SI
SI
discoversearch

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor.  We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community.  If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.
Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis
 Public ReplyPrvt ReplyMark as Last ReadFilePrevious 10Next 10PreviousNext  
To: mishedlo who wrote (14342)10/30/2004 2:31:57 AM
From: GraceZ  Read Replies (1) of 116555
 
Presidents don't create jobs, people do.

You can't in one instant argue productivity increases and global wage arbitrage destroys jobs and then say it's all the President's fault a few minutes later without sounding just a little childish and partisan.

I don't doubt for a second that you or people like you are having a difficult time finding a job that pays as much as the ones you lost when the tech bubble burst. My brother-in-law lost his IT job. His high salary was largely a product of a capital investment boom that could not be sustained and Y2K induced shortage of information technology workers. He will most likely never reach that level of compensation again in his lifetime simply because he insists in trying to compete with Indians making a fraction of what he makes instead of doing what he needs to do which is retrain to do something else. On a micro scale this is enormously painful, but on a macro level it doesn't necessarily end there. Someone other than him will train to do something else, will invent some other job. While individuals sometimes get stuck an entire population is unbelievably adaptable to change. Just as the US as a whole didn't suffer in the long run from moving off the farm to the factory and then out of the factory to the office.

As for two people working, for most it is choice. I never doubted for a minute I'd work. I never had any intention whatsoever of staying home and being kept from working like my mother before me. We could live on my husband's salary or my salary alone, we choose not to. Now my sisters are a different story, of the four sisters I have, I'm the only one who has consistently worked. Two have advanced degrees which they use while deciding what to cook for dinner and have only worked very sporadically, another had a very short successful career in RE after her kids were grown and retired early and one has never worked outside the home. Right now I have at least half a dozen woman friends who are married to a guy who stays home with the children and I know at least two dozen single parents and single adults who live quite well with one income. To say you can't live without two incomes is absurd since so many people do live on one.

They all have one thing in common, they all think they'd do a lot better if they made just a little bit more money. I know people who live on incomes from 12k a year to 250k so something is wrong with that picture.

3) There are more people in poverty that 4 years ago

Yes, they keep raising the income floor that classifies people as living in poverty which puts more people in poverty while the living standard for people "living in poverty" continually rises. The poor haven't been getting poorer in nominal terms either, only in relative terms so what must really bother you is that someone is getting richer. Why?

For the most part Americans have chosen to try to exact wage increases in the form of nontaxable health benefits. Until recently they were very successful in that strategy but this has backfired on them. Companies are increasingly not willing to shoulder the rapidly rising liability in health benefits. Attaching health insurance to employment will eventually end up costing a lot of people their jobs as the population collectively ages. Companies are still willing to give you work if you are 50 years old (I work for some of the biggest companies out there) but only on a contract basis where you carry those liabilities yourself. I've been warning people this would happen to them as they aged for years and they've been dismissing me as crazy.
Report TOU ViolationShare This Post
 Public ReplyPrvt ReplyMark as Last ReadFilePrevious 10Next 10PreviousNext  

HomeMailHotSubjectMarksPeopleMarksKeepersSettings
Terms Of UseContact UsCopyright/IP PolicyPrivacy PolicyAbout UsFAQAdvertise on SI
© 2025 Knight Sac Media.  Data provided by Twelve Data, Alpha Vantage, and CityFALCON News