, especially computers, and the fact their processing speed keeps increasing every year. The rest of the manufacturing sector has performed quite poorly and at best is keeping pace with the rest of the economy, or at worst lagging behind it in productivity growth. What? I specifically responded to this in my post. Here: Susan Houseman posted:If one excludes the computer industry from the numbers, manufacturing output is only about 8 percent higher now than in 1997. It is about 5 percent lower than before the Great Recession. And, without the computer industry, productivity growth is no higher in manufacturing than in the economy overall. I chose those graphs to show that the massive increase in output coupled with flat employment began long before the time period she's talking about here. In fact, it goes all the way back to the beginning of the series tracking that data. So that massive jump in growth from 2000 is thanks to the computer industry - so what? She's still saying that the rest of the manufacturing sector has increased its output by 8% over the last two decades despite cutting a third of its workforce. Helsing posted:No it isn't. Manufacturing employment was relatively stable for decades and then suddenly makes a dramatic plummet around the year 2000. Yes, I also acknowledged this in my post. My point is that the civilian labor force literally doubled between the early 60s and 2000, yet manufacturing employment was flat in absolute terms over that same period. Helsing posted:Obviously there are other factors at play here and this is only one part of a larger story but the idea that there wasn't a huge disruption in the manufacturing industry, which was directly tied in to the opening up of new labour markets in places like China, is ridiculous. I never said any of this, so I don't know why you're responding to my post as if I did. Manufacturing was a rapidly diminishing part of the employment picture in the US long before 2000, and that apparently precipitous drop over the last 16 years actually doesn't represent a huge number of jobs compared to the wider labor market. Paradoxish fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Mar 4, 2017 |
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Mar 4, 2017 00:28
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Helsing posted:Output is only about 8% higher than it was in 1997 and in fact about 5% lower than before the Great Recession. That's not a "massive increase". I'm not trying to be a dick, but it seriously feels like you're not reading my posts. The "massive increase" in my post is referring to before 1997, which I brought up specifically to show that this isn't some new phenomenon. And there's still the issue that we're talking about an 8% increase in output alongside a large drop in employment. quote:Yeah and then it made an unprecedented and dramatic drop since 2000 after remaining stable for decades. Between 1997 and 2008 manufacturing employment declined by 22%. Your argument that manufacturing employment was stable makes no sense when combined with your argument that an 8% increase in output represents a decline. You seem to be saying that it's a decline in real terms since consumption increased over that period, but if that's the case then manufacturing employment has actually been declining steadily since the 70s (at least). A roughly equal number of people being employed in manufacturing over a period where the labor force literally doubled represents a massive decline in the relative importance of manufacturing to the labor market as a whole. quote:FRED is really a lot better for this kind of data, since you can overlay series against each other:  Is there a correlation there? Yeah, kind of, but the declines in manufacturing employment correlate much more strongly with recessions. There's no evidence that the trade deficit for goods was increasing alongside declining employment during recovery periods. I'd argue that what you're seeing here is two separate data points that are both being affected by similar structural issues rather than some kind of direct cause and effect relationship. quote:Do you really think the US could produce hundreds of billions of additional dollars worth of manufactured goods without a substantial increase in employment? No, but I never made this claim either. The problem is that this isn't a simple case of suggesting that we can open US factories and use them to start meeting demand for goods. That demand is largely for cheap goods, and manufacturing (even at its peak in the 90s) represents a small part of the labor force as a whole. We aren't going to suddenly start employing so many people in factories that aggregate wages will shoot through the roof because we simply do not need that many high paid factory workers.
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Mar 4, 2017 20:39
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I don't think we're looking at a 2008-level crisis because of it, but a subprime auto loan crash still scares me. It's bad for all the obvious reasons, but car manufacturers absolutely depend on credit being available to sell cars. It's going to be completely brutal if the bottom drops out of that market.
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Mar 22, 2017 22:07
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LorneReams posted:On the bright (what is that again?) side, a correction in the subprime auto market may unfuck the used auto market. Isn't this all part of the same problem? My understanding of the situation is that hyperaggressive new car financing is creating a glut of used cars, which in turn is tanking prices and biting financing companies in the rear end. The auto market in general seems exceptionally hosed at the moment thanks to manufacturers pulling out all the stops to build unsustainable demand.
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Mar 23, 2017 18:41
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OhFunny posted:https://twitter.com/CNBC/status/850433023929614338 This isn't hugely out of line with first quarter GDP over the last several years. I hate to be that guy, but people mostly want to talk about it now because we've got Trump in office instead of Obama. The truth is that the US economy has been stuck in the mud for most of this recovery and it only seems okay relative to most of the rest of the world. Good employment growth has really been the only thing driving the narrative that the economy is healthy. Paradoxish fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Apr 8, 2017 |
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Apr 8, 2017 18:20
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I think employment in general is a super lovely metric because its usefulness is more or less limited to the question "is the economy currently in recession right now y/n." Even then you need to be looking at some kind of rolling average and not just a single month's jobs figures to be sure that you aren't seeing noise. Quality of jobs (however you want to define that), wages, etc. are definitely way more useful if you're interested in answering the question of whether or not an economic expansion is actually working to benefit a large number of people. Most of that data from the last eight or so years is much less optimistic.
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Apr 9, 2017 20:46
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Ardennes posted:I notice a lot of "basic income is going to save us" going around. That's because it's relatively hard to see a way out from where we are. I'm actually a much bigger fan of guaranteed employment, but that has a huge host of problems associated with it as well and it's just as dystopian (if not more so) if it's done poorly.
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Apr 11, 2017 21:26
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Ardennes posted:Granted, I think we are locked in for "dystopian" at this point. The problem is mincome/basic income really just doesn't fit in the liberal model and if you are looking for another model, you can do much better. Wait, why do you think a UBI doesn't slot into liberal economic models? It's far closer to being a market based solution than any other form of social welfare given that it's entirely based around individuals making choices about when and how to spend benefits. This is one of the main reasons why there are a ton of people on the left who strongly oppose it. I'll grant you that something like guaranteed employment is way outside of where we are now, but guaranteed income is like the textbook example of sticking a bandaid on the problem so that things can stay more or less exactly as they are right now. Paradoxish fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Apr 11, 2017 |
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Apr 11, 2017 21:48
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Ardennes posted:A key part of the liberal model is the protection of property, UBI would require massive amounts of taxation which would violate that. UBI isn't actually a downward wealth transfer. Keep in mind that companies that don't pay their employees enough to live enough on are really the largest beneficiaries of most social services and a UBI isn't going to be any different, especially since anyone who would strictly benefit from it is going to be too poor to do anything other than shove the money right back into the economy. It's politically difficult (probably impossible), but it's not going to massively shake up society. People at the lower end will still work, they'll just do it for a pittance now since the majority of their income will come from the government. The people who don't work are going to pay all that money back into the system as consumers too. The money moves around, but the wealth is still going up. Guaranteed employment is the policy equivalent of dropping a nuke on the demand side of the labor market, though. There are tons of businesses that would be completely unable to compete with an employer guaranteeing to hire an infinite number of people at fair wages.
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Apr 11, 2017 22:03
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Ardennes posted:Likewise, if UBI isn't an actual transfer of wealth, what is being done at this point beyond changing the name? If people can't survive on the social safety net at this point and a transfer of wealth isn't happening, how are people getting to A to B here? (I don't want to be rude but...don't say saving on administrative costs.) You've misread my posts if you think that I'm suggesting that we gut government services and replace them with a UBI. You could probably drop some means tested stuff, but I think implementing a UBI while gutting safety nets is an abhorrent idea. Ideally a UBI would result in far, far fewer people on means tested services, but that doesn't mean you get rid of them. Even better, drop the means testing and just provide the services. Other than I'm not really sure what you're asking. Like I said, I'm not a huge fan of UBI so I'm not trying to seriously advocate for it. I do think it's better than nothing and better than what we have now just because it offers people a little more agency. The ability to say "you know what? gently caress this lovely job" and quit without having something else lined up is a pretty nice feature that would probably have positive effects on the labor market on the lower end. The long term security of knowing that your income will never fall below [x amount] is good too. Confounding Factor posted:Why not guaranteed unemployment? What's the point of advancing in automation, computers and machines if it doesn't free us from the chains of labor? This is good if we literally no longer need labor, but my big fear is that detaching people from the labor market risks creating a permanent underclass. I'm down with people who don't want to work not having to work, but as long as we actually need human labor you're going to end up with that divide between people who have jobs and people who don't have jobs. Guaranteed employment at least prevents people from becoming unemployable because they haven't worked for a decade.
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Apr 11, 2017 22:22
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Ardennes posted:The issue is how to pay for it i.e taxation in a world with free capital movement. Just because it's not practical doesn't mean it isn't worth talking about. We have the wealth to implement pie-in-the-sky policies, so it's a discussion worth having even if the political will isn't there. quote:I think most people like having " a place to be" even if their job is relatively unimportant. People shouldn't have to slave away in order to survive, but by the same token, I think most people probably would still crave some type of schedule even if it was subconsciously. I have seen this first-hand with people on "funemployment" and a lot of the time they have no idea of what to do with themselves. Maybe, but I wouldn't make a blanket generalization like this. Full disclosure: I spent about two years being willfully unemployed and living off of savings, and I'd probably consider it the most productive and fulfilling part of my life. I do full-time (mostly remote, where possible) consulting work nowadays because I realized I never wanted to go back to a normal office routine. I'm not saying that this is what most people want, but I was extraordinarily privileged to be in a position to make that kind of choice and I think it would be a net benefit to society if more people could make that decision for themselves.
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Apr 11, 2017 23:02
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asdf32 posted:None of this makes any sense. Of course its a wealth transfer. It's not a net downward transfer of wealth unless we're talking about a very generous UBI or coupling it with a massive expansion of worker protections and government services. Actually moving wealth down in a way that "sticks" requires something well beyond a subsistence level basic income, otherwise you're only changing where the check comes from for very low income people. readingatwork posted:Yes, constantly being a heartbeat away from abject poverty/deportation will do that to you. The article is poo poo, but immigrants really are way less risk averse than Americans and the problem of declining entrepreneurship is something that's been noted in a lot of places. We've reached a point where most Americans don't feel financially secure enough to take risks and that's probably bad for the economy in the long run.
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Apr 13, 2017 02:37
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asdf32 posted:If I take $1 from richer people and give it to poorer people that's wealth transfer. Don't be stupid and obfuscatory. It's really as simple as that. I'm not trying to obfuscate anything. The point is that if we're talking about wealth transfer as a policy, then what matters is whether that wealth transfer has any net effect on the distribution of wealth in society. I'm saying that anything other than a very carefully designed (and probably impossible to implement) basic income probably wouldn't result in any real downward transfer of wealth. This is a pretty important point to make if your policy goal is, for example, to reduce wealth inequality.
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Apr 13, 2017 02:56
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asdf32 posted:Ok I can imagine scenarios when UBI doesn't subract income from rich people but it would increase purchasing power for poor people while reducing inequality. It doesn't even necessarily do this, which is the point that I was making a few pages ago. Most of the "practical" forms of UBI that I've seen proposed are accompanied by cuts to social services, a reduction in the minimum wage, or both. If you assume that there's a fixed absolute minimum cost of living that very poor people meet through some combination of pay from low wage jobs and social service benefits, then a UBI with accompanying cuts elsewhere does nothing to reduce inequality unless it pushes their total income above that threshold. It also doesn't really do anything to increase purchasing power, since presumably you're still spending that money on whatever necessities were previously provided by other services. Paying for it with much higher tax rates on the rich would do it too, but that would reduce inequality even if you set the money on fire after you collected it. Paradoxish fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Apr 15, 2017 |
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Apr 15, 2017 17:52
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readingatwork posted:Because we tend to get a recession every decade or so. The average time between recessions is actually less than that, so we're "due" basically anytime. Recessions don't just happen, though, something actually has to trigger a slowdown in growth that spreads through enough of the economy to check all the boxes.
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Jun 26, 2017 07:58
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Grouchio posted:So you're implying that recessions can be predicted to an extent if you're smart enough? You can make an educated guess that a particular risk factor might be enough of a problem to cause a recession and there are leading indicators that you can (try to) use to predict whether economic activity is slowing down. Keep in mind that the NBER won't even say for sure that the economy is in recession until we're actually well into a recession, because the the definition requires several months of past data.
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Jun 26, 2017 08:38
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