Here it is: “FOR the first time since the Depression, the American economy has added virtually no jobs in the private sector over a 10-year period. The total number of jobs has grown a bit, but that is only because of government hiring.”
Source link: http://blog.mises.org/10426/the-ten-year-stagnation/
The Ten-Year Stagnation
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Wouldn’t that meet the definition of socialism to even the most die hard empiricist?
Are not all depressions working class phenomenons?
The aim is not to “get a job”, but create your own means of earning a living, job or no job (start your own company).
Depressing
Unfortunately, it seems as if Floyd Norris reaches the wrong conclusions. He seems willing to accept a higher rate of natural unemployment, as factories move overseas, whereas the true conclusion should either be that workers need to increase productivity in the United States or real wages need to adjust. The best book on the subject, and it covers recent years to a minor extent (1980s), is: http://www.economicthought.net/2009/08/out-of-work-unemployment-and-government-in-twentieth-century-america/ (Out of Work), by Vedder and Gallaway.
Astounding that someone over at Big Government Times had to find out about this… on the surface, it also adds a new dimension to the idea of the “recession that never was” in the early 2000s.
No, really, this looks huge. I’m a bit winded by the fact that I never saw this figure in any explanation of how the past decade’s growth was illusory. Sure, it doesn’t have anything to do with the ABCT, but it could at least have been summoned as a side argument… the thing that comes closest to this is Schiff’s statements about “service sector America”, but this is more like “state sector America”.
How does taking pay cuts ‘create’ wealth? Is it more of a case those who have ill-gotten wealth giving it back to those who rightfully own it? If a company wants to move a company to China because the labour is cheaper then doesn’t Americans labour have to match the Chinese workers’ lower pay and standard of living to outcompete them? Then again if low pay and conditions ‘create’ wealth then why set a limit for a maximum wage of $10/hour so as much profit as possible is available for reinvestment?
I fear for our country; it is in the pre-final phases of being third-worlded. An infighting super-class, a dwindling desperate middle class, and a greatly expanding abject worker class (when they can find work). Those who cannot control their own means of vertical integration are doomed to subsistence, like most of the world’s populations. The final fall of the dollar will seal our fate shortly as those holding them dump them on the markets as worthless. The only ascendancy we will be left with is the military, which is a bad mix of social vehicles. The Federal Reserve banks must stop being allowed to claim ownership of printed money ! The fact that this has been going on in banking since the middle ages shows how complacent the “working” world has been. Money should be worked for, not “counterfeited”, printed in criminal fashion from nothing as it is now. Why has the world allowed itself to be so asleep in this realization for so long?
In this day of totally unprecedented wealth of goods,
how is it possible that the responsible people of the world have allowed poverty to grow so substantially, concentrating wealth so egregiously? I’m not an egalitarian, but what our country has just experienced with the printing of such huge amounts of money that they can’t find places to put it all is total outrage. The Fed charter must be revoked by congress and return the printing of money to the government under strict supervision as to balancing the budget so that the amount of money reflects more accurately the GDP/GNP, using that as it’s basis for being (hopefully not a gold standard?), but but we can’t do that without reinvesting in and reinventing America as so many of our important industries, and their jobs have gone “off-shore” along with the attendant unregulated shadow banking that our GDP/GNP will continue to suffer.
Gil, things from China are also cheaper because of the (effectively)pegged exchange rate; however, what you seem to miss is the fact that services merely move wealth around: new wealth lies in manufacturing.
In general, I am very skeptical of numbers such as unemployment. Unemployment is an idea and not a thing. It is also not the physical property of a thing. In many situations, it is impossible to say if a man is employed or not.
For example: If an inventor invests his life savings and years of labor in the production of a product which no one is willing to buy and which has no value, has he really been employed?
Or: If a man works in a field which is destructive and anti-social (such as fractional reserve banking) is he really employed?
Or: Should a hermit taking care of himself be considered employed? If so, should a hobo taking care of himself also be considered employed?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics methodology would consider the inventor and the banker employed. Depending on his responses to the survey questions, the hermit might fall in wither camp. The hobo would be considered unemployed.
I am not surprised considering the moron in the Blight House for the last eight years, and the current Marxist there now. How could the private sector expand when the government destroys wealth, not to mention the government bank known as the Federal Reserve?
I do not think wealth lies ONLY in manufacturing, or building houses, or cars, or such but I am hard pressed to find a case where knowledge somehow is not connected with something tangible.
If I have the knowledge that increases efficiency of some process, then knowledge does add real wealth. Now does it somehow someway go back to what you mine, manufacture, metabolize, or mow? It seems hard for me to come up with an example that doesn’t eventually lead to one of the 4 mentioned.
Economic Wisdom
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Surprise! The Capital Is Gone!
When the Keynesian ego-driven interventionists bring about the unspeakable stagflation (again, but this one will be the big one!) and have no choice but to stop creating money out of thin air (stop causing inflation) then prices will stop rising.
“Good!’ you say.
But the entrenched costs created by unions and regulations will then cripple industries and all of the sudden it will be discovered that almost all of the capital has been consumed. Hence begins the long process of recovery, a recovery starved of capital and burdened by ego-driven interventionism.
Be very careful taking Norris at face value. He has a reputation of manipulating numbers and here is a good example. From about 2002 until early 2008 unemployment dropped and employment rose due to the Bush tax cuts. Norris chooses his dates to prove his point not to demonstrate the truth. Norris takes a carefully chosen beginning number and compares it to an dismal ending number while ignoring everything between. This is actually a propaganda ploy to soften the truth of the high unemployment of the Obama era.
Our productivity has soared without much as a hiccup through out this past generation. This is our supply aspect. Our wages have stayed the same or it has fallen. This is our demand aspect. In order to avoid a serious depression and to keep attracting investors CREDIT has been made very cheap and it has become an industry as well. The minority class,” the very well to do” has driven the prices for the rest of us. Credit is drying up. Why?? Wages and workers haven’t been protected so demand is going to the “dust bin of history”. The canard the” coercive force” that you love to mention has been removed. I miss those days of “stagflation” I would take that before I would take the wide spread poverty in a world coercively driven by the obscenely wealthy. If you long for the objectivist libertarian world either read up on the Roman empire after March 476 AD or move to Somalia and live among the people. You will be free from “coercive force”.
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