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America's Vanishing Worker: The Truth Behind The "Recovery" Propaganda
The biggest paradox of the so-called US recovery is that in the same report in which the US Department of Labor reported that the US unemployment has dropped to a depression-low 5.4%, a level suggesting near zero "slack" in the labor force, the BLS also indicated that the number of people not in the labor force rose to a fresh all time high of 93.2 million, keeping the participation rate at a level first seen in 1978.
How does one make sense of this glaring contradiction and paradoxical data, which one one hand suggest the recovery is fully in place, while on the other screams depression?
For the answer we go to the WSJ's report on the curious case of America's vanishing worker.
To be sure, this "curious case" covers nothing new for regular Zero Hedge readers, but may explain to casual observers how it is possible that America's labor metrics have devolved to such a Schrodingerian state in which the US labor market is both alive and dead, depending on whose propaganda one observes.
For the answer, the WSJ tracks the career, or rather lack thereof, of Denny Ryder of Decatur, Illinois, 47 years old, who is one of hundreds of thousands of (former) employees in the industrial Midwest who has been forced to move away, retire or give up on finding a job. As a result, the unemployment rate in this has fallen even as Denny is no closer to being able to provide for his family.
As the WSJ reports, "by one key gauge of economic health, this industrial city three hours south of Chicago is well on the way to recovery. Hit hard by the recession, when its unemployment rate topped 14%, Decatur over the past year has seen one of the swiftest declines in joblessness in the country, with the rate dropping to 7% in March from 10.2% a year earlier."
The problem: it's nothing but a statistical mirage, a lie.
[L]ook closer, and this city of 75,000 resembles many communities across the industrial Midwest, where the unemployment rate is falling fast in part because workers are disappearing: moving away, retiring or no longer looking for a job.
“In cases like that, the unemployment rate makes things look better than they really are,” said Karl Kuykendall, U.S. regional economist at IHS Global Insight. In terms of overall economic growth, he said, “a decline in population and workforce is devastating.”
[T]he falling unemployment rate doesn’t tell the full story of a recovery that remains uneven nearly six years after the recession ended. Among the 20 metropolitan areas where unemployment fell by at least 2.7 percentage points in the past year, 16 also saw their workforces shrink over the same period, according to Labor Department data. Half of those were in Michigan or Illinois, including Detroit, Decatur, Flint, Mich., and Rockford, Ill.
Most places saw at least some hiring and job creation. In Decatur, though, payrolls fell over the past year due to layoffs, attrition, transfers or other causes.
In other words, anyone daring to look closer behind the thin facade of the "recovery" uncovers a rotting, collapsing core: an economy not only not flourishing, but shrinking even as it creates the false impression of growth.
Behold the recovery "mirage" in four simple charts:
Back to Denny Ryder, who wasn’t looking to leave Decatur, where he was born and raised. But he was laid off from a Caterpillar Inc. plant here in late 2013 as the heavy-equipment maker faced a slowdown in demand from mining companies.
What happens next is a story familiar to millions of Americans who not only have no weekly paycheck, but whose plight no longer is even accounted for in the Labor department's monthly assessment of US economic health.
So Mr. Ryder and his wife relocated to Winston-Salem, N.C., last year where he found work at a Caterpillar contractor. While Mr. Ryder was confident he could find a job in Decatur, he didn’t feel it would match the wages and benefits at Caterpillar, where he worked for 19 years. “I probably could have lost a lot of money and found a job in Decatur,” said Mr. Ryder, who has taken to life in North Carolina, from enjoying the hills to swimming in the ocean for the first time.
"Probably." And perhaps, not. That's the magic of proving a negative: it's impossible which is why economists do it all the time.
What one can prove looking at the data, is that any suggestion of a wholesale economic recovery is nothing but Goebbelsian propaganda.
The fitful recovery in Decatur has laid bare challenges building for decades in many places in the Midwest and Northeast. Populations are shrinking, and the workforce is getting older. A historical reliance on manufacturing has hurt aging industrial cities as the U.S. economy continues its shift to service jobs. And the recession expanded the share of the working-age population who don’t have a job and aren’t looking for one.
In the Decatur area, the Labor Department’s rough estimates show falling unemployment, a shrinking labor force and declining nonfarm payrolls. But the data don’t explain why the workforce is smaller and where the unemployed are going.
There are clues, such as the lunch crowd at the Good Samaritan Inn, a soup kitchen where the Rev. Stacey Brohard is executive director. He said many people lack skills or face other barriers to jobs and have given up on finding work. The recession only increased their ranks, he said.
You mean soaring soup lines aren't counted as employed by the BLS? How is that possible when hookers and drug dealers somehow contribute to GDP in the UK, Spain and Italy? Surely someone at the BLS will promptly fix this oversight.
But it's not just the Labor department's blatant fabrication of a recovery narrative: what is worse is that America's aging workers have been left to fend for themselves even as their absence from any official counts is meant to signify America's fake economic renaissance.
Decatur’s population skews older—the metro area’s median age was 39.7 in 2013, compared with 37.5 for the U.S. as a whole. Some older workers were laid off or took early retirement during the downturn but remained in the labor force, looking for work. Now, with the stock market near all-time highs, their portfolios look healthier and they feel more comfortable retiring for good, said Ron Payne, a labor market economist at the Illinois Department of Employment Security.
Decatur faces a dual challenge: getting older workers retrained so they can extend their careers, and keeping younger workers from moving away. Richland Community College increasingly is concentrating on people over 50 years old—many of whom haven’t been in a classroom in decades.
And it's doing a damn good job: as we also showed last week, the number of Americans 55 and older who do have a job has never been higher. Surely the basis of any solid recovery.
As for the younger ones, why they too are in luck: "City officials are courting young professionals with moves such as banning trucks from downtown, promoting outdoor dining and developing recreational opportunities around Lake Decatur." Speaking of outdoor dining, these are precisely the jobs the young end up getting because if there is one thing America has a record of in addition to jobs for old workers, it is a record number of waiter and bartender jobs as well.
It's not all bad:
Since the recession, the city has built a new water tower, replaced sewer lines and cut the ribbon on a new freight-rail terminal—all with the goal of retaining industrial employers and attracting new ones.
“First, it’s recovery, which is the phase we’re probably still in right now, but expansion eventually follows that,” said Ryan McCrady, president of city’s economic-development corporation.
Which is also known as "hope" which always dies last. Sadly, for the vast majority of Americans "hope" is all they have left.
As for the 1% of US society which has reaped the benefits of 7 years of ZIRP and QE, there we will admit: the recovery is all too real.
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Had to sell a monster box the other day to pay the bills. Taxman took everything I had.
Sad sad news...
Oh look- there's a Kardashian!
dog
Which is to say that our ruling class doesn't represent Americans nor American worker interests, but rather they represent the interests of the majority stock holders of multi-national corporations.
This is not a 'Marxist view', but a God damn fact.
I doubt there are any entities big enough to be majority stock holders of these giganto-corps.
Should say: "but rather they represent the interests of C-suite management (who also happen to run the Board of Directors) of multi-national corporations."
Both.
I'm originally from the Decatur area and can confirm that's it's become one big-ass shit-hole. Back when I was a kid in the '80s, Decatur had a population near 100,000. Now it's apparently down to 75,000. You can't lose a quarter of your population without the town going to hell.
People used to get decent jobs at Caterpillar, Firestone, ADM, and AE Staley. Firestone eventually closed its plant, and everyone else laid off thousands of employees. Every time I'm in Decatur, it seems like at least 75 percent of the people are probably on some sort of assistance program. It's a seriously depressing place.
Now the only thing Decatur is notable for is that weird French fry fart smell that hangs over the city. I guess that'll never change.
As a Central IL resident, I can confirm this...Decatur is definitely a shit-hole.
What's the unemployment rates in concentration camps during WWII?
The "participation rate" was 100% for those that wanted to live another day...but that didn't always work...
So the same conditions the German worker suffered under Weimar?
0%
They were always busy to find any kind of food
weird French fry fart smell that hangs over the city.
Ah yes, I remember it well. Staley's roasting soy beans, 24/7.
I grew up in a smaller town near there. Jobs are mostly a memory. You have to own a farm, or work for the government, and it is NOT improving.
Roasting soy beans? I figured it was stench left behind by Jesse Jackson in '99.
Same thing here too. Everyone on GS No jobs worht working and slave wages for those you can get. Sad Sad.
Little do you know then grasshopper.
One of my clients and his brother control a giant multinational corp.
My client lives very frugally apart from his car.
The billionaire next door type, mousy wife and all.
One my clients and his wife live in their car. They run a small country.
does it have a weird french fry smell?
If it's Greece, yes.
"I doubt there are any entities big enough to be majority stock holders of these giganto-corps."
Please don't tell me you are one of these fuckwits that takes Forbes List of the Richest at face value? The list which is taken from public sources?
Geez, dood!
Of course they have majority owners, but since they are private institutional investment accounts, and such information is therefore private, we don't know who they are.
And since the corporations and banks are owned through cross-stock ownership, which is illegal, there is no way to ascertain who really owns anything today in Amerika.
Get with the program, please....
I remember reading an article from Dean Henderson where he attempted to trace the ownership of the U.S. based TBTFs.
As it turned out, it required a FreedomOfInformationAct submission to the government (what a surprise).
His request was denied.
I myself once had a burst of energy (don't know what came over me) and attempted to ascertain who owned the Bank of England. Turns out the UK government has classified that sort of thing. (what a surprise).
That one is easy and all you need is a little history. The Rothschild family owns the Bank of England, and has since they scammed every other banker out of British Bonds after Waterloo.
The Network of Global Corporate Control
in Japan it's called Keiretsu, in America it's called F-you
No need to know who they are, just where they are. Simply firebomb Dubai and you'll get most of them.
and the majority stockholders of one after another trans national corporation are none other than the very same JPM, BofA, Citi, etal, bankster predators who still manage to get an increasingly lazy and dumbed down public to keep their deposits and credit cards with these sociopath led monsters.
And should anyone doubt commenter, calledtoaccount, please review the TNEC study, the last actual economic study undertaken in the USA, which motivated FDR's DOJ to initiate a lawsuite against the 17 Wall Street banks which controlled the majority of major corporations: United States v. Morgan et al.
Marxism has always been the tool of the 0.01%, the ones of whom you speak. They point fingers at the 0.99%, and the 99% swallow it hook, line and sinker.
"Which is to say that our ruling class doesn't represent Americans nor American worker interests, but rather they represent the interests of the majority stock holders of multi-national corporations."
But the ideologic Marxist leftist ruling class (i.e. dictators like Stalin, Mao, Castro, and Obama) use the wealth of their corporate masters to get into power. Once in power, they forment a Marxist revolution to take control over all sectors of the economy for the benefit of themselves and their cronies.
So...for the rest of us, then, it's TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION? Where did I hear of this before? Oh, Yes. Something to do with the Boston Tea Party and the 1st American Revolution. Get ready for #2....
Decatur is a shithole. This guy is lucky to get away. The Beachhouse on the Lake (with no beach) is one of the nicer resturants. Snow piled up to your eye-balls in the winter and it stinks of rotting cattle feed in the summer. I guess if you like drinking and bowling you are OK there, otherwise you are up shit creek....
In other news, the earth is round and the economy keeps chugging along on QE and a pryaer, kind like turd that keeps circling the bowl after you flush...eventually its gonna fall in the vortex and go to its rightful place.
if a worker loses his job but the goverment reports low unemployment, was the job ever really lost?
the bureau of labor says no. he went to live in the tree that no one heard fall.
Why work when one can make more money having the government forcibly take from others to give to you?
"Free" EBT, "free" housing, "free" ObamaPhone, "free" ObamaCare, "free" walking around money, the list goes on and on - all for simply voting the "correct" way.
Yeah, you'd think these stupid, freeloading bastards would have enough sense to glad hand their way into some sweet heart no-bid government contracts and "earn" a living. Oh wait they probably don't have the right connections, well to hell with them, save that money for the ones who deserve it. We are in the vice, takers above and below on the ol' socio-economic pyramid; not sure which I despise the most.
And completely arranged that way. There are no accidents.
Are EBT purchases taxed?
why not read the article and think thru the implications rather than express your knee jerk prejudice ?
the one god thing about what is to happen very soon is people like you will be swept away in the outgoing tide as well as everyone else you criticize
Putting that 93 million number in perspective, that's more than all the armies in the world combined.
So you're basically saying that in the "War on Poverty", the poor would win?
No, I'm not saying all 93 million of them are poor nor am I saying there will be a war against them.
I was thinking that if the potential energy of a number that size was harnessed it might make a formidable force against some of the things done by TPTB that totally suck.
Like a "War on Poverty"?
LOL - Dude, I'm pulling your chain here for yuks
You know, at one time I was a lot less sympathetic to the free shit army than I am now. I've come to think there's much more to the story than the typical stereotype that I'd envisioned for so long.
I also believed in trickle down and other things I no longer agree with. What I think I'm doing is finding ways to argue with opinions I once held where they don't necessatily even exist and that may be the case right here. For whatever it's worth, it's only me and my wife these days and neither of us has ever gotten any free shit and if we needed any we doubt we'd get it.
In light of that, now is probably a good time for me to take a break from the commentary world and bid everyone a fond farewell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9q7EjHxYsE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FcGLZ0Q14s
See you on the flip side Chunga.
We should have an openly declared "War on the Middle Class". That way it might just start growing again, since every other .gov "War On [insert noun]" causes more of the thing they're "at war" with.
Literally a Free Shit Army.
Hey remember when these rich assholes printed themselves 14 trillion USD to prop up their system of slavery in the US and EU? Remember when they were going to lose Wall Street and they gave themselves billions in TARP welfare?
But yeah, feeding the victims of this shit show is the REAL concern, we need to put a stop to that right away. God, what are we thinking?
Shit, yeah, cracker!
After all, they should all be like that Gay conservative libertarian, Peter Thiel, who sits on the board of the American Friends of Bilderberg, Inc. with David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger and Richard Perle, and then Richard Perle introduced Thiel to Adm. Poindexter for the heavy CIA funding for Thiels newly found spy corporation, Palantir.
Next, Palantir's first private sector client would be Chase, the Rockefeller bank.
Great to be connected. . . .
hmmmm, one might ask, "Did the job ever really exist?"
wendigo..... That really bites. If it is any consolation, you are not alone. Last month we bought 4,000 oz from a client who needed to sell to meet a tax obligation. We have twenty two monster boxes scheduled to come in over the next two or three weeks. Many are from one client who is converting to gold for portability reasons but some are also from small business owners who need cash.
Those are the ones we have scheduled. There are certain to be walk ins bringing more without notice.
Are you from Jacksonville, as your username suggests? I'm in the general area.
"converting to gold for portability reasons"
Not to disparage silver, but the significance of this is that someone in the U.S. realizes being mobile with ones stored wealth (i.e. stored blood,sweat & tears) is paramount.
That speaks volumes.
As liquidity & trust evaporate, things collapse to the core.
Every oligarchy eventually winds up with its Potemkin Village.
At which point the oligarchs then spend the rest of their lives trying to shackle the peasants before the peasants gets their hands on the oligarchs.
We're not getting a WW III-but prolly a version of the civil war finally winding down in Myanmar after 60years. Takes that long for oligarch perps and their progeny to get exhausted.
Once it starts, it won't take 60 years here in the U.S. How well armed is the general population of Myanmar?
My last pay check was $9500 working 12 hours a week online. My sisters friend has been averaging 15k for months now and she works about 20 hours a week. I can't believe how easy it was once I tried it out. This is what I do... www.jobs-review.com
Would you please ask your sister to begin shaving.
That five o'clock shadow of hers is really rough around my crotch when she gives me that afternoon bj.
"Had to sell a monster box" , at this point if you are still paying taxes you need to really think about your life.
but, but -
over 93 mil w/o work in the US of working age people
slightly over 300 mil people of all ages
US enemployment rate = 5%
______
Uncle Sam is a dirty rotten scoundrel with the constant lies he feeds us.
One pragmatic benefit from such a bold lie is that maybe some of the guys who gave up looking at 10% might start looking again when they hear it is 5%.
Had to sell a monster box the other day to pay the bills. Taxman took everything I had.
You didn't build dat / sar
I'm making over $7k a month working part time. I kept hearing other people tell me how much money they can make online so I decided to look into it. Well, it was all true and has totally changed my life. This is what I do... www.jobs-review.com
U3 and U6 are measured differently. Guess which one TPTB to include willing allies in the media report on a nightly basis? (Not to mention the ever upwardly mobile stock market)
I am reminded of the last Kevin Bacon scene in Animal House when he is screaming "ALL IS WELL!" as chaos erupts around him
OR it could be the Animal house scene where he is getting smacked on the Ass with a paddle and says
"Thank you sir, may I have another"
U6 is just as bogus as U3. It supposedly captures more than U3, yet their correlation is something like .98 or .99.
Once again people, there is no, nor will there ever be an economic, monetary, fiscal, or political solution to resource scarcity...
You must become more efficient, and nothing is more efficient than a robot...
evolve or die...
otherwise, you better revolt while you still have the means to do so...
tick tock motherfuckers....
http://www.amazon.com/Second-Intelligent-Species-Irrelevant-Cockroaches-...
ah yes, the "Curse of Machinery"... heard it all before, a fallacy easily laid bare with simple application of reductio ad absurdum...
http://steshaw.org/economics-in-one-lesson/chap07p1.html
There isn't much that is more robotic than the average American consumer zombie......
Robots are expensive when you have Mexicans and Guatemalans to build houses for very little off the grid.
LOP
in Canada we call it degrowth
the only thing about those efficient robots....they don't realize the need for endless energy (both to be created and to work) on a finite planet.
Stepping out of a plane at say 40,000', with or without a parachute, represents an enormous implied energy store. That energy is fully available until you realize the path from plane to earth is finite. It ends suddenly.
There is no resource scarcity and never has been. It was always a lie to empower the few at the expense of the many.
People just don't understand how big the world really is, and maps and globes and fast modern methods of travel don't help. The whole world's population could fit in Texas at the same density as New York City. Most scarcity problems are self inflicted, by putting huge tracts of land off limits for development. Then there's just the blatant lies like that incredible rate the rainforests are being cut down at, they were supposed to all be gone a decade ago I think.
Part of the answer?
http://dailyanarchist.com/2012/06/12/what-is-georgism-followed-by-a-refu...
Keith Gardner says: June 12, 2012 at 2:52 pmGeorge’s idea was predated by Antiquity (Leviticus, Eccelesiates), the classical liberals (Mill, Paine, Jefferson, Smith, Locke, Blackstone), the Physiocrats, and David Ricardo. George just happened to develop the idea and argued effectively for it, refuting Malthus in the process.
The thing lacking from George’s solution was recognizing the equal importance of government providing it’s own legal tender, free of usury. The only legal tender compatible with the free market is a legal tender provided by the government, where monetary origination benefits the public, with whom it properly belongs, rather than the usurer. For the government to select a legal tender is a corruption and intervention in the free market. State-granted privilege to collect usury upon the money supply is also theft and places too much control over the general economy in the hands of a few, which is a form collectivism, leading to things like banker bailouts, privatized profits and socialized losses, where banks collect usury upon the monetary expansion and collect real assets and social bailouts when the compound interest collapses the expansion. And we haven’t even touched on the usury on the national debt, which the tax payer is obligated to pay to private holders of national debt.
George was right about money, unlike Nock whose treatment of money was quite a let down, he just didn’t develop the idea and recognize the importance.
The George solution also only created almost free land. George’s second flaw was not proposing the funding of a citizen dividend to distribute the profit of the land to all in their fair and equal share to create effectively free land, as Paine had attempted, just not in a continuous way..
https://realcurrencies.wordpress.com/interest-free-economics/
I used to have hope, but that all changed......
Snarkiness and sarcasm aside (for just a second), the story of Denny Ryder should give you hope for this country.
Simple dude with a simple life picks up stakes and moves his wagon from the only place he'd lived to North Carolina.
He's following opportunity and making something of himself. Good for him.
Contrast that with the Greeks, which as a society are circling the toilet bowl. Rather than making the most of their EU citizenship and moving their wagons to, say, Germany to find work, they rot in their birth country expecting some deus ex machina to save them. They're fucked. Denny Ryder is not.
I guess if you are desperate enough to believe that moving to North Carolina is a step up then, yeah, he done good.......
you've obviously never been to North Carolina, which is quite nice...
the real title for this story should have been "guy gets laid off from job in a union shithole state, moves to a right-to-work state where opportunity abounds and lives happily ever after"
He probably earned a decent wage in that "union shithole state" and is getting paid a lot less with no benefits in a wrongly named "right-to-work" state. I notice the article made his unemployment and subsequent move sound peachy keen without any real facts or figures.
He did earn a decent wage in that union shithole state. Until the union and .gov got together and got rid of his job and all other equal opportunities, except of course those with a job in the union or .gov.
no... being intimately familiar with the area and its denizens, more likely the union made more than enough ridiculous demands to price themselves right out of existence... sucking members like the subject dry the whole time they were doing it... Illinois is a Fucking Union Shithole(tm)... it doesn't surprise me in the least that someone with any inkling of skill and work ethic could leave there and absolutely *flourish* in a right-to-work scenario...
He probably earned a decent wage in that "union shithole state" and is getting paid a lot less with no benefits in a wrongly named "right-to-work" state. I notice the article made his unemployment and subsequent move sound peachy keen without any real facts or figures.
saying it twice just makes you doubly wrong... just in case the dupe is on purpose lol
Have you ever been to Decatur?
I have. I don't care to ever live there.
Decatur is where high school heroes go to work for A.E. Staley as their memories of former glory fade away... which explains a lot about the Chicago Bears, if you think about it...
Please do me a favor, and don't ever move South.
You really believe everything you read, don't you?
You really believe in talking snakes, like it says in Genesis?
"It's tough being a cynic these days!. It's so much work to keep up."
––Lily Tomlin
Cynicism is just another ideology the man puts in you to keep you down. Wise up.
Come on people! Our government loves us and they would never lie to us. Everyone has work!
I mean after all it was Obama that killed Osama Ben Ladin!
Next you're going to say 911 was some kid of lie. ha ha ha the whole "inside Job" thing.
You ZH folks are getting to be too much.
Now let's talk about something really important like the color of our skin or Bruce Jenners penis.......
"Bruce Jenners penis"
Excellent horse name.
I predict that will be the winner of the 2017 Triple Crown!
Won't happen...eveyone knows Bruce Jenners penis starts off strong and pulls ahead by a few lengths early, only to slow and eventually get cut off at the final turn.
Agent P,
That was priceless!
No, Agent P - that was 'small talk'.
Me, I'm betting on Kenneth Penyan horsey!
I notice an uncanny resemblance to your post and the speeches given by Hitler.
"How does one make sense of this glaring contradiction and paradoxical data?"
EASY!
1) Live below your means
2) Deflation
3) No Bills
4) Don't pay daycare
5) Avoid the sickcare system as much as possible
6) Don't collect funemployment
7) Cook at home
8) Don't take jobs that don't pay for skills. Fuck em.
Jobs are for unconnected losers........
Remember the heady days of the trillion dollar "stimulus" for those myriad "shovel ready jobs?"
Good times!
Expect to see metrics such as consumer confidence and public approval numbers replaced with positive or negative apathy statistics. Further, expect even greater liberalization of marijuana laws, to help moderate those apathetic numbers.
I'm as old as "Oldwood", but wanna grow pot for profit and nymphomaniac welfare moms.
Anybody got a business plan for this?
I think you just outlined it right there. Keep it simple.
The Rev Stacy BlowHard(er) says people don't have the necessary skill sets. D'uh
Decatur wants to draw people into a state with high taxes and heavy laws, I'll pass thanks. And yes Winston Salem: 4 hours from coast, 1.5 from mountains.
This spate of joblessness is only transitory. Soon TAFTA and TPP will have the job creators doing some creatin'. We will evolve into a middle class utopia where the truck drivers, bank tellers, store clerks, fast food folks etc.. can stand back with a big grin and wave at the machines doing their jobs for them. The huge increases in production will translate into much higher wages, just like what has happened since NAFTA. Yes sir, it's a new day in 'Merica where the dream never dies, and we can all live in the shining city on the hill.
Just keep reaching for the sky. Utopia is at hand.
Remember back in the time of The Jetsons, looking forward to where we are now? They promised us that machines would "free us up" so much we wouldn't know what to do with our spare time.
I appreciate the irony.
But the TPP is going to be negotiated in secret. I'm sure they have nothing to hide. At least with NAFTA, they had to come out in public and defend it a little. The subsequent job destruction in American after NAFTA (1993) gives us a preview of TPP.
I also appreciate the theoretical appeal of "free trade". We Americans should be happy to trade with free people. Of course, NAFTA gave us the opportunity to compete with Mexican slave labor and now with TPP we will get even more opportunity to compete with Asian and Chinese slave labor. We can see how well we've done trading with China so far.
Partisan things like Obamacare often bring real problems. But nothing brings a bigger ass-raping than Government policies with bi-partisan support: VietNam War, NAFTA, Patriot Act, Iraq War, Wall Street Bailout, TPP. I could go on.
Listen, you're just too stupid to understand all the ways NAFTA has increased your prosperity. Here's a tenured economist to explain why...
Lots of jobs being created in the southern auto corridor.
http://www.southernautocorridor.com
The big question is...What did Tom Brady know and when did he know it?
Disagree, the MAJOR story here in NY is still the lane closing and who knew what. Forget the IRS scandal or Hillary's state department follies, the MSM is on the lane closing like it was Watergate. Don't believe it has anything to do with R governor
Finally, Utopia. Progressive policies and crony business relations have finally brought us to where we always thought we should be.
No need to work.
If you can't find a job that you like, or pays what you want, or offers the kind of benefits that you deem a "right", you have arrived!
Minimum wages combined with entitlement payments that effectively exceed minimum wages in effect, have "leveled the playing field" for those more selective amongst us. As Pelosi told us with Obamacare, no person should have to have a job simply to have health insurance or even eat or have shelter for that matter. It is impossible for the vast numbers of people outside of the labor market to survive without these benefits, and with rules that clearly state that they don't have to take jobs that can only justify below minimum wages, we ensure that a labor free society lays ahead for all of us.
Now exactly how we fund this Utopia is not completely clear. We can extend debt, but its not sure that others will keep lending against such long odds. We can redistribute, but we see more and more expatriating personally and professionally, so that looks like less than a sure thing.
We can try to suppress low wage countries with economic and military warfare, to force them to sell us our necessities ever cheaper, but I think we are hitting a wall there as well.
The best part is that once we realize our new Utopia is not sustainable, were are assured to see rampant violence as typically it is those who receive something for nothing that are the first in the streets, and more importantly, we will have abandoned our skills, our factories and for many, their willingness to even try to survive.
Our population will come down to those who are willing to kill to survive and those who are not. I'm not betting on the pacifists and deadenders.
The cycle continues.
Are you thinking we should have a back up AR to the primary AR already in the car trunk?
Jonathan Swift had a modest proposal that could be implemented.
Don't you know that they have manufacturing plants already set up at all the prisons? McDonald's, Victoria's Secret, Starbucks, man everybody who is anybody is getting their stuff packaged at the prisons.
Problem? What problem?!
As it should be obvious, the leadership of this countyr wouldn't know how to run a lemonaide stand. They either are in governement, or are playing off the government.
"Yes sir, it's a new day in 'Merica where the dream never dies, and we can all live in the shining city on the hill."
Where I live, the shining city on a hill consists of homeless people living along the freeways, using the underpasses and offramps for shelter. Thank you Bill and Hillary Clinton for shoving NAFTA and GATT down our collective throats, when over 90% of the population was against both, as you two well knew from the avalanche of letters, faxes, and phone calls. Now Hillary wants to be a "champion for the everyday American," much like Colonel Sanders wants to be the best friend a chicken ever had.
what's sad is when you hear a semi literate, intelligent person make a case for HRH Clinton's election. Or Jeb for that matter.
It's hopeless unless we pull off a miracle
If folks would have headed Dick Gephardt and his contingecy, the NAFTA travesty would have been avoided. It took Slick Willie to push through what Daddy Bush et. al. had been trying in vain to do. Red or Blue, in politics the only color that counts is green.
Don't worry Elliott. Why they're going to use the staged shootings of African Americans (per Dick Gregory) as a way to institute a national police force.
Then things will be better. You'll see!
Send a message.
Burn the north shore of LI to the ground.
Eveything above Northern Blvd to the Sound.
Leave nothing standing.
Why did you omit everything east of center moriches?
It's not a high shit zone.
Rockford, Illinois, led the country with 25% unemployment at the depths of the 1982 recession.
Since then, the industrial jobs moved to Asia. Rockford was once known as the "screw capital of the world." The brand names still exist, say, some cabinet knobs I purchased at Lowes, but the products are made abroad and imported.
The industrial corridor along the Rock River, from the Quad Cities to Janesville, WI, was once a real powerhouse.
It's that pesky Kondratieff winter, I tell you.
Well we are due for that wave to hit.....but what will the next paradigm be?
100 years ago, this was a high-tech start-up:
http://tinyurl.com/ml5t4q3
Creative destruction, bitchez.
The next paradigm? The post-USD world. Looking forward to a World Made by Hand ...
You reminded me that I have to go pick up my manure....the real kind I get from actual horses and not what is bandied about on TV nightly to dipshit plebes....I wish you and all of us luck.
Maybe I spoke too soon.
There is still some manufacturing going on in the Rock River Valley. Anyone need an AR-15?
God Bless the America!
christiangustafson: Rockford was once known as the "screw capital of the world."
Replaced by D.C. No lube either.
One man's recovery is another man's HORSESHIT.
Yea this is a bad sign, just like in 1978. You do remember what happened next right? The market went, for all intents and purposes, straight up for the next 20 years; increasing by around 1600%.
So if history is any guide the SPX has just under a couple thousand percent of upside left. Incidentally the pattern (SPX log scale) is very similar today of that from the late 70s.
What this means is in a few decades you can start to unload some longs and maybe think about getting short. Depending on your situation that could be good timing to sell stocks and pay for your grand kids schooling. In 20 years a bad community college will be 2 million a year to walk in the door so with the dow around 280,000,000 it will have all worked out.
When was black Monday?
WSJ lies aka Murdoch aka Fox News aka friend of the Red Shield and Saudis. The entire media, TV and Hollywood are scum.
Idiots who watch their shit enable all of this.
We do count drug dealing and prostitution in our GDP, along with gun running.
It's just called banking.
Just ask Wells Fargo who inherited the drug running assets of Wachovia!
Mexico welcomes you !
By the time Obozo leaves orifice the unemplyoment rate will be 3%. With 150 million no longer in the work place.
The moron stream media will hail their hero as the greatest dictator/president of all time!
FUBAR!
Leaves Office? Boy are you optimistic!
they all want to share in the rape and plundering of a once great nation...yeah he'll leave and the next clone will be in.
that 55 and older chart looks exactly like the 55 and older chart of the general population
People who run out of unemployment benefits move from the unemployed list to the no longer in the workforce list. Seems the relevent number is those no longer in the workforce. It's a fucking depresion !
Did the snip leave something out of the WSJ story?? The editorial comments suggest that our man Denny has met a terrible fate. but the WSJ article just says that he took a job in North Carolina and that he kind of likes it there. it doesn't say anythign about a massive pay cut or problems supporting a family.
It's bad news for Decatur, but the problem for Denny isn't obvious.
Winston: "Do these jobs exist in the same way that I exist?"
O'Brien: "You do not exist."
Fewer books are as great!
"Some older workers were laid off or took early retirement during the downturn but remained in the labor force, looking for work. Now, with the stock market near all-time highs, their portfolios look healthier and they feel more comfortable retiring for good"....
Hence why central banks are going to continue passing the easing baton for years to come (if they can). Keeping the retirement "dream" alive for the millions that got rocked in the last downturn and maintaining the economic life support system. Kicking the can on the massive unrest bubbling under the surface. Meanwhile people continue breaking their back to save a buck for retirement and simultaneously have their lifes work debased with a simple mouse click on the PRINT icon..
Little sympathy here for a $50 / hr plus bennies Union bolt tightener..... A modern tractor today does 5x the work of a 20 year old tractor so there are 5x less of them built, and sold to factor farms. Doesnt matter that they cost 10x as much.
Its more of an issue of folks with skills welders, fitters, mechanics, who are being crushed by the war on coal, the war on shale, and the general war on the middle class....
"TPP gonna fix it all"
Alan Grayson one of the few pols speaking out
Recently, I was on national TV with host Thom Hartmann, trying to offer some kind of explanation why Congress would even consider committing Constitutional hari-kari under the proposed "Fast Track" legislation. Here's how it went:
HARTMANN: While President Obama's is out defending the Trans-Pacific Partnership, members of his own party are making their voices heard over the latest so-called "free trade" deal. A number of progressive lawmakers, led by Senator Elizabeth Warren, are asking for the full text of the TPP to be released, so that Americans can judge for themselves whether it's a really good deal for America. So is it time to take the secrecy cloak off of the TPP, and make it public, so that "We, the People" can see all of its gory details? Let's ask Congressman Alan Grayson representing Florida's 9th Congressional District. Congressman Grayson, welcome back.
GRAYSON: Thank you, Thom.
HARTMANN: Great to have you with us. First let me play a clip of President Obama on the Chris Matthews show the other day. Check this out:
OBAMA: Everything I do has been focused on, "how do we make sure the middle class is getting a fair deal?" Now, I would not be doing this trade deal if I did not think it was good for the middle class. And when you hear folks make a lot of suggestions about how bad this trade deal is, when you dig into the facts, they are wrong.
HARTMANN: Your reactions and comments?
GRAYSON: The President is wrong. In fact, he is so far off-base that right now, if we had a vote on TPP or on "Fast Track," his own party would be 10 to 1 against him. It's a giveaway to corporate America. It's a giveaway to multinational corporations, millionaires and billionaires. And specifically, it's the death knell of the middle class in America. The President is so far off-base that it's ridiculous. And he should have realized that, during his State of the Union Speech. During the State of the Union Speech, about 50 times, Democrats got up and applauded when he was talking about everything else. And then when he was talking about this issue, only Republicans stood up to applaud the President. That would have been some type of tip-off, back in January. And yet here it is [three months later], and the President is singing the same sad song. Let's face the facts. Since NAFTA, the first of these major, mega-trade deals that went into effect, since NAFTA went into effect, we've lost five million manufacturing jobs, and roughly 15 million other jobs. The resulting trade deficit means that we've gone $11 trillion into debt. That's $35,000 for every man, woman and child in this country. What are we going to do, when the Japanese and the Chinese and the other foreign countries say, 'Okay, now we want our money back'? And we lose twice over. Because what's been happening in these trade deals, over and over again, is not that they're buying the same amount of goods from us that we're buying from them. They're not buying the same amount of services that we're buying from them. What's happening is very simple: We're putting their people to work by buying their goods and services, and they're buying our assets, not generating any new employment in this country at all. We lose twice. We lose the jobs, and we're driven deeper and deeper into debt, to the point where already one-seventh of all the assets in America are foreign owned. And it's getting worse. It's getting worse to the tune of one billion dollars a day.
HARTMANN: Wow. Now legislatively what we're looking at here are actually two different pieces of legislation, which do quite different things. The one most people are familiar with, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, I call it the Southern Hemisphere Asian Free Trade Agreement, or SHAFTA. That's one of the pieces. Okay, the TPP, SHAFTA, what's in that? But then there's this thing called "Fast Track," where Congress votes to give up its own ability to debate and amend legislation. Can you explain the logic of that?
GRAYSON: It's a constitutional form of hari-kari. What we're seeing here is unconstitutional violations of the oath of office that we took at the beginning of this term. We have a constitutional duty to look over, to debate, to inquire, to do oversight, to amend. And all that is taken away from us [under Fast Track]. What the President's asking us, both the Senate and House, to do, is to give up on hearings. No hearings on any of these trade deals. To give up on subcommittee and committee and floor amendments. And to give us each in the House, 88 seconds, -- 88 seconds, Thom! -- to debate these trade bills before we have to vote them up or down. It's absurd. We don't do it for defense matters. We don't do it for tax matters. We don't do it for healthcare. We don't do for anything else except for this. And why is that? Because multinational corporations slip into these trade deals provisions for their own benefit, that would never under any circumstances pass the House or the Senate and be signed into law.
HARTMANN: Wow. Where did Fast Track come from? . . . I don't understand the process.
GRAYSON: Well, both the trade deals themselves, and the fast-track procedure to deal with trade deals, are unconstitutional. The trade deals are unconstitutional because they are treaties. And the [proponents] go way out of their way to avoid using the term "treaties." But what is a treaty? It's an agreement that you make with another country. By definition, these are treaties. And under the Constitution, they require a two-thirds vote in the Senate. They know they'd never get a two-thirds vote for any of this stuff. It's hard enough to get 50 percent, plus one. So they call them a "trade agreement" instead of a "treaty," to avoid the Constitutional provision that goes back 200 years, that requires a two-thirds Senate vote.
In addition to that, we get "Fast Track." Fast Track is taking away our constitutional prerogatives, which under the Constitution, legislation cannot do. Under the Constitution, the House and Senate set their own rules, by their own discretion, unilaterally. So what this legislation purports to do is tie our hands as an institution, which under the Constitution, we can't do.
HARTMANN: Now when you start speaking about the Constitution, Congressman Grayson, most of the people who wave that thing around a lot and treat it as holy writ are conservative Republicans. How are they reacting to Fast Track, to setting aside their own constitutional power? I mean they were hysterical about, you know, giving up any power or sovereignty when we joined the UN for example. Where are they on this?
GRAYSON: Well, the first cut for the Republicans is, "what does the Chamber of Commerce want?" And the Chamber of Commerce wants this so, so badly. This is their number-one legislative priority, and it's been that way for several years. Because they realize this is the way to get what they want, without having to bother with debate, with oversight, with hearings, with mark-ups, with amendments and so on. Just get it all at once, in one nice neat package -- everything they want. One of the other things they want is to set up courts outside the U.S. court system, which can result in judgments against not only the federal government, but also state governments, county governments, and municipal governments, which are enforceable judgments. And these judgments can be handed out for arbitration panels that are operated by the United Nations and the World Bank. So we are surrendering our sovereignty to the United Nations and the World Bank. You can bet that some of the Tea Party fanatics have picked up on this already, and some of the Republicans are starting to feel the heat. What I'm hearing from the other side -- and I talk to them quite frequently -- is that there's already roughly 60 [GOP] votes in the House against this, because they realize that we are giving away our hard-fought, hard-won sovereignty, in exchange for nothing.
HARTMANN: Wow. In the last half a minute or so here, Congressman, how do you see this playing out?
GRAYSON: I think that the Senate may or may not vote in favor of it. I'm pretty sure the leaders in House will never let it come to a vote, because Boehner has been telling Democrats that if there aren't 50 Democrats in favor of it, then he's not going to bring it to the Floor. Right now, they'd be hard-pressed to come up with 15 Democrats in favor of it, much less 50. So it may never come to a vote in the House, just like it didn't last term. And if it does come to a vote, there's a very good chance that it will be defeated, as it should be. This is nonsense. Let's try to solve our trade deficit problem, and instead of figuring out creative ways to add to it, and dig a deeper and deeper hole for ourselves.
HARTMANN: Amen. Congressman Alan Grayson. Great to have you with us. Thank you for dropping by.
GRAYSON: Thank you, Thom.
If we want to defeat this "death knell for the middle class," then we have to fight back, and fight back now, before it's too late. To see the video, or to support our "Truth in Trade" campaign, click right here.
Courage,
Rep. Alan Grayson
I used to have a job shuttling other peoples PM's offshore, but I kept losing them due to multiple boating accidents
This is what is so wrong with America right now..you have a big sob story of some guy who lost his job...now I know this guy is Union thru and thru and voted for the strikes and for Obama 2 times who has said publically he wants to put the coal buisness out of business..so this idiot who builds coal mining equipment could not put the two together..that he was going to vote for a guy that wants to take his job away....stupid is what stupid does....
Reminds me of seeing Obama/Biden stickers on gas hog SUV's and trucks.
Morons.
EVERYBODY still left in Decatur is looking to move somewhere else. That's been the nature of the town for a hundred years ....this is nothing new ....