My herbalist put me on a new strain of Valerian Root, so I was able to watch about 45 minutes of last night’s debate with the help of my herbs and a few whiskey sours. After consulting the transcript, to make sure my drunken recollections are correct, it’s pretty clear that the Republicans have hit upon a winning campaign slogan: we are all moochers.
Trump kicked it off by saying that the princely sum of $31,000, which is the fortune that one lucky enough to pull down 15 US American Dollars per hour would make, is too high. We can’t be competitive in the global Happy Meal toys and iPhone assembly race to the bottom if we are paying our workers a barely living wage. Ben Carson agreed: we can’t effectively build and stock pyramids with the life-giving sustenance of grain by paying three pictures of Lincoln every backbreaking hour. And repeal Obamacare.
The question I have is whether the “paid too much” charge is true across all salary levels. If so, we all need to take an immediate pay cut. Will a $20,000 annual wage make us competitive? Will $10K? Should we send our surplus wages directly to Trump so he can make us competitive again? Is there a middleman who will collect my check and move my name from the “taker” to the “maker” column? Help me out, because I get the general principle, but as usual the Republicans are a little short on implementation details.
rikyrah
Quote of the Day
November 11, 2015
“You’re a liar, and you’re a cheater.”
— John Bel Edwards (D), quoted by the New Orleans Times Picayune, in a gubernatorial debate with Sen. David Vitter (R).
Steeplejack (phone)
Aren’t U.S. C-level executives paid more than their international counterparts. Perhaps the wage cuts could start there.
rikyrah
You know, when I saw the first tweet about this, I just didn’t want to believe it. I really didn’t. But, I kept on clicking through links to get what he said.
I mean, the cooning never stops with this slave catcher.
……………………………………..
“This country was — declared its independence in 1776. In less than 100 years, it was the number-one economic power in the world. And the reason was because we had an atmosphere that encouraged entrepreneurial risk- taking and capital investment. Those are the fuels that drive it.”- Ben Carson at last night’s GOP Debate
rikyrah
Asking Republicans to deal with those pesky things called FACTS!
………………………………
The GOP Debate: Republicans Have No Answer to the Key 2016 Question
By Brian Beutler
For the most part, primary debates probe at differences in philosophy and strategy among copartisans, or at fundamental ideological differences between Republicans and Democrats. Or, in the case of Republican debates, a right-wing caricature of Democrats.
But candidates on the debate stage are rarely forced to grapple with the practical and pugilistic realities of general election politics—with the fact that Hillary Clinton isn’t an abstraction or a paper tiger, but a formidable candidate in her own right.
Against that backdrop, the most revealing question of the first half of the debate, addressed to Carly Fiorina, posited that Democrats will point out, accurately, that the labor market has performed better in modern times under Democratic presidents than under Republican ones, and that it performed particularly poorly under the previous Republican president.
“The Democrats will inevitably ask you and voters to compare the recent presidents’ jobs performance,” said moderator Gerard Baker. “In seven years under President Obama, the U.S. has added an average of 107,000 jobs per month. Under Clinton, the economy added about 240,000 per month, under George W. Bush, it was only 13,000 a month. If you win the nomination, you will probably be facing a Democrat named Clinton. How are you going to respond to the claim that Democratic presidents are better at creating jobs than Republicans?”
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/123417/fiorina-just-proved-gop-has-no-answer-key-2016-question
BGinCHI
The way to grow the American economy is by drastically contracting it.
What the fuck is so confusing about that?
Unabogie
@rikyrah:
This is why Teabaggers love him.
Punchy
I think I’ve identified the problem….
beltane
Valerian root has helped me with my night-time panic attacks. It is not strong enough to get me through a Republican debate.
NotMax
“What this country needs is more wage slaves since we can’t have real slaves anymore.” The Laffer curve of wages.
rikyrah
Question for the redesigners – how come I can’t see the arrows to the previous and future posts when I’m looking on my kindle?
When I’m dealing with the laptop or desktop, I can see them fine. But, not on my Kindle. I have to scroll all the way back to the top and then go back out to the home for Balloon Juice.
beltane
@Steeplejack (phone): They are paid a lot more than their international counterparts. Even worse, the more they fail, the more they are paid. We have become a society that rewards failure and ineptitude while punishing honest work.
Ruckus
The only thing republicans are not short on is bullshit. They have so much of that they have to spread it around every time they open their mouths.
Ruckus
@NotMax:
That of course should be the “Laughing Curve of Economics”
Ruckus
@beltane:
So we ARE a conservative country.
shell
Yeah, absolutely gob-smacked when Trump dropped that little nugget. Our economy sucks cause people get paid too much. Just like lower taxes and no regulations will help our economy soar, paying workers even less so they can buy less and less in this new booming economy……Dont you get it people! Its Austerity! That always works!
BruceFromOhio
@rikyrah: Ah, yes, Manifest Destiny, legal slave trade, subjugation and murder of indigenous populations, robber barons, child labor, a good old fashioned bloody civil war – those are AWESOME fuels! Top off the tank, Ben, let’s get this entrepreneurial risk- taking and capital investment show on the road!
Please, please, please, let him be nominated. President Sanders/Clinton can always use the assist.
BGinCHI
@Punchy: You have to aspirate the H.
debbie
@rikyrah:
I can’t believe Carson’s still pushing his theory of slavery-as-work-program after all the criticism it’s received, even from other conservatives.
Punchy
@BGinCHI: Ahhhhh….got it. Perhaps that’s not a bad preventative health care solution for GOP debates.
rikyrah
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 11/10/15
GOP on wrong side of veterans with VA privatization plan
Rachel Maddow reports on the partisan divide over how to improve health care for veterans, with Democrats like Hillary Clinton proposing changes to improve the V.A. and Republican candidates proposing to privatize the V.A. against the wishes of most veterans.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/watch/gop-opposite-veterans-on-va-privatization-564020803602
rikyrah
Yeah..sure…whatever muthaphucka.
…………………
Jonathan MartinVerified account
@jmartNYT
Trump news on Morning Joe: Under Pres Trump there will be “a deportation force” to find, send back illegal immigrants.
JPL
@rikyrah: When lamb mentioned that last night, I went on Cspan to find the clip. It was about 55 minutes into the debate. It was a great quote that needs to be used by more dems. Both candidates are running against Jindal’s budget. lol
Gin & Tonic
Trump kicked it off by saying that the princely sum of $31,000, which is the fortune that one lucky enough to pull down 15 US American Dollars per hour would make, is too high.
Not to quibble too much with mistermix’s point, but many of the people who are paid minimum wage are also very deliberately kept to 32 or fewer hours per week so they’re not considered “full-time” employees. So that “princely sum” is more likely to be under $25k.
JPL
When talking about the minimum wage, will someone point out that the government is subsidizing the working poor.
@rikyrah: Since I didn’t have the magic root in the house, I couldn’t watch the debate so thanks for that quote. He definitely agrees with Trump that wages are to high.
Ruckus
@rikyrah:
See my reply to Richard’s post below.
But yeah, I’m opposed. My care under private insurance never had the kind of review that I get at the VA. Not that it was necessarily bad, it’s just that properly managed care is better. Not as personal but then who actually cares if the end result is better?
srv
Any iPhone user wanting a higher minimum wage for themselves is a moocher by definition.
Oatler.
My herbalist here in Oregon put me on new strain of super sour diesel, and it successfully removed any urge to see debate.
SFAW
@srv:
Fixed that for you.
PurpleGirl
Current thinking about the building of the pyramids is that they were not built by slave-labor but by a special class of workers. Excavation of a workers village nearby the pyramids produces one story homes, food remains showing meat/fish at least once a week, generous amounts of beer, medical care (a fractured leg bone which healed well). Not an easy life but not horrible either. The also had their own burial grounds.
cmorenc
A legitimate skeptical question to ask about the $15/hr minimum wage proposal is: to what extent will the positive economic effects (personal and macro-economic) of more cash in the hands of folks more likely to spend it – be offset by inflationary pressures, to the extent businesses offset higher labor costs with higher prices (=>inflation). It’s economic illiteracy on our part to pretend this effect will be negligible, but neither is it a forbidding counter-effect if the positive feedback effects (increased cash flow in the economy) outweigh it significantly. Another potential counter-effect cannot be dismissed either – to what extent will businesses adopt labor-replacing automation as a partial offset to paying higher wages to their remaining (smaller) workforce? Again, these two negative feedback effects might indeed not outweigh the positive effects, provided the increased cost of living for workers at or near the minimum-wage end of the scale doesn’t effectively wipe out the increased nominal take-home pay. But they can’t be summarily discounted as negligible either.
Botsplainer
Fuck. My office is downtown, on a street which has been blocked off for some jingo shit. As I was walking up, I heard the dulcet tones of some whitebread fucking choir singing “Ah’m Proud to be ‘Murkin”.
If I had been in possession of a flag at that moment, I’d have burned it.
How about “In Flanders Fields” and an effigy burning of each British and American General who ordered a final charge while being in possession of the Armistice orders instead?
Hoodie
“Paid too much” is definitely the case in the executive/admin ranks. We just got a new university system head and she got a 150k/yr raise over her predecessor, who was struggling to get by on 600k/yr. You can find the same dysfunction in the corporate ranks. It’s all about membership in the club, not what you’re worth.
The Other Chuck
@PurpleGirl: It’s pretty well-accepted these days that the pyramids were public works programs, labored on by otherwise idle farmers when the Nile was flooded. Not that telling a wingnut this will actually cause them to even retain this fact, let alone learn anything from it.
SteveinSC
@rikyrah: I can think of some spiffy uniforms for them: all black with silver piping and little skulls on the hats. And this time some black helicopters. Trumps Troopers, logo in the form of sort of like a pair of lightning bolts.
MomSense
I’m really glad I didn’t watch the debate last night. Have some sort of crud coming on and don’t need to feel worse.
Cervantes
@Gin & Tonic:
Good point.
In a world where people take Trump’s nonsense seriously, that is.
Thoughtful Today
” We can’t be competitive in the global Happy Meal toys and iPhone assembly race to the bottom if we are paying our workers a barely living wage. “
Trade policies such as TPP, pushed by Obama, paraded by Clinton II as the ‘gold standard’, pushed by Clinton I through NAFTA and his betrayal on China’s trade status, are part of the right-wing/neoliberal political-economics that created and perpetuates the ‘race to the bottom’.
dedc79
Saw that even some conservatives were calling Rubio out for his bogus welder/philosopher claim:
.
boatboy_srq
Modern Republicans resent paying
forlabormore than once.Betty Cracker
@rikyrah: Jesus. I hope that comment gets play far and wide.
SFAW
@Cervantes:
Unfortunately, it seems we inhabit that world. What’s scarier (to me) is that almost as many people take Carson’s nonsense (some might call it “insanity”) seriously.
I’m not sure Trump believes everything he’s saying — do (stereotypical) used-car salesmen or carnival barkers believe everything they say to the marks? — but it seems pretty likely that Carson does. Not that I’d ever question the sanity of an acolyte of Cleon Skousen, of course.
Bobby Thomson
Hokey herbs and ancient cures are no match for Valyrian steel at your side, kid.
Librarian
@rikyrah: WTF? In 1876, we were nowhere near being from the world’s no. 1 economic power- That was Britain, which would hold that title at least until WW1. The stupid it burns.
Peale
@BruceFromOhio: The best way for us to grow out of this malaise is a global war that leads to a few hundred million deaths and leaves all of our competitors a smoking pile of trash. Worked last time. Guaranteed to work again. This time we’ll take out Canada, too.
Cervantes
@SFAW:
I don’t know Ben Carson. Some of the accusations about him make sense to me, others don’t (yet). The nonsense about evolution, about the pyramids — and his ability to believe nonsense, if he really does — that sort of thing is troubling and amusing in equal portion — but it is his policy strictures that are most outrageous and need to be defeated, if not burned down to the ground completely and the earth beneath salted.
SenyorDave
I realized after reading about the GOP debate (I simply cannot bring myself to watch it, I think I would rather watch the Kardashians), that if Bill Clinton could run again he would probably win the general election by at least 10 points.
SFAW
@Cervantes:
Yeah, I’m still trying to parse out how a purportedly* world-class pediatric neurosurgeon can promulgate such screwed-up or out-and-out stupid shit, but I don’t think it’s because he’s Trump-like in his grifting.
But, in general, I agree with your comment. (Not that my comment above should be considered disagreeing, of course.)
*”Purportedly” because I am not qualified to assess his surgical skills. However, I have no reason to dispute what I’ve heard/read re: his being “world-class.”
ThresherK (GPad)
@Gin & Tonic: Isn’t that what the second job is for? Nothing says “go getter” like twice the commuting and scheduling headaches for a combined barely poverty paycheck.
I swear Shrub talked to a woman in this situation, whose plaint was that she had 2 jobs and didn’t have healthcare. His response? “Only in America”.
Baud
@rikyrah:
And those are his good points.
SFAW
@SenyorDave:
Is that WITH Hillary also running, or against only a Rethug opponent?
NorthLeft12
@Steeplejack (phone): Sorry, but the wage cuts must be borne by the people who actually produce something of value, not by the worthless managers who add no value to the products.
And by the way, there are not enough of those highly paid people around to be taxed enough to pay down the debt or support the US military machine, so they basically should not be taxed at all…..because……FREEDUMB!
MattF
This is pretty funny. A sculpture in a Brooklyn park that says YO if you’re looking at it from Manhattan, and says OY if you’re looking at it from Brooklyn.
NorthLeft12
@ThresherK (GPad): Actually, I believe she told him that she had three jobs…..not counting her wifely and motherly duties at home. GBA!
gene108
@BGinCHI:
I think the correct way to grow anything is with reasonable watering, plenty of sunshine and good soil, fertilizing when necessary.
If it works for tomatoes, it should work for the economy.
NorthLeft12
@Peale: If you are smart you would be better off declaring war on the confederate states and straighten out the mess you left from the Civil War. What the hell have we done to you guys besides beat your men and women’s hockey team every four years?
Cervantes
@SFAW:
Well, of course a surgeon is only as good as the worst member of his surgical team — Carson did nothing alone — but having said that, like you, I see no reason to gainsay the reports of his technical skill and accomplishments.
Cervantes
@SFAW:
Pretty funny.
SFAW
@MattF:
From the article:
Outstanding!
Linnaeus
@Botsplainer:
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
gene108
@JPL:
A problem that will be solved by Republican governance by eliminating all those subsidies.
Thoughtful Today
“Modern Republicans resent paying
forlabormore than once.”Can anyone point me to where the TPP addresses abusive labor conditions? Slavery?
Are there teeth in anti-slavery enforcement mechanisms?
Bonus points if you can italicize those sections inside a blockquote.
SFAW
@gene108:
Amen to that!
Just as long as they don’t eliminate subsidies for the all-too-deserving wealthy, and corporations such as JP Morgan Chase (well, Jamie Dimon, that is — who cares about the workers?)
Botsplainer
@Linnaeus:
Exactly, which was the problem.
Cervantes
@Thoughtful Today:
!
I admire your persistence on this question. Can it pay off?
vhh
@Steeplejack (phone): Yup, way, way more. CEO salaries in other countries are all 2-8 times SMALLER than in the US. Since worker minimum salaries in those countries are generally 1.5 to 2x higher than in US, the ratio of CEO to worker salaries is 4-10 times LOWER than in the US. BTW, at some point, workers will no longer be able to afford to live within reasonable commuting distance of jobs in super high priced places like Manhattan and San Francisco, so companies may have to provide dormitories if they won’t raise pay.
You can see figures by Googling “pay gap CEO Washington Post”.
Peale
@NorthLeft12: Going to war with Russia and China is kind of scary. North Korea isn’t really worth the trouble it would cause. Occupying countries in the Middle East has turned out to be a fools errand and very expensive. But Canada? It’s so close by. We wouldn’t even need to build extra aircraft carriers. Which are apparently in short supply right now and take a long time to build.
Woodrowfan
@Peale: and the Québécois will great us a liberators with wine and kisses from pretty girls!
geg6
@rikyrah:
I feel your pain. The site is almost completely unreadable on my iPhone. And forget about navigating it. It seizes up immediately if I try to scroll up. I am resigned.
Peale
@Woodrowfan: I think the last two times we tried to unleash that Québécois love, it didn’t work out as expected. But this time will be different, I’m sure.
raven
@geg6: It’s not on mine.
Gin & Tonic
@Woodrowfan: Overpriced wine, if the SAQ is involved.
bemused
@ThresherK (GPad):
Shrub said “You work three jobs? Uniquely american, isn’t it?” I can imagine Jeb saying something like this too.
debbie
@Linnaeus:
Not to mention shooting them if they ran instead of walked for cover.
SFAW
@Peale:
As Shakespeare or someone else once wrote:
“No one likes us – I don’t know why
We may not be perfect, but heaven knows we try
But all around, even our old friends put us down
Let’s drop the big one and see what happens
.
.
Asia’s crowded and Europe’s too old
Africa is far too hot
And Canada’s too cold
And South America stole our name
Let’s drop the big one
There’ll be no one left to blame us”
So forget the Canadia thing, OK?
geg6
@raven:
It’s been doing it on mine ever since the switch. I’ve tried everything and it doesn’t work. As I said, I’m resigned to it. Maybe it will be fixed and maybe it won’t. Either way, I’ll probably stick to commenting mostly in the day when I’m on my work desktop, where the site works just fine.
raven
@geg6: Huh, strange days.
MomSense
@geg6:
Huh, the old site was like that on my iPhone but it works really well now.
Roger Moore
@cmorenc:
ISTR the figure that an average fast food place spends around 10% of its money on wages, so increasing the minimum wage there is unlikely to cause a really big price increase. Other kinds of retailers who tend to hire a lot of minimum wage workers also tend to have relatively low labor expenses, since their biggest driver of expenses is cost of goods sold. The other thing to consider is that low wage workers are only a fraction of the total workforce- the people arguing for a $15 minimum wage say about 18% of the workforce would benefit- and their total wages are obviously a much smaller fraction of the total. Even if you were to double their wages over the span of a few years, it would have a relatively small impact on inflation.
The other point, of course, is that our biggest problem with inflation right now is that it’s too low. We’re still below the Fed’s semi-official target of 2% inflation, and a number of economists like KThug have suggested that 2% is too low a target given the risk of hitting the zero lower bound on interest rates. So a mild boost to inflation would be a good thing, not a bad one.
The Lodger
@gene108: Fertilizer, they got.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@geg6:
Switch to the mobile version. It hasn’t been changed and still has all of the same flaws as before, but it doesn’t seize up like the main site does and you can scroll at human speed.
catclub
@Cervantes: I really wish there were more interviews with staff at the hospitals he operated at. What do the nurses say?
Why are reporters not doing this?
Also, how long since he last operated? Why did he quit?
FlipYrWhig
You guys all know, right, that the people whose wages are too high in all these Republican blatherings on the subject are Those People, the ones who are lazy and mooch and want handouts instead of working their way up, while The Rest Of Us do our level best and only want to be treated fairly… Republican candidates don’t think _we_ get paid too much, but that _they_ get paid too much: wussy young people, shiftless public employees, etc.
Botsplainer
@Roger Moore:
I perceive that the upward jumps would most benefit those currently making between $8-12 an hour, as they’d be more valued and would no longer be begrudged employees that should be grateful they’re not being thrown away.
trollhattan
@SFAW:
But…
We’ll save Australia
Don’t want to hurt no kangaroo
Tickets acquired. I don’t think they’ll send me to Christmas Island with the riff-raff.
RSA
@dedc79:
Not to defend Rubio, but he just used a bad specific example. He started off by saying, “For the life of me I don’t know why we stigmatize vocational education.” Does anyone here think vocational education is given enough respect in the U.S., enough attention, enough resources? Not me.
A lot of media sources are jumping on the welder/philosopher mistake (and doing a pretty bad job of it–for example, by looking at what people with philosophy degrees earn by doing something other than philosophy).
Punchy
I call dibs on those ice trucks. I’ve always wanted to do a triple salchow in a 18-wheeler.
schrodinger's cat
Did Cruz really bring up the gold standard? Are these people for real?
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Thoughtful Today: Cliff’s Notes version of the Labor agreements.
The Full Text in hypertext form.
Just put the points on my tab. Thanks.
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@SFAW:
As far as I can tell, the single-minded belief in his own skills that served him well as a top surgeon is exactly the trait that’s biting him in the ass as a candidate. If you’re going to be cutting out chunks of people’s brains, you can’t allow a lot of room for self-questioning or self-doubt, because you’d end up paralyzed. You have to bull ahead with what you think is the right procedure and shut off that little voice in your head that tells you what could go wrong.
I think you can see why this personality type would be very unsuited for the compromises and analysis of competing interests necessary to be a good president.
Matt McIrvin
When I ask conservatives about this, they say that there should be no arbiter of value other than the free market, and what I want is a totalitarian state determining what everyone gets paid. And they cite the piles of bodies amassed by Stalin and Mao.
Seanly
@cmorenc:
See this LINK from Think Progressive for the impact to prices for raising wages. So, prices raise by 4.3% for everybody. The most economically vulnerable working people would be getting a net raise of 80% to 90%. A lot of other folks would see smaller gains – folks who currently make $12/hr would probably not see their wages go up to $20/hr but maybe $16 to $18/hr. Folks on fixed incomes would be hurt until inflation adjustments are made the following year.
The one thing to keep in mind is that there is always some inflation. If the minimum wage is stagnant then those people are actually getting a pay cut every year as the real purchasing power of their net take home pay is being reduced. Even in low cost of living places like SC or ID, minimum wage with full time hours isn’t enough money to get by especially with debt and children.
EDIT: the 4.3% increase was for a Big Mac which is the price increase for a company with a large percentage of it’s employees making wages that’d be impacted. The net inflationary impact to the entire economy would be less.
jake the antisoshul soshulist
@vhh:
Per Pohl & Kornbluth in The Space Merchants, they can/will sleep in the stairwells of the high-rises. For a reasonable rent, of course.
ruemara
@Gin & Tonic: that’s me right now. We don’t have minimum hours laws. I’m pretty horrified at the Republican party these days; more horrified at this if base though. I sincerely believe they’d bring back slavery and internment camps without the bat of an eyelash.
SFAW
@trollhattan:
Don’t forget that we’ll put an All-American amusement park there – they got surfing, too!
? Martin
The mistake people are making is thinking that wages are what will make us competitive. They won’t. Consider the next industry to fall, and the next thing for politicians and folks around here to get outraged about – the auto industry. Current automobiles contain 20,000-30,000 parts, a decent fraction of which are moving parts. There is a tremendous amount of machining and assembly work, but also transportation work as these parts are built at suppliers all around the world, boxed up, shoved in shipping containers sent via truck or truck/ship/truck to the next supplier where they are unboxed, assembled and possibly boxed/shipped again. All of that is massively, massively expensive in terms of labor – and cheap labor certainly helps the bottom line.
But the newest cars don’t look like this. The shift from gasoline to batteries and from analog to digital controls means that cars go from 20,000 parts to perhaps only 1,000 – or even less in some cases. And the digital parts are typically fully automated in their construction. There’s very little machining/fabrication done by people, much less part handling/shipping, much less assembly. Within 10 years, most automakers now believe they will be shipping mostly electric/digital vehicles. If these can be built with only 25% the labor (and that might still be high since the car will only have 5% as many parts), that’s 750,000 blue collar jobs here in the US that go straight out the window. Add on top of that the hundreds of thousands of maintenance jobs that will go away as these will be substantially more reliable and easier to maintain.
The future challenge isn’t that workers in Mexico or China earn $5 an hour instead of $15 or that they don’t get as much in residual benefits – pension, health insurance, it’s that the cost breakdown of a car will move from being 65%-75% labor costs (aggregated from suppliers to automakers) down to probably 25%. Paying future workers better will be vastly easier to justify simply because there will be fewer of them, and the workers you do have will each deliver far more value to product sold.
Focusing on labor prices in the current economy is looking backward. For durable goods, automation is going to eat your job. For services, software is going to eat your job. Wages will follow value-added, as they always have. Make something that can’t be automated, or perform a service that the user explicitly wants not automated. Yes, that is a tremendous problem for people later in their career where retraining is difficult, but we can’t wish this situation away – it is inevitable.
SFAW
@catclub:
Give it a rest. I mean, it’s not as if he said he invented the Internet.
But to be serious for a second: it’s not clear that there’s any “there” there. And even if there were, it’s not clear how much traction there would be with the base. If his current statements have not dissuaded them — hell, his nuttery is what they love — it seems unlikely that a few disgruntled, sour-grapes-spewing ex-surgical staff (which is how they’d be portrayed) will have any noticeable effect on his numbers.
SFAW
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
You’ve probably heard the old joke, but in case you haven’t: The difference between God and a surgeon is that God doesn’t think he’s a surgeon.
? Martin
@RSA:
This is a very fair point. We do stigmatize vocational education, but it’s because of what I wrote above – it has been too difficult for the general public to identify which vocational fields will survive these larger economic trends. Welding is a terrible example to choose because the number of welding jobs has steadily been falling, and will continue to fall. The only reason there is a shortage of welders is because so few young people went into the field to replace those who are retiring. But every industry is either replacing human welders with robotic welders which are far more accurate and consistent, not to mention faster and cheaper, or replacing the need for welding by going with more advanced machining or laser metal sintering (3d printing metal parts) which eliminate the need to fuse parts together which is the typical point of failure. Yes, the equipment is expensive, but it’s rapidly becoming cheaper than hiring someone.
And that’s the very problem with vocational programs – they need to move VERY rapidly these days, and workers need to be willing to retrain. 20 years ago you would not have predicted that these automated solutions would displace your job. Historically you didn’t usually see entire industries upended within a single person’s career span, but it’s pretty routine now. If you think of programming as being at least partially vocational, you get a good sense of what these careers ought to be like. I don’t know anyone in the programming world that isn’t currently retraining. Every programmer is learning the next language, framework, etc. It’s constant retraining as your outward skillset might have a shelf life of as little as 5 years. There’s a lot of carry-over from one area to another, so it’s far from a full retraining, but it is continuous. Vocational programs need to be seen the same way – they need to be continuous, and they simply aren’t now. And that’s why they are stigmatized. The days of learning a skill and practicing that largely unchanged for 30 years is gone.
Jeffro
@vhh: several resort towns such as Aspen Colorado already have major workforce housing initiatives , since no one who works there can afford to live there
Peale
@? Martin: You are sounding like the boss who wants you to not take a raise today because tomorrow you might be laid off. There is no guarantee that you won’t lose your job and making an increase in the minimum wage tied to somehow understanding where disruption is going to come. We do need to figure out what we are going to do when the corporations decide that the decisions made by computers are good enough and they don’t need office workers, or salesmen, or accountants. But putting off a long overdue wage increase because we can’t predict the future and waiting until we can seems a bit cruel.
Linnaeus
@? Martin:
Even continuous retraining is going to fall short in some ways, especially if the job you’re continuously retraining for isn’t where are you anymore.
Vocational education and training has a place, and I agree that it needs to be more robust. But that’s going to take more resources, and we also need to devote more resources to other kinds of social support in this economy. And that’s money that no one seems to want to pay.
Elie
@catclub:
I think eventually the “word” will come out. People are scared. He is very powerful and very vindictive as you have already seen. They are probably just glad to be rid of him. At 64or so, he is not that young, but he did retire early compared to some. Again, mixture of fear and just the right incentive strike me as the reason we haven’t heard anything — yet.
Origuy
@SFAW:
He cut out Adam’s rib, didn’t He?
sm*t cl*de
@Librarian:
These are esoteric facts, hidden from all but the initiated.
Looks like China and India were bigger than the UK.
boatboy_srq
@Thoughtful Today: You probably won’t find anyone here thrilled with TPP, but it’s touching that you’re more concerned with horrid working conditions in other countries when the GOTea thinks unregulated sweatshops paying $45/month are just dandy and should be implemented in the United States.
@Cervantes: It’s cute that TT keeps trying. I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet seems to have filled in the blanks.
? Martin
@Peale: I think you are misunderstanding. The wage increases should come, but everyone needs to be clear on the implications of this – it will only accelerate the process I outlined. Wage increases will only drive workers even faster out of their jobs and into new ones. The new ones will be better jobs, but one of the big complaints I hear from the left on labor is ‘what do you tell the welder who just lost his job’ and my answer is you better learn to be a CNC operator, or a programmer, or some such. My objection to the the cries from many on the left is that there is a very sort of union-centric attitude to those calls, that once you fix your career it should persist for life, that the need for retraining is some sort of violation of your rights.
Everyone needs to be clear that retraining is everyone’s job, all the time. The reason why philosophers outearn welders is that philosophers are retraining at a faster rate than welders are. They may be teaching english or go into ministry or a bunch of other things, but they are inevitably retraining and often significantly so.
And I would say that is most often the biggest difference between welders and philosophers – that the former are looking for a smaller educational investment than the latter, when in reality they need to make the same investment, at least in terms of time.
Tenar Darell
@rikyrah: I can’t even… Seriously, my inner historian is screaming profanities and cursing at him very very loudly. (I feel kinda nauseated by this stunning ignorance).
boatboy_srq
@sm*t cl*de: Ah, but the US would have been #1 if all that pesky Reconstruction hadn’t saddled the
Confederate statesSouth with all those obligations anduppity niCLANGsnew citizens with voting rights./Teahad
Tenar Darell
@MattF: LOL. Thanks, needed that. A good laugh, better than brain bleach.
tony in san diego
If you read the entire Joseph story in the Bible, he goes on to enslave the entire population of Egypt and seize all the land from the people, to give it to the Pharaoh, when they are desperate from the famine. That is what Ben has in mind.
Cervantes
@? Martin:
Bureau of Labor Statistics:
Mixed bag.
Cervantes
@sm*t cl*de:
India’s accounts at the time were … unreliable, managed as they still were by the British.
I’d check.
Thoughtful Today
You can be whoever you want to be, ImNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet .
Am I missing pages or is it just a list of ‘Objectives’, ‘Objectives’ that we barely maintain here?
… marketing gloss…. /facepalm
? Martin
@Cervantes: But it’s currently down by 25% from 5 years ago. There’s going to be local ups and downs, but the overall pattern is down. If you are looking to make a career of it, 10, 20 year trends matter. They are all going against you.
Cervantes
@boatboy_srq:
I missed that. You have details? (Thanks.)
Cervantes
@? Martin:
I must have mis-read that BLS report.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Cervantes: I just posted some links in my comment above. TT is welcome to look there an tell us what, exactly, he has problems with in the TPP language. He shouldn’t expect us to do his work for him. ;-)
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Thoughtful Today: I see lots of “shall” statements in the Labor section (13 page .PDF). I’m not a lawyer – maybe you can tell me what you think is insufficient about it using your apparently deep knowledge of international labor law.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
J R in WV
@sm*t cl*de:
Perhaps true about China and India, both much larger than Great Britain in every way. But Great Britain owned India at the time, and mercilessly pillaged it for money and products to be sold back home in Britain at less than the cost of production. Which caused multiple famines in India, which didn’t interfere with the movement of foodstuffs back to Britain.
This also happened with Ireland. At the height of the Irish famine huge amounts of food was exported to Britain from Ireland. Good, high quality foodstuffs like beef. Not infected potatoes. That was for the Irish. The British took the beef.
boatboy_srq
@Cervantes: @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: I hit the “max 3 links per comment” [FYWP] limit in the first one.
boatboy_srq
@? Martin:
And notice that the same people complaining about the minimum wage being too high are also complaining that education (primary, secondary, tertiary, continuing, whatever) isn’t teaching what they want taught. All those blue-collar jobs lost will mean lots of skilled labor in need of retraining – and when the GOTea seems fixated on young-earth/geocentric cosmology, four-element physics and four-humour medicine, that’s nearly as likely as tRump’s twenty-million-man illeeeeygul immygrunt relocation force.
Cervantes
@boatboy_srq:
Thanks, but I had seen all the links. By themselves, they prove nothing. What could prove something is analysis of the linked material.
Cervantes
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Here’s one “shall” statement (TPP 19.3.2):
And who defines these “acceptable conditions”? That footnote [5] tells you:
Do you get the joke?
For the sake of discussion, look at just one more (albeit paramount) section (TPP 19.6, Forced or Compulsory Labour):
Does one need an “apparently deep knowledge of international labor law” to see that a “goal” is just that; and to recognize that “discourage” is no synonym for “prohibit”?
As for the “obligations” assumed “under Article 19.3,” they refer to the ILO Declaration of 1998, in which Member States admit that they “have an obligation […] to promote and to realize” (among other things) “the elimination of all forms of forced or compulsory labour.”
About this obligation assumed nearly twenty years ago, two things: (1) Footnote 3 in TPP 19.3 makes clear that only the general ILO Declaration is considered relevant, as opposed to any actual Conventions binding on Member States; and (2) If Member States were, in fact, taking seriously ILO declarations issued in 1998, why are we still seeing forced labor in (for example) Southeast Asia?
In other words, how does the TPP protect anyone from forced labor if all it relies on is a “Declaration” that states have been ignoring for nearly two decades?
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Cervantes: The Chapter Summary (8 page .pdf) seems to answer many of your questions in more conventional English:
Is the TPP going to save American workers from unfair competition? No. Is it going to result in a huge boom in exports to member countries? No.
Several respected economists (including, IIRC, Dean Baker) have said that the TPP is going to have a small impact in US GDP at best.
Are the Labor provisions going to make things better for workers in developing countries that are signatories? It looks like it to me. And in the process, it will make labor more expensive there and lessen the perceived advantage to ship US manufacturing jobs there. And it will raise incomes in those countries, reduce poverty, and make their economies better able to import more from the US (and not just movies and pharmaceuticals).
I think Obama is doing his best to get a good agreement for US workers, just as he’s done his best to help people in many other areas. He’s tried to learn and apply the lessons learned from mistakes in previous agreements.
Did he succeed? Will it even matter either way? Time will tell.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Cervantes
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Which of my questions does it answer, and where?