General Chat (Non-Music-Related)

because everyone has two jobs... doh!
Wah wah waaaaaat?
I'm sure most of you have seen this... a Bernie Disciple Democratic Socialist. Oh and she has a Bachelors degree in economics...

She also said 200 million Americans make 20k or less per year... and then said that's 40% of the country.
The population is at 325.7 million...
If you went by 2016 numbers 58.9 mil. made 20k or less which would be about 36% of wage earners...

But...
27.3 million workers work part-time like seasonal workers
19 million workers between the ages of 16-24 most probably not qualified for much more than minimum wage. How much should these people be making?
Bachelors in Bernie economics?

Meanwhile she's out there campaigning for Democrats all over the country... would be really funny if she wound up losing the actual election.
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez... the new face of the Progressive Dems.

According to labor Bureau statistics
Workers working 2 or more jobs has been as high as 6.5% over the past 20 years but right now 4.9%

Don't know anything about ^^^ but I have read that unemployment numbers dipped because of people taking themselves out of the working' category - early retirement for most.

Don't know anything about ^^^ but I have read that unemployment numbers dipped because of people taking themselves out of the working' category - early retirement for most.

Surprised you haven't heard of her... don't think she's doing the Democrats any favors here. Shows more division to the party. Seems a different approach to the same ol appeal to the down trodden left behind where's my piece of the pie... dangling carrot.
And blames Capitalism for the woes of the world...

Partial article I read from Forbes... enough to explain it. What I gathered is It's a mixed bag not just one force causing this.

In fact, it peaked in 1997 at 67.1 percent, and has dropped annually ever since. As the study notes, “retirement had not played much of a role until around 2010.” By then, the rate had already dropped 2.4 percent.

Meaning, retirement cannot be thought to have played much of a role in the participation rates up until that point, and may only be tangentially affecting it now.

On the other side are those such as senior fellow and director of Economics21 at the Manhattan Institute, Diana Furchtgott-Roth who, in a Jan. 14 piece for RealcCearMarkets.com noted that “since 2000 the labor force participation rates of workers 55 and over have been rising steadily, and the labor force participation rates of workers between 16 and 54 have been declining.”

Which is absolutely true. Since 2003, those 65 years and older have seen their labor force participation rate rise from 13.99 percent to 18.7 percent. Those aged 55-64 saw their rate rise from 62.44 percent to 64.36 percent, a recent Americans for Limited Government (ALG) study of Bureau data from 2003-2013 shows.

Meanwhile, participation by those aged 16-24 dropped from 61.56 percent in 2003 to 55.05 percent in 2013, and for those aged 25-54, it dropped from 82.98 percent to 82.01 percent.

So, does older Americans working longer, younger people failing to enter the labor force, and the middle-aged dropping out account for the decrease in labor force participation?

Yes on all counts, the ALG study shows.

Specifically, 16-24 year olds failing to enter the labor force alone took 1.29 percent off the overall labor force participation rate. 25-54 year olds took a whopping 5.24 percent off the rate.

Meanwhile, these losses were offset by 55-64 year olds adding 2.39 percent back to the rate, and 65 years old and above adding another 1.13 percent.

By far the biggest contributors to the drop in participation were:

that the population of those aged 25-54 increased by 1.12 million, and yet its labor force actually shrank by 1.53 million—a net loss of 2.65 million; and
2.53 million people aged 16-24 failed to enter the labor force compared to the rate in 2003..
In fact, if older Americans were not working longer — in the process adding 2.79 million to the civilian labor force — participation would be even lower than it already is at about 61.7 percent, instead of the 62.8 percent rate reported.

To avoid seasonal variations, the ALG study uses average, annual figures published by the Bureau rather than monthly data.

Individuals can draw their own conclusions from the ALG study, but one conclusion they cannot make is that there is some sort of retirement wave that is driving down labor force participation and making the unemployment rate look a lot better than it really is.

What Mike's talking about (people leaving the workforce) actually goes back to the beginning of the Obama years does it not?

There are beaucoup help wanted signs in North Atlanta. I retired for health reasons but still get hammered frequently by recruiters looking for project managers, also known as 'straw bosses.'

Talbot

What Mike's talking about (people leaving the workforce) actually goes back to the beginning of the Obama years does it not?

Yes, the Obama years were the only time in American history where that happened. It was Obamacare that started the trend of companies hiring people for less than 40 hours per week to avoid paying higher health care costs of Obamacare. That was when everyone started having to get two jobs to make forty hours.

The trend began immediately reversing when Trump became President and Obamacare was on it's way out.

Currently under Trump, we enjoy the all-time lowest unemployment among African-americans in history. Fastest growth in the economic sector since Reagan.

Really horrible, horrible things if you're a Democrat. America is becoming great again after a decade of extreme decay.





Yea, Michael, the Help Wanted signs are all over the place everywhere I'm going these days... ZERO PERCENT unemployment in Odessa TX, btw.


.

Some of her talking points from an Interview with Trevor Noah..
She wants to add a carbon tax to deter people from using... I don't know Gasoline, Natural Gas, Electricity,Oil heating etc... Yup we'll all stop using these lil cushy things to avoid this tax... money grab?
She said "last year we gave the military a 700 billion dollar budget increase which they didn't even ask for"...
The entire budget for 2018 is 700 Bil. and Mattis has asked for more.
She went on to say "They're like we don't want another fighter jet... They're like don't give us another nuclear bomb you know"
She doesn't even know or understand the numbers from the tax cuts and how it works...
She needs to fire her 3rd grade math teacher and get someone working for her to do basic research...
But as long as none of the MSM outlets that she goes on call out any of this nonsense out she'll build a following of idiots that believe her.

Come on Dems this is not helping your cause... it is helping someone though

She has a degree in economics from a prestigious university. That's the worst part of it.

She has a degree in economics from a prestigious university. That's the worst part of it.

Right?
Every time she does an interview the Repubs are like...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF7OnW4 ... oshJackson

If she doesn't know the population of the US or how many of us are in poverty, maybe she had the wrong page and was looking at Brazil's numbers? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If she doesn't know the population of the US or how many of us are in poverty, maybe she had the wrong page and was looking at Brazil's numbers? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Maybe Venezuela... with some Chihuahua on the menu and all the glory of Socialism.

From finance.yahoo.com:
Both political parties are rejecting capitalism

Which would you prefer: Economic authoritarianism? Or domineering socialism?

This might sound like an Econ 101 thought experiment, but in reality, it’s the choice being offered American voters by the nation’s two major political parties. If you thought Republicans and Democrats mainly differed on the matter of how best to distribute the spoils of free-market capitalism, you’re stuck in the 1990s. Each of these parties is now lurching toward anti-capitalist statism, with the main difference being how, exactly, the government should control the economy.
The Republican party is now prostrate to President Trump, who comes from the world of business but acts more like a despot rewarding friends and punishing enemies. Sure, his tax cuts have boosted after-tax profits, but they’ve also weakened the fiscal infrastructure that keeps capitalism humming. When the next recession hits and the economy needs help, Washington will likely do less than it has in the past, probably prolonging the recession and making it deeper.

Enemy list

Meanwhile, Trump is quite unfriendly to companies that fail his loyalty test, even when they’re making shrewd business decisions. His latest blackball target is motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson, which he is encouraging bikers to boycott, because Harley is moving export production out of the country. Harley is doing that to avoid the tariff war Trump started with Europe, but instead of fixing the bad policy forcing Harley to make a tough decision, Trump is just causing more damage. If you work for Harley and declining sales cost you your job, thank Trump.



Harley joins Amazon, Boeing, General Motors, Toyota, several drugmakers and a bunch of media companies on Trump’s enemies list. And his Justice Department is desperately trying to undo the AT&T-Time Warner merger even though a federal judge declared it fine and most antitrust experts say it won’t cause any consumer harm. The arm of government doesn’t get much longer.

Trump has pals in the steel and aluminum industries, so he imposed tariffs allowing them to raise prices. But he’s penalizing every business and consumer who must now pay more for those metals. He’s also punishing American farmers and other exporters, who are losing access to foreign markets because of retaliatory tariffs imposed by Europe and at least eight other nations. Some Republicans grouse, but nobody does anything, effectively endorsing Trump’s Ministry of Meddling.

Trump is lucky the economy is relatively strong, which is masking, for now, the markets’ disdain for his protectionist distortions. But he’s not doing what he could to make it stronger. The economy needs more workers, and the United States as a whole needs faster population growth, to maintain living standards. More legal immigration is the best way to boost labor force growth and increase the pool of people who will finance Medicare and Social Security in the future. Trump, of course, is cutting back on immigration, to appease a small bloc of anti-immigrant voters he deems crucial to his political success. Maybe when Medicare starts to run short of money in 2026, we can ask those immigrant haters to pay extra.

Where are the centrist Democrats?

Not long ago, there were centrist Democrats who might have offered a welcome antidote to this Trumpublican strong-arming. Wall Streeters like Robert Rubin in the Clinton administration kept the Treasury on sound footing, with four years of federal budget surpluses in a row in Clinton’s second term. Clinton even deregulated the banking industry – for better or worse – in 1999. Pragmatic economic policies gave Clinton cover to pursue more liberal social goals.

But centrist Democrats now seem as scarce as principled Republicans. A new Gallup poll shows that 57% of Democrats have a positive view of socialism, while only 47% have a positive view of capitalism. Look, I get it–the message here is that a lot of people feel they’re not getting ahead in the US economy, and wouldn’t mind trying something different. There’s truth to that, and rising income inequality is a legitimate problem. But socialism would be a great way to lower living standards even more, and do it in a hurry. Hardly anybody who has ever tried socialism has liked it.

There may be a definitional issue here, with supporters of Bernie Sanders-style socialism merely preferring a little more fairness, better health care and education, and a bit more help for the little guy, rather than the totalitarianism of textbook socialism. Note, however, that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the celebrated 28-year-old Latina who upset an old-guard Democrat in a New York House primary and will probably be headed to Congress, belongs to the Democratic Socialists of America, which advocates government control of key industries. Imagine that your bank, grocery store, gas station and doctor’s office operated with the efficiency and cheerfulness of the postal service.

At least 42 socialists are running for office this year, according to the Associated Press, and the popularity of this particular form of oppression seems to be dragging the Democratic party leftward. Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for all” plan, once a lonely fantasy, now has mainstream support among Congressional Democrats and will be a popular slogan in the upcoming midterm elections. It’s so expensive that income and business taxes would have to double or triple to pay for it, but the Dems seem to think that as Trump becomes more extreme, they should too.

Where are the pragmatic centrists who understand that properly regulated capitalism generates the best economic bang for the buck? Among voters, they seem to have left the two political parties. Only 26% of Americans identify themselves as Republicans, while 30% say they’re Democrats. Independents are the biggest voting bloc, with 41%. Politicians rarely run as independents, because they need the campaign infrastructure a party provides. But they do need independent votes, especially in a year when control of Congress is in play. Voters should speak up for sanity.

I have never read so much bulssshhhhit
Mike BIRCH Isi not a nice guy.

SOOOOOO!

He wasted a bunch of time posting that crap.

NOT MY PROBLEM !

From finance.yahoo.com:
Both political parties are rejecting capitalism

Which would you prefer: Economic authoritarianism? Or domineering socialism?

The economy needs more workers, and the United States as a whole needs faster population growth, to maintain living standards. More legal immigration is the best way to boost labor force growth and increase the pool of people who will finance Medicare and Social Security in the future. Trump, of course, is cutting back on immigration, to appease a small bloc of anti-immigrant voters he deems crucial to his political success. Maybe when Medicare starts to run short of money in 2026, we can ask those immigrant haters to pay extra.

I agree with parts of this... But I think being more selective is important right now. We need people to fill jobs that require less assimilation and are already qualified for positions. Not a bunch of immigrants that aren't qualified to do much of anything or have any interest in our values. We already have that here. Otherwise it just grows the welfare state.
Cutting back on the total is not a new thing other Presidents have done it.
This is one of those points where I completely side with Republicans... I think it's critical right now that we're more selective.