Category: Business

The Promise Of Wages

I follow Speaker Ryan on Twitter because his daily Tweets can get a real person laughing for most of the day.  His Tweets since the tax cuts of 2017 are about how much better off the economy is at this point and occasionally he offers some vague promise of wages.

The truth is these cuts have done little to raise the wages of the working class but did everything to raise the wealth of the already wealthy.

The real truth is that all the tax cuts for the last couple of decades have done nothing to raise the wages of the average working stiff.

The graph on wages is flat and has been that way for many decades……follow the graphs on wages……there are 9 of them that prove my point…..https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/

After checking out the graphs……read this report from the Pew Research……

On the face of it, these should be heady times for American workers. U.S. unemployment is as low as it’s been in nearly two decades (3.9% as of July) and the nation’s private-sector employers have been adding jobs for 101 straight months – 19.5 million since the Great Recession-related cuts finally abated in early 2010, and 1.5 million just since the beginning of the year.

But despite the strong labor market, wage growth has lagged economists’ expectations. In fact, despite some ups and downs over the past several decades, today’s real average wage (that is, the wage after accounting for inflation) has about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago. And what wage gains there have been have mostly flowed to the highest-paid tier of workers.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/

So to taunt the tax cuts as working for the working class is a damn lie….a lie that the GOP has become master at selling to the unwitting public.

To fight this growing story…the public is starting to see just how much of a lie the GOP is spreading…..the Right needs a theory to explain the lagging wages…..

Once upon time, when the GOP was still attempting to dress itself up as a party of ideas, Yuval Levin was considered one of its star intellectuals. As editor of the conservative policy journal National Affairs, he was a wonkish prophet of fiscal doom, who argued that the U.S. would soon face a reckoning over its national debt, and that the only way to avert catastrophe was to radically curtail the modern welfare state. Levin was once described as Paul Ryan’s own “personal philosopher,” and was the sort of guy who could get David Brooks hot and bothered by writing a long-winded argument for slashing entitlement spending.

If a politician like Sen. Marco Rubio or Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker had become president in 2016, Levin might still be playing a starring role in Washington’s policy discourse. But of course, Donald Trump is president, and Republicans have dropped the charade that they sincerely care about the deficit, or whatever the heck got written about in ponderous thinky policy rags. Levin still gets cited by columnists like Brooks, but his star is a bit fallen.

https://slate.com/business/2018/09/wage-stagnation-new-conservative-theory.html

An interesting read and very eye opening……

The GOP has always been a party for liars and when it comes to screwing the public they are masters at making the public smile while getting humped.

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Here Comes The Neighborhood!

We see/hear/read stories about the urban turn around……how a developer goes into an area and develop the crap out of it and makes it a success…..with Starbuck, trendy eateries, upscale shops with candles and retro clothing….something you can find anywhere they have developed the uniqueness out of the neighborhood.

I have a friend that was born and lived in Harlem most of his life….today he hates the neighborhood….he says it is soulless and cold.  He says that the whole feeling of a neighborhood is gone and the people were left with a cold hollow shell that they can only remember for they cannot afford it as it has become.

I witnessed this phenom in Santa Fe, New Mexico….originally it was a colony of writers and artists…..living was simple then the “developers” found it…. they turned it into a haven for the rich and disgusting.

These are the same tools that transformed “The Village” and Soho in NYC

Can you build a neighborhood out of money? It’s a defining question in America’s fastest-growing cities. When a major residential project rises, who suffers? When a tax incentive is granted, who benefits? When occupied land is redeveloped, how do city dwellers reconcile the pressure for economic growth with the need to safeguard vulnerable communities?

As a regular reader of Eater or Curbed, you may be wondering who gets to decide the target audience for these real estate megaplexes: Which retail and restaurant tenants get in? How much do they pay? What kind of economic incentives do they benefit from? And what’s the special sauce that actually makes a viable, dynamic, livable neighborhood?

https://www.curbed.com/2018/9/19/17841682/city-development-urban-planning-neighborhood-restaurant-economy

That illustrates exactly what is happening to our neighborhoods.  It is always about turning a buck….never about preserving the culture of that area.

Detroit is next in the sights of “developers” ……….this time it will be a whole city to lose its uniqueness…..not just a part of a whole like Harlem was…..yes it may become an “In” spot but at what cost?

Today is my better half’s birthday….so we will spend the day doing what she would like to do….

Thanx everyone for the visits hopefully we will see each other next week.

In closing I offer a musical interlude…..

Closing Thought–21Sep18

An American institution is heading for a fall.  American agriculture is heading for a fall.

It is time for the harvest!

I have been watching this sector of our economy closely….one because the new tariffs could have a lasting effect on the farming in this country…..I have written a couple posts recently….

https://lobotero.com/2017/12/18/closing-thought-18dec17/

https://lobotero.com/2018/07/25/the-coming-farm-aid/

The Wall Street Journal is also watching this sector and their insights are not very good for the coming year…..

The Farm Belt is hurtling toward a milestone: Soon there will be fewer than two million farms in America for the first time since pioneers moved westward after the Louisiana Purchase.

Across the heartland, a multiyear slump in prices for corn, wheat and other farm commodities brought on by a glut of grain world-wide is pushing many farmers further into debt. Some are shutting down, raising concerns that the next few years could bring the biggest wave of farm closures since the 1980s.

The U.S. share of the global grain market is less than half what it was in the 1970s. American farmers’ incomes will drop 9% in 2017, the Agriculture Department estimates, extending the steepest slide since the Great Depression into a fourth year.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-next-american-farm-bust-is-upon-us-1486572488

How sad that a true American institution is slowly withering away….the government will step in but it may be too late for it to save this way of life.

My Techno Post

I am not much of a techno geek so I only post on the subject as an FYI or something new that has been released……

These are my two techno references…..

Some see the rise of AI as a rise of Skynet….but then there are attempts to prevent that from happening……

Thousands of artificial intelligence (AI) experts and developers have signed a pledge vowing to “neither participate in nor support the development, manufacture, trade, or use of lethal autonomous weapons,” and imploring governments worldwide to work together to “create a future with strong international norms, regulations, and laws” barring so-called killer robots.

More than 160 companies and groups from three dozen countries and 2,400 individuals from 90 countries are backing the pledge, which was developed by the Boston-based Future of Life Institute (FLI) and unveiled Wednesday during the annual International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) in Stockholm, Sweden.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/07/18/worlds-artificial-intelligence-experts-sign-pledge-aimed-averting-dystopian-future

Your fears are addressed…..then why do I not feel better?

Next…..we all run on GPS….our blue tooth, phones, tablets, etc and the world economy also runs on GPS and that should be changed……

Duke Buckner was enjoying his breakfast at the Renaissance Tel Aviv Hotel, looking out on the city marina, on the day that time stuttered. Buckner oversees marketing and business development for Microsemi Corp., an American communications and defense contractor, and he gets a copy of emailed error reports for its equipment. It’s rare to get more than one in a given day. But on the morning of Jan. 26, 2016, they flooded his inbox. He forgot about breakfast.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-07-25/the-world-economy-runs-on-gps-it-needs-a-backup-plan

My two small attempts to post on techno issues…..

That does it for my Saturday……foul weather is about and we should get a lot of rain today…..so a lazy day watching Britbox (compensation not given)……

More Tariffs On The Way

Closing Thought–20Jul18

Our Dear Leader has decided that his newest round of tariffs will be the auto industry…….seeing how his other tariffs have been so successful and widely loved…….

Having tangled with China on trade and angered US allies with steel tariffs, President Trump is primed for his next fight: autos. Trump’s latest plan is to consider slapping tariffs on imported autos and auto parts—a move he says would aid American workers but that could inflate car prices, make US manufacturers less competitive, and draw retaliation from other nations, the AP reports. The action has also begun to provoke a backlash among members of Congress. On Thursday, manufacturers, suppliers, car dealers, and foreign diplomats will line up to testify at a Washington hearing to try to head off auto tariffs.

After the hearing, the Commerce Department will decide whether to label imported vehicles and auto parts a threat to America’s national security and whether to recommend tariffs to the president. In announcing the auto investigation in May, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross had said, “There is evidence that, for decades, imports from abroad have eroded our domestic auto industry.” Yet even General Motors and other companies that build cars in America are opposed. They rely on imported parts that would be subject to the tariffs, thereby raising automakers’ costs. “There is no automaker that has 100% exclusively US-sourced parts,” says Brian Krinock, Toyota’s senior vice president for North American factories. “It is a global business with global operations.”

He, Trump, fired the first shot earlier when he put luxury German cars on a list to be banned…..and now this…..

Nothing more fun than a trade war…..nothing is more effective than a trade war (that is sarcasm)……

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue belittled American farmers on Wednesday.

“It’s a little bit like weight loss,” Perdue said of the tariffs that are damaging the bottom line for lots of red state, U.S. farmers. “It’s going to be good to get there but it is a little painful in the meantime.”

Perdue referred to Trump’s reckless tariffs as “trade disruptions we’re experiencing,” as if they weren’t specifically manufactured and imposed by the Trump administration. His remarks echoed Trump’s dismissive rhetoric about how trade wars are “easy to win.”

“Wait a minute, ‘Trade disruptions we’re experiencing.’ That sounds very passive,” stressed Axios editor Mike Allen, as he interviewed Perdue. “In fact, it’s your president, it’s your administration, that’s disrupting trade.”

Trump has also suggested it’s the patriotic duty of U.S. farmers to bear the burden of an unnecessary trade war.

“They want to hit the farmers because they think it hits me — I wouldn’t say that’s nice,” Trump said of China, as it readied its response to Trump’s sweeping tariffs. “But I’ll tell you, our farmers are great patriots. These are great patriots. They understand that they’re doing this for the country,” he added.

“We’ll make it up to them. And in the end, they’re going to be much stronger than they are now.”

(shareblue.com)

So far the only people that see any benefits for these trade things are the President and his Boyz…..the rest of the economic sector does not see the same benefits as Our Dear Leader.

Closing Thought–25Jun18

The past week the screaming and yelling on the news and in most so-called conserv blogs has been about the border situation….if I need to catch you up then try Google I will not waste my time…..but the news that the corporate Americans would be watching have very little to do with the border…..

Following tariffs recently imposed on steel and aluminum, U.S. businesses have been forced to pay more than $110 million in tariffs in just 13 days according to the Customs and Border Patrol. The U.S. took in $82.2 million in steel tariffs and $28.3 million in aluminum tariffs between June 1-14.

The unintended consequences of tariffs are vast, and have a harmful ripple effect throughout our economy. In just two weeks, U.S. businesses could have spent $110 million in a much different way. Consider the following:

$110 million is enough to hire 2,000 out of work Americans at $55k salaries for an entire year.

$110 million is enough to purchase 4,000 brand new, American made, Jeep Wranglers using the MSRP of $27,495.

https://freedompartners.org/press/report-tariffs-cost-u-s-businesses-more-than-100-million-in-just-two-weeks/

Apparently “Freedom Partners” is not here to cover the horrible policies to this man we call “president”….

I realize that economics is not something most conservs can get a grip on…but all the yelling about the border has done nothing to strengthen our economy and neither has the policies of the dude in the White House.  (Please do not taunt the stock market as proof….there is more to an economy than the markets….if you need a quick refresher course on economics…..https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/economics)

Time for a change…..period!

The “South Beach” Life

Good morning my friends……we are expecting lots of rain and wind today so the garden adventures may be out for the day.

In keeping with tradition I found something completely different than the posts I usually do during the week.

South Beach……the Southern Florida lifestyle that so many want to be part of…..we have a the South Beach diet and of course it is sold on TV by this babe in a bikini (what else?)…..South Beach is a beach experience and all its trappings like Volley Ball, girl watching, sun bathing, etc.

Formula One is considering adding a Miami Gran Prix to the world championship schedule (I will be bitching about this at a latter date)……

All the high life and glamorous aspects of South Beach…there is another industry there that seldom gets talked about….

At just 20 years old, Kandie Monaee earns good money, works a few days a week from home and even gets gifts mailed to her by adoring clients.

She is a success in a Florida industry that is consistently on the cutting edge of technology, generates tens of millions of dollars in revenue each year and aspires to move into the mainstream.

Monaee’s job: web cam model.

Her on-line sessions run up to six hours, mixing small talk and teasing with sex acts. Hundreds of viewers log onto a free website called Chaturbate and type her messages, awarding her virtual “tokens” as tips that she redeems for money. On a good day, Monaee — a Tampa mother of one who wanted to be identified only by her web cam name — says she will pull in about $300.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/-Cam-Con-exposes-a-booming-biz-Florida-doesn-t-talk-about-selling-live-sex-online_168673077

Do you know how hard it is to rite a post using only one hand (LOL)

Thanx for stopping by my friends….hope all have a good day…..will be back to “normal” tomorrow…….chuq