Here's a few tidbits from an alternative view of the US economy....kind of ties in with thoughts on Uncle Al and the gang always having the right numbers to roll out to keep the bull headed in the right direction.
Message 10096487
<<Figure 19 shows the U.S. labor force. The darker portion is the
productive--again, that which alters and changes nature:
manufacturing, construction, infrastructure. And we have included
certain scientists and engineers, active doctors, active
teachers, so that we actually had those people we call "useful"
in infrastructure. Everything else, is neither productive nor
useful. And we call that "non-productive," or overhead.
Look at the employment profile from 1970. The darker portion
representing productive jobs has basically remained the same.
But, the total has increased from slightly more than 80 million
employed, to 140 million. America added 60 million jobs. This is
the "great jobs machine." Practically none of them are
productive! The jobs created are flipping hamburgers at
McDonald's. Or, as one person says, "We've created 10 more jobs,"
and the other says, "I know. I have three of them."
I want to give you a sense of this, and I hope you'll see why
people are working two and three jobs to get the equivalent
standard of living to what they used to have when they worked one
job. I think the most fruitful way to do this is to compare
manufacturing jobs and retail jobs. Retail jobs are the people at
McDonald's, or the people selling goods in the store. You need a
certain number of retail workers, but you hardly need the level
that we have at this point.
Figure 20 shows that the number of manufacturing jobs peaked at
around 1980, and has since remained the same. But, look what
happened with retail jobs. Back in 1953, there were two and a
half manufacturing jobs for every retail job. In today's society,
there are more retail jobs, more people simply serving
hamburgers, or whatever, than all those people who produce real
wealth. Completely changed.
I want to show you what this has to do with living standards.
Figure 21 shows the wages, on an annualized basis, of
manufacturing and retail. Up to 1971, there was a discrepancy in
wage levels, but the discrepancy was not that large, and the pay
scales sort of moved in parallel. After 1971, manufacturing did
not really rise that much, but retail jobs, which now were
proliferating as part of the post-industrial society, started
having almost no wage increases whatsoever. Since 1971, the gap
between the two grew considerably. And I'm going to use that gap
to make a point about how many jobs you have to have.
Figure 22 shows how many retail jobs you need to earn the
equivalent earnings of one manufacturing job. In an earlier
period, a household could be provided for with one worker's
income; maybe someone else in the household worked because they
wanted to. Or, they could choose not to work. That's not the case
today. You can talk about the "freedom of women" all you want,
but most are not working for $7 an hour in Wal-Mart because they
are "liberated." That's not what's happening.
In an earlier period, you needed roughly one and a half retail
jobs to earn the income of a manufacturing job. Now, you need 2.2
retail jobs. So, you've got to hold down two retail jobs in your
family, and you still won't even earn what a single manufacturing
worker used to earn.
Go back to Figure 20 to see what this means for our economy,
because the number of manufacturing jobs stagnated, and then
fell. The only job you could go into was retail. And, because
manufacturing wages have been falling--they've risen in nominal
terms, but the purchasing power has fallen sharply--you actually
need three, or maybe four retail jobs to earn what one
manufacturing job used to provide as an income in the 1950s, to
keep your family going. That's the great American job machine.
It's a complete fraud, a total fraud.
Figure 23 shows the number of paychecks required to pay off
household debt. We wanted to eliminate inflation entirely. We
said, "Okay, if living standards were rising in America, your
paycheck should buy more." So, we took the amount of an average
paycheck--not retail or manufacturing, but just the average--and
we took household debt, and we compared them. We tried to
eliminate the monetary factor by saying, "How many paychecks
would you need to pay the debt?"
Look at the difference. In 1960, you needed 25 paychecks, but now
you need more than 120. Similarly, the cost of buying a house
went from 400 paychecks in 1960 to more than 840 today. Which
means that, for a house, the same paycheck buys less than half
of what it used to. You heard that your living standard is going
up? Your paycheck is buying less. That's what's happening with
people's living standards.
Figure 24 shows unemployment. Officially, unemployment is at
the "lowest level"--gee, since the invention of time. And you
can't beat that, can you? But there's a little bit of a problem.
Official unemployment is now 6.13 million. However, there are
various ways of getting rid of people you don't like--we've
encountered it as a political movement. And, there are ways of
doing it when you're a statistician as well, working for the
Department of Labor.
There's a category called "Want a Job Now," and an included
sub-set, "Too Discouraged to Look for Work." This is the way it
works: Let's say you used to work for General Motors, in Flint,
Michigan. GM has been shutting down plants and moving those jobs
to maquiladoras in Mexico, which pay one-eighteenth the Flint
wage. But there's nothing else for you to do. So, some person
from the Department of Labor goes out to your house after you've
been unemployed for four weeks, and says, "Have you found a job?"
"No." "Have you actively looked for a job?" "Well, I'm waiting to
get called back." "But have you gone to McDonald's?" "Well, not
really. I used to earn $19 an hour. I don't want to work for $5
an hour."
The Department of Labor employee writes, "Too Discouraged to Look
for Work." Now, here's the secret: "Too Discouraged to Look for
Work" is classified in the category "Not in the Labor Force."
It's outside the labor force. You can't be unemployed, because to
be unemployed, you have to be in the labor force. So, they've
created a category, "Outside the Labor Force," put you into that,
and you're no longer "unemployed." Very nifty.
The third part of Figure 24 is part-time for economic reasons,
for people who want to work but can't find jobs that are full
time. The three categories combined are 14.34 million people.
That is an unemployment rate of almost 10%, which is more than
twice the official unemployment rate. That's the unemployment
picture in the United States.
What is happening to this country is the following: For example,
you see people driving BMWs and so forth, and it unfortunately
influences people, far too many who should know better, to think,
"That's how America lives." They don't. There is growing poverty
in the United States, and the lower one-third of this country is
in absolutely desperate straits, even with two to three to four
jobs.>>
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