The Economy can't keep on growing forever

It depends if there will be good paying jobs available for all those additional people, doesn't it?

 

Just as has happened for many decades now, immigration and GDP have grown. Immigration presents new workers and consumers. What percentage of immigrants start businesses and have employees? Contrary to popular conservative opinion, 'most' immigrants come to the US to work hard and create a better life for themselves...they are looking for opportunities to work, to start businesses, and of course to consume and pay taxes. If the US truly has 4% unemployment then more workers are needed...immigration...

 

And they don't need to be 'good paying jobs' because there are people to work every job description from the most unskilled and lowest wages to higher educated/skills and higher compensation. Further, many of them will seek higher education once in the US. It's a long term proposition IMO in which more workers means more GDP. We will always have workers spread across the job position bell curve...

 

Sounds like we'd have to make a financial investment in them. Do we have the financial resources to make that happen? Any research to get some idea whether there might be a return on making such an investment? (and proof that those better jobs are not just being taken away from other people, so referring to a macro-scale analysis)
Plus we already know a good segment of the student population never finish college, or take a longer time to finish it.

Often consumers who have much less disposable income to spend.
Just creates more lower paying jobs.

 

Which one caused the other?

Maybe it was GDP that attracted immigration.

 

Economic production increases not only because the population grows, but also because of the growing legacy of technological and financial capital. U.S. gdp's been growing since the beginning--

--and while a one thousand fold increase in 200 years may seem like a lot, it's just the 3.5% annual average that we've all gotten so familiar with.

 

America's had both tremendous econ growth and immigration for almost two and a half centuries.

Two hundred years ago average wages were $16 for a 59 hour week. In 2017 median annual household income was over $61,000.

 

Which, as you well know, by itself is meaningless because things used to cost less. My grandma was telling me how during the Depression her dad got 2 bags of groceries for a dollar.
My other grandma bought her house for $30,000. Today you couldn't even buy that house for ten times the amount, even though it's an old house in what has become a bad neighborhood where most of the neighbors don't speak English very well.

 

"GDP includes all private and public consumption, government outlays, investments, private inventories, paid-in construction costs and the foreign balance of trade (exports are added, imports are subtracted)."
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/gdp.asp

Stock buy-backs are a big driver.

 

You are ignoring the basic facts of our existence.

We left the Industrial Age in the late 1990s with the advent of the Internet. Which means clearly a higher level of scholarly achievement is necessary to find an "average job" in the US nowadays. Otherwise one is consigned to a dreary life earning the minimum-wage or thereabouts ...

 

You can't follow the logic? Your problem, not mine.

GDP growth will stagnate without needed governmental investments in educational attainment! Which has become to effing expensive in the US! (And I hope it's one of your kids that gets swallowed by that fact! Some people need to learn the hard way.)

You are ignoring the basics about what is happening in the world. Go back to sleep on the beach! You are in the wrong forum ... !

 

More like the property bubble and technology bubble, and higher education bubble, while offshoring industrial jobs to other countries.
The early 90s was when all those Free Trade deals began to be signed into law.

 

Neither the US nor Europe "offshored" industrial jobs.

Who was to refuse China the ability to trade internationally? Who?

Which is what they did and their much, much, much lower cost-factor is what allowed them to literally expropriate most if not all basic non-skilled jobs.

The west is recuperating some of that work by installing evolutionary automated manufacturing techniques that are highly automated - but the people who run such equipment are highly trained, well-paid and an almost insignificant part of the New UpMarket Labor Force necessary today. We should have seen this coming when Detroit installed the first automated paint machines in the 1980s!

For your edification, see documented evidence regarding Industrial Robots of the date "1985" here:

Education that leads evolution is key to any country's future ...

 

A lot of it is just credentialism, not macro value-added.

(There's also the employer screening hypothesis, where educational attainment "proves" the candidate's worth, and in that case there might also be a genetic/cultural component to the process if affordability issues create a barrier)

As the country gets dummed down, educational qualifications might become more important to screen out the bad ones.
(In which case immigration could be creating a tremendous invissible cost)

 

The phenomenon is called "limits to growth."

 

NATURAL GROWTH

Macro value-added would be that all Americans must pass a Civics test in order to obtain their secondary-school degree.

That the unacceptable manipulation of the popular vote by means of Gerrymandering and the Electoral College happens in no other "so-called democracy"!

Interesting remark, but it needs further explanation.

The US has allowed immigration far beyond its economic necessity. (Ditto Europe where mostly all the middle-easterners that made it in are without jobs and just mill around central parts of town.) Indigenes must come first and foremost in hiring. (And Americans could learn to do less "throwaway" that needs to be removed? (Better yet, remove it yourself to the nearest public dump!)

"Natural growth" has its limits in any country - and that limit should non-migration population expansion. (Which, I understand Japan is doing without making any public statement about that fact.°

The US does not know what to do with its uneducated youth as it stands. Why put up with thousands more?

It makes no sense ... and the culprit is that Americans think GDP-growth is automatic. What if if such was no longer the rule in the US. What if the US is "up to capacity" in terms of manpower growth and perhaps should learn to accommodate "natural growth" of its existing population ... ?

 

Just as many feel strongly one way or the other about business owners raising capital by selling shares, still more seem to have very strong opinions on buying back up the shares when the capital's no longer needed.

The idea that buybacks drive production is new for me, Is there a chance you could explain how you see it that way?

 

Let's get clear. You can't possibly be saying "low paying jobs" is meaningless because things "cost less". If you want to talk about 'real incomes' then please say so. If you're worried that real incomes have fallen then we can look together at actual ledgers showing increases in personal incomes adjusted for inflation.

What most of us see when we look is that over the past century average real incomes have doubled every 21 years --even while those of us who are married to misery just ignore the good and complain.

 

Yeah ... it's called abra-cadabra !

Consumers drive all aspects of product/services production (and contraction).

Always have, always will ...

 

Some Real Info about Really Low Paying jobs. (Factoid - it is a very small percentage of the population that are affected. That is, 2 to 4% of all those employed.)

Well, here are some uncomfortable truths about the US economy:
*The Minimum Wage has been pegged at $7.25/hour since 2009 (almost two decades ago!)
*From the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) here:

*BLS remarks about Minimum Wage earners:

*State of residence:

 

Those who dig into this stuff big time note that consumers can want to buy something all they want, but unless they're willing to cover additional costs that may arise from say, disasters, war, or gov't intervention --then those all powerful consumers suddenly won't be driving anything.

 

Some like governments sticking it to businesses, not because they think anyone will be better off but because they want what they consider to be "fairness". Minimum wage laws are often passed to make employers pay more "fairly", but what happens is that wages in general fall:

What we got is that median (half more, half less) weekly real (adjusted for inflation) wages fell for years after the min. wage hike, and then finally soared to all time highs w/o the help from those in gov't who think they knew better.

We can't help employees by attacking employers.

 

It's more complicated than that.

I won't waste our time arguing about it here, but can refer you to this thread:
How much has GDP really increased since 1970 ?

(Answer is that GDP relative to the price of cars & houses has only increased about 20 percent since 1970 )

 

Did you really misunderstand what I said?

 

What you said was--

--and what I asked was--

So now when you ask--

--my guess is that no matter what I reply I'll probably get retorted w/

So we're probably better off dropping which one of us is more understanding and get back on topic.