Weekend Reading

There Is No Labor Shortage
We Don't Have Labor Shortage. We Have A Pay Shortage.
Fighting Climate Change May Be Easier Than We Think
Heavy Job Loss Since The 1970s Hit Milwaukee's Black Community The Hardest. Here's Why.
The Case Against The Electoral College In Stronger Than Ever
Journal Sentinel Slams "Liberal" News Site
David Koch's Monstrous Legacy
I Helped Create The GOP Tax Myth. Trump Is Wrong: Tax Cuts Don't Equal Growth.
Humans Versus Earth: The Quest To Define The Anthropocene
New Inequality Numbers Are A Gift To Campaign Sloganeers
No, Productivity Does Not Explain Income
How Trump's Foxconn Deal Conned Wisconsin Out Of Billions
The Financialization Of The American Elite
The 'War On Cars' Is A Bad Joke
Social Security Does Not Add To The Federal Deficit
Brazil, The Amazon, and Global Warming: It Ain't Quite What The Media Tell You
The Trump Vs. Obama Economy - In 15 Charts

Prosperity By President

[source]

Sunday Reading

To Get Into The 1%, You Need Adjusted Gross Income Of $480,930
Wisconsin Attorney General Open To Allowing Guns In Schools
Citing Costs, Some GOP Governors Refuse To Hold Special Elections
New Spending And Tax Cuts To Cost More Than $700 Million Under Actions By Wisconsin Lawmakers
WisGOP Pre-Election "Cut And Borrow" Spree Will Hurt Us After November
The NRA Was Waging War On Facts Long Before The 'Fake News' Boom
Supplements Are A $30 Billion Racket - Here's What Experts Recommend
The Governor Of Giveaways
Eminent Domain May Be Use To Acquire Land For Foxconn From Holdouts
On The Link Between US Pay And Productivity

Sunday Reading

Monopoly Rents And Corporate Taxation
Basically Every Problem In The US Economy Is Because Companies Have Too Much Power
The Hit Job On Chief Flynn
UW's Noah Williams Isn't Just A RW Hack. He's A Koch Addict
Harvey Shows Anti-Government Crowd's Utter Hypocrisy
Tax On Hybrids And Electric Vehicles Is Poor Economic Policy
David Brooks Gets Story On Wage Growth And Productivity Completely Wrong
How Local Housing Regulations Smother The US Economy
The Voting Commission Is A Fraud Itself
Why American Workers Pay Twice As Much In Taxes As Wealthy Investors
Houston's Flooding Shows What Happens When You Ignore Science And Let Developers Run Rampant
Why America Still Hasn't Learned The Lessons Of Katrina
Exempting Suburbia
Have Smartphones Destroyed A Generation?

Labor's Fair Share

On Labor Day, What About Labor’s Fair Share?

• According to the Economic Policy Institute, productivity went up about 25 percent from 2000 to 2012. How much did compensation increase? Only about 7 percent. 
• From 1979 to 2010 the top 1 percent of households saw their after-tax income grow by about 202 percent.

Weekend Reading

Wisconsin's Health System Ranks In Top 10 In National Report
The Privatization Backlash
Backlash Against Privatization Is Growing in States and Cities Across the US
Biggest Infrastructure Need: States
Scott Walker's Health Care Dilemma
John Doe Probe Raises Issue Of Potential Conflicts With Justices
Federal Judge Strikes Down Wisconsin's Voter ID Law
Wisconsin Voter ID Ruling Could Cost State More Than $1 Million
FOX Find Another Anti-Government Wingnut [David Clarke] To Prop Up 
Ill-Advised Sheriff [David Clarke] Who Warned Of Second American Revolution
Walker Declines To Commit To Four-Year Wisconsin Term
Corporate Tax Attacks In The States
The Most Important Economic Chart

Time To Raise The U.S. Minimum Wage

A Chart That Demands Attention

A Rough Guide To Spotting Bad Science
A Chart To Share With People Who Complain About People On Welfare

$18.30 Minimum Wage

Real value of the federal minimum wage, 1968–2013 and 2013–2016 under proposed increase to $10.10 by 2016, compared with its value had it grown at the rate of productivity or average worker wages (2013 dollars)

* Productivity and average wage projections from 2013 to 2016 do not include the Harkin-Miller proposal. [source]

"If the minimum wage had grown at the same rate as productivity, it would be $18.30 today," reports David Cooper of the Economic Policy Institute.

Income Inequality

Did Sprawl Kill Horatio Alger?
A Tale Of Two Rust Belt Cities
Will SCOTUS Voting Rights Ruling Yield A Blue State Refund?

Without State Spending There'd Be No Google Or GlaxoSmithKline
Econ 101 Is Killing America
McDonald's Budget Plan Leaves Out Corporate Welfare
The Case For Paying People More
Mr. President, Have Pity On The Working Man
How Intellectual Property Reinforces Inequality
Is Productivity Being Translated Into Pay Increases?
Higher Productivity Used To Mean Higher Wages. Has That Broken Down?

Wages Fall At Record Pace
Walmart One Of The Major Welfare Recipients In America
Who's Dependent On Food Stamps? Cheapskate Corporations
Inequality In America: The Data Is Sobering

The Auto Industry And Labor Productivity

General Motors had $150.28 billion in revenues in 2011. General Motors has 202,000 employees. That's $743,960 revenue per employee. As David Leonhardt wrote, "The average GM, Ford and Chrysler worker receives compensation – wages, bonuses, overtime and paid time off – of about $40 an hour. Add in benefits such as health insurance and pensions and you get to about $55." If we use this $55 per hour number (for total compensation), which would gross roughly $114K per year, the typical GM worker only receives 16 percent of his revenue productivity.

People complain about taxes. But this is a direct example of how labor is taxed. In this case, at 84 percent! (And Republicans complain about 30, 20, and even 10 percent taxation?)

2011 Ford Revenues: $136.26 billion.
2011 Ford Employees: 164,000.
2011 Ford Revenue Per Employee: $830,854.
Labor Tax: 84%

2011 Chrysler Revenues: $55 billion.
2011 Chrysler Employees: 51,623.
2011 Chrysler Revenue Per Employee: $1,065,416.
Labor Tax: 89%.

Seeing as how the Republicans are so concerned with the average Joe and fair taxation, I know we'll be hearing from them any minute now about how we must obtain more just compensation for our auto workers.

Productivity & Compensation

Paul Krugman comments on Larry Mishel's (of the Economic Policy Institute) latest research, "Larry Mishel has a systematic breakdown of the reasons for worker income stagnation since 1973. He starts with the familiar divergence: productivity up 80 percent, the compensation (including benefits) of the median worker up only 11 percent. Where did the productivity go?

The answer is, it’s two-thirds the inequality, stupid. One third of the difference is due to a technical issue involving price indexes. The rest, however, reflects a shift of income from labor to capital and, within that, a shift of labor income to the top and away from the middle.

What this says is that widening inequality makes a huge difference. Income stagnation does not reflect overall economic stagnation; the incomes of typical workers would be 30 or 40 percent higher than they are if inequality hadn’t soared."

Unions, Public Sector & Wages

Yet more reporting/research debunking the claims of an oversized public workforce and of overpaid public workers.

GOP's State Project Of Slashing The Public Workforce
Red States See Massive Public Sector Job Losses
Unions & The Wage-Productivity Gap
Union Wage Advantage: Myth Or Reality?

For Further Reading:
About Those Public Workers
Deferred Wages
Plutocrats In A Bubble
Public Disregard
Reality & Public Sector Compensation
The Undercompensated Public Employee
We're All Workers

Productivity & Wages

Benjamin Landy reports, "Productivity -– a measure of economic efficiency in terms of output per hour worked -– actually grew at the relatively fast rate of 2.8 percent between 1948 and 1973, when tax rates were far higher and regulations were more extensive in many industries, relative to 1973 to 2010, when average productivity growth slowed to 1.9%. In addition, during the period from 1948 until 1973, almost all Americans were seeing their average income rise as productivity climbed. Income inequality in the United States was at its lowest levels in history, with the rising economic tide lifting all boats. But beginning in the mid 1970s, the income of the bottom 90% –- all but the highest earners -– started to fall behind productivity increases. As the graph shows, though,the incomes of the top 10% and 1% continued to track productivity growth. As of 2008, the average American’s real wages were no higher than they were forty years ago. Since all workers are collectively enhancing the efficiency of the economy, there's little justification for perpetuating policies that have enabled only the wealthiest to benefit from those improvements."

Another Way

The Center for American Progress has a new report, "Restoring the link between economic growth and the earnings of workers so that the recovery re-establishes a prosperous middle class could help reverse the economic disparity in our nation and restore prosperity for all."

Immigration

A Nation of (Yesterday's) Immigrants

How Illegal Immigrants Are Helping Social Security

The Effect of Immigrants on U.S. Employment & Productivity

Myth Busting: Job Training

Globalization is inevitable. You can't stop it. It's good for all. Get on board or be left behind. To stay viable you need additional education and training.

There is only 1 job available for every 6 unemployed workers. So what exactly do these hucksters want people to retrain for? The economy continues to expand (even if that growth is slower). Workers have simply been cut off from the expansion. Capital has been expanding it's share of the profit, while labor has been left behind.

Most of the new jobs being created require an associate's degree or less. 85 percent of the population in the U.S. have at least a high school degree. Over 27 percent have a bachelor's. The percentage of high school and college graduates has increased since 2000. We have neither an unskilled nor an uneducated workforce. Education as a corrective to the employment problem seems minimally significant.

Technology has replaced jobs. This does not mean, as the 'job training' charlatans would imply, simple advances in automation automatically must equate to reductions in the workforce. Increases in productivity upon one variable in the production process can lead to increased needs for labor at another point in the process.

Historically, wages rose with productivity. It isn't an invisible hand or some magical market force pushing us along. It is conscious policy choice. The nanny state has become an inverse Robin Hood scheme. Rather than providing a safety net, ensuring that the least among us do not fall between the cracks, we now provide corporate welfare, ensuring asset price inflation.

We've transformed from a productive economy to an casino capitalism - filled with risk, speculation, and the endless pursuit of higher yields. Any downside is now covered by the public. This is alongside our funding of much of the research and development taking place, and other subsidization of many industries and sectors within the economy.

For Further Reading:
Debt Delusion
Economy Track
Job Crisis: Fact Sheet
Skills Crisis & Job Training
Unemployed Wait Longer For Jobs

Rectifying Reagan Fabrications

Paul Krugman corrects a few (of the many) Reagan myths.