From the Economist - Forgotten Men

Here: Labor Markets - The Forgotten Men Index

Excerpt:

 

Even the most cursory look at the above Forgotten Men Index graphic shows a long-term downward trend in the Index - so there should be no dispute about where its growing. Though we may want to dispute the reasons it is downward.

I keep saying it, so I'll say it again, the only way to stop that slope downwards is enhancing skills and competencies - and that can be ONLY DONE by assuring that our workers have recourse (as children) to free Tertiary Education and (as grownups) the same but perhaps an emphasis on vocational training. As regards the latter, a decent Vocational Apprenticeship program would be worthwhile establishing.

For some who was driving buses yesterday, perhaps in a year to a year-and-a-half of vocational training they could be restaurant chefs - earning more than triple their previous income. Why not? Obama did fund an apprentice training program called ApprenticeshipUSA Investments.

But who knows if the new Dept. of Labor Secy will want to finance that program ...

 

Free education when liberals have made our schools about the worst in the civilized world??? Better to ship 30 million illegals home and eliminate the corporate income tax which is highest in world. Then we'd have millions of new jobs and huge upward pressure on wages!!. Never fear The Donald is here!!

 

Pitiful blather and claptrap. (In fact, apparently you need an education.)

You are genuflecting at the altar of Donald Dork - superbly first-class con-man. All talk, talk, talk.

Lotsa luck with that one ...

 

One day the suckers will realise how wrong they were. They'll never admit it though, not in a million years!

 

Yes, let's give the Brits 4/5 years outside the EU, see how they fare - then you can do the mudslinging?

The economic rot has already begun, and from here the rest is all downhill for England and Wales.

We'll see how you feel when the Scots leave "Great Britain" and Northern Ireland votes to join Ireland.

All alone in this Brave New World you (plural) have just sunk into ...

 

No luck involved. Supply side economic policies are proven superior to command-control economics. Reagan/41/Clinton/43 vs. Obama performance shows that. Claiming that income redistribution is superior to economic growth is ludicrous and will be the death of the D party in the US.

 

Has it? I haven't noticed! Au contraire, all the doom-mongering and dire warnings of what would happen to our economy post Brexit haven't materialised, have they? As to whether the Scots want to be in or out is of zero interest to me; in fact I wish the Scots would join then we won't have to support their country any more. Anyhow you're French - why should you care if we're in or out?

 

Patience, petit bonhomme. Patience.

Britain hasn't quite yet left the EU ...

 

But be under no illusion er, little man - we will, and you're going to miss us when the (*)(*)(*)(*) hits the fan in your dysfunctional country. Look north to Scandinavia and you'll know what I mean.

 

Redistribution of Income downwards instead of upwards WILL INDEED rectify the dismal-looking future of the US.

As I've noted more than several times in this forum:
*Too low taxation on upper-income simply incites the sorts of machinations that brought about the Toxic Waste Mess that causes massive recessions. (And Bernie Madoffs!)
*Said Income becomes Wealth and exits circulation, since it sits in accounts merely accumulating return on interest. (Yes, in some rare cases it provides start-up investment funding. Most of it, studies have shown, simply accumulates interest as it is placed in interest-bearing investments.)

Moreover, in terms of Wealth Inheritance, it seems not to last too long in the family. That is, second and third generations are not up to preserving and expanding their inheritance. Howzat?

See here, from Time Magazine: 70% of Rich Families Lose Their Wealth by the Second Generation

So, you think you are "doing what you're doing for the kids"? They are gonna blow it all awayyyyyyyyyy! So, it inevitably does anyway reenter the economy!

Why not just tax at 95% superciliously ginormous upper-incomes (say like over a megabuck a year)? In that manner, the government can use the additional revenues to teach our kids what they need most (a postsecondary education) and maybe even mount a National Health System that does not cost an arm-and-a-leg to manage and deliver.

A Tertiary Education allows them the "credentials" to pursue an active career at a decent salary and have a wholesome family-life along with it.

What more should any nation of intelligent people want ... ?

 

Thanks for making my point. If the D party continues on this belief that the state has the right to make decisions on the financial matters of families they will do nothing but add to their string of ~ 1000 lost governance seats.

 

If you ship immigrants home and someone does the work they were doing, you have not created any new jobs. You have just changed the color of the skin doing them, at best. In reality, however, it still wouldn't happen because if the people do not have the skill sets to do those new jobs, then the jobs will not come. The fundamental problem with both sides of the argument is that there is no effective tools in place to make sure that the person seeking vocational training will have a job on the other side. It is a problem we have seen locally when the workforce transition funds sent a lot of people to college after their jobs got sent overseas. There were no jobs coming out of the program so a lot of the folks purposefully failed so they could stay in the program and bide more time, especially those older workers closing in on early retirement. A lot of these folks went into precision machinery under the promise that was where the future jobs were, but there still were not a lot of those jobs to be had.

 

THE FILTHY RICH

Can't imagine how I did that. Once again, you've misunderstood.

Higher taxation (that is raising the ludicrous 15/20% of effective rates today) and instituting a cap on Income would do wonders towards revitalizing the American community.

What you (in particular) do not understand - and I will repeat it once again - is that insufficient taxed Income does not return to the economy to sustain/boost Consumption. It goes swiftly into Wealth - and the administrating hands of Wall Street bankers. All they do is look for the quickest/best RoI, which generates applause from only those concerned. That is, the filthy-rich.

History lesson:
*Since the Roman Empire crashed in the 5th century, various monarchs have fought over land. Because land was the critical-component for generating Wealth. It was in this circumstance that "capitalism" was born because bartering goods was ineffective.
*So money was introduced as an exchange mechanism, and Ownership of the means of production became a predominant human interest - which produced the "Leisure Class." The ownership of both rural agricultural-land and/or citified "services" (meaning the production of goods for Consumption) became a major preoccupation of both rural and citified gentry.
*Capitalism is neither the product of economic nor social-theory. It is just a mechanism of exchange, and it has become one upon which a market- economy is wholly dependent.
*Which means that human-kind, being imbued with Vested Interest , will thus seek naturally to accumulate "capital". Typically, best by owning the means of production - but also participating in the process of ownership by shareholding.
*Nothing wrong with that for as long as it employs people and the distribution of "Return" is fair and equitable. Which is isn't because "means of production" generate enormous amounts of Income, more to those who "own the process" than to those who "participate in the process".
*And there, at that point, the necessity of adequate and fair taxation is born. Because without Fair Taxation, it is its opposite that prevails - Grossly Unfair Taxation and a Wealth Class.
*Riches are accumulated at the top of the Wealth Pyramid and do very little to add to the Generation of Income. After all, Income is derived from a market-economy that exchanges Money for the Consumption of Goods/Services. Wealth, for the most part, simply sits and engenders interest. It is a minor portion that actively enters the economy to engender more economic activity.
*OTOH, higher taxation (and subsequent tax-revenues) would allow the state to produce/offer key services, such as National Health Care and Tertiary Education at acceptable levels of pricing - even free where judged a "necessity". Too much taxation, however, will produce the opposite effect - since it destroys inducement to take risk in order to obtain profits.
*Thus there is a mid-point where too much taxation is as bad as not enough.
*Of course, both Education and Health Care can be and are provided by private-enterprise - but typically at market-prices that many cannot and will never afford. Which simply furthers the harm done by the aberrant Income Inequality that exists today in the US ...

 

Wealth is not a zero sum quantitiy. Wealth is used for investment. If there were no investment there would be no future economic growth. And the private sector is much better at determining where investments are made due to free market forces. All the gov does is misallocate investment and thus reduce economic growth. That's very simple to understand. Gov's which practice and prioritize redistribution greater than economic growth have stagnant economies. Best examples - Europe and the Obama economies.

 

Again the same tiresome blah, blah, blah about "gummint misallocation".

You refuse the economic research that shows CONCLUSIVELY that Wealth is being amassed by a very select few because of our aberration of upper-income taxation. Where it is taken out of the economic-system and sits there accumulating interest.

Yeah, right government DOES MISALLOCATE ITS INVESTMENT! Like here:


Fifty-four percent is being wasted on the DoD! It could be better used:
*Giving our kids a free Tertiary Education rather than shutting them out (when fewer than half graduating from high-school will likely not obtain one). So, many will likely end up in jail where we have the highest incarceration rate of any developed economy. Or,
*Providing the nation with a true National Healthcare System that assures a life-span equal to that of the EU - presently three-yeas longer than the US!

That's what I am talking about - hard-line facts and not your baneful rhetoric ...

 

AND ABOUT THAT "ABERRATION", from Huffington Post: How Rich Are the 400 Richest Americans and How Do They Use Their Money?

And all because, after Reckless Ronnie's outrageous reduction in Upper-income Taxation, the Income-to-Wealth surge became "massive". So, in yet another demonstration of the mindlessness of the American method of voting a PotUS, we have Donald Dork (a plutocrat who benefited most from the Reagan tax-reductions) who's going to fix-it-all.

We are all waiting for "Mr. Fix-It" with breathless anticipation - which is, so far, nothing more than his usual media-antics before national TV.

Fine-tuned Presidency, me arse ...

 

(Politicized) Energy & Environment, (Politicized) Science, (Politicized) Education, (Politicized) Food & Agriculture, and (Politicized) Government.

 

Brilliant rebuttal!

Moving right along ...

 

Just pointing out the obvious.

 

how can the freedom to keep what you earn in voluntary peaceful transactions that enrich both parties be outrageous
and stealing money at liberal gun point not be????

 

THE MEANING OF THE WORD "COLLECTIVE"

"Keep what you want" is the hard part - especially in a country fascinated with Wealth. Obtain what you deserve fairly is the far better and just solution.

You live in a collective, called "a nation", with collective rights and collective obligations. Your "rights" are not unlimited in order to protect and assure economic fairness.

Taxation is an obligation of governments necessary to satisfy the needs of the nation generally, fairly and equitably. We can discuss those needs, but YOU, the individual, have only the right to elect those who govern the collective - supposedly with the approval of voter elections (most often in most democracies the popular-vote).

Neither do you evidently understand the necessity of Societal Fairness (aka Social Justice). You are not alone in not knowing. Which is why Income Disparity reigns supreme in the US:








MY POINT?

Social Justice is not to be confused with either Socialism or Communism since it pertains to an economic market-economy where "capital" is employed as a medium of exchange.

From here:

Sociologically and as regards the individual, equality of opportunity relates to the bottom two rungs of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.

 

Some people must have the last word - regardless of its inanity.

You've had yours. Do you feel better now ... ?

 

The forcible removal of my right to liberty for the unearned profit of the privileged was not voluntary or peaceful, and every transaction conducted under such conditions is a transaction under duress.

 

how can it be forceful if you volunteered to pay for it?? Care to rethink???