‘Cheap manufacturing be damned’: Sentiment builds for moving U.S. companies out of China

I'm 100% for it. Regardless we have to continue exports to maintain our status as world power, otherwise we'd give that status to China. If countries were to become isolated, then yes, no country would complete with the USA, we'd be set.

I think we should also end foreigners owning U.S. real estate. That said millennial's already screwed the pooch on that one. Many figured they were above property ownership. They didn't take into account they'll be paying the Chinese rent in the form of 5Kish by their 60th B-days.
Isolated countries fail economically.


To be fair, there has never been an isolated country on a scale of the US.

AND, as we seen to be destined to be fucked by any trading partner, isolation could be a competitive policy.


THe choice seems to be either be the world's bitch, or take our ball and go home.
How do you mean? The USSR failed miserably. Pretty big country.


Failed because they tried to have a big empire AND we fought them.

Not because they were isolated.
Being isolated is bad for capitalism. Very bad .


Being the world's bitch on trade, hasn't been that great either.

If only there was a third option. But there does not seem to be one.
We have the biggest economy in the world with the most wealth and we’ve had super low unemployment. Seems to be fine.


No, we're not. Our middle class wages have stagnated and our middle class and lower class have lost faith in the future.

People are dying from this shit. To the point that our life expectancy is actually FALLING.


Good macro economic numbers have been hiding generations of pain.


Try to change policy.
That is an internal problem . We have the wealth and jobs. That wouldn’t change if we were isolated.


It is not an internal problem. It is a problem caused by external trade and the inflow of labor.


Time to change policy.
What do you base that on. Again, tons of wealth and jobs. That’s the formula for good wages. If we had too much inflow we’d have high unemployment and certainly wouldn’t have labor shortages. Your claim is baseless. Learn some economics.



Because we have NOT had rising wages for the middle class and working poor.

If it is the formula for "good wages" something went wrong.
Yes something is wrong. Has nothing to do with trade. We have near monopolies, wage collusion, government corruption... internal problems have hurt the market.


How do you know which factors are causing the issue? Cause the reduction of demand, by losing so many manufacturing jobs, while flooding the labor market, seems, like two factors that could have quite an impact.
Good question. I would say you want to first start by following the money. The wealth is here, we have plenty of jobs, where is the money going? I think we know the answer to that. So then why are markets so broken? Here is a good article I mostly agree with you should read.


MARKET CONCENTRATION, the economist’s term for how much an industry is dominated by one or a few firms, touches ever more aspects of American life. From the obvious (the Amazons and Walmarts of the retail economy) to the obscure (the beer industry, which may appear diverse, is dominated by two firms), market concentration has increased in three-quarters of U.S. industries during the twenty-first century. This has had wide-ranging effects not only on consumers, but also, economists increasingly believe, on labor. “Fewer firms in a given industry makes it easier for them to have more bargaining power [over employees], and harder for workers to switch to another employer,” says Jason Furman, professor of the practice of economic policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and former chair of the Obama administration’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Today’s labor markets increasingly look like a monopsony: a market in which there is only one buyer—the inverse of a monopoly, in which there is only one seller. The more an industry is dominated by a small number of corporations, the more those companies can control the cost of labor. Traditionally, Furman says, economists have relied on a supply-and-demand story about the labor market: “There’s a supply of workers and demand for workers, and the wage is what clears the market, just like the price of wheat is what clears the market for wheat. That explains a lot about wages, but it probably doesn’t explain everything…[T]hat research program went as far as it could.”

In the last three years, Furman explains, economists have looked to monopsony and other factors beyond market competition to explain the stagnation of Americans’ wages during the last few decades. Fewer companies in a given industry make it easier for those companies to coordinate, either indirectly or through overt collusion, to keep wages low. Think of a town with two big-box retail stores: each store knows what the other pays its cashiers, and neither wants to raise wages. Firms can also use noncompete agreements, which ban employees from taking jobs at rival companies, to prevent workers from finding new jobs elsewhere. About 24.5 percent of the American work force has signed a noncompete, according to one Brookings Institution analysis, and this number is not much lower (about 21 percent) for workers earning less than the median salary.



But wages stagnation is across the board, not limited to "given industries".
There are few industries I can think of that don't have some form of this. The use of noncompete agreements is all over.


Why are you limiting the discussion to industries? Nothing prevents labor from moving from industry to service jobs.
What service jobs aren't tied to some industry?


Financial, Medical, Food, Bars, off the top of my head.
Aren't many finance jobs for companies that might have a near monopoly in their industry? What type of medical? It certainly exists in food with huge companies like Mcdonalds. Bars? Is that a big employer?

All industry is interconnected.

Everything is interconnected to everything.



Which is irrelevant to the question. That a dialysis center might be "connected" to the local hospital, does not mean that the local hospital will not hire a nurse from the lower paying center, if the center is a bunch of cheap bastards that are under paying her.

So just as someone who has been around cheap clinics.....

I don't know the specifics of this center, but if the clinic is getting Medicare or Medicaid patients, then this means they are capped at what they are paid by the government for service.

It may not be that "They are cheap!"... it might be they simply are not capable of paying more money.


So, why don't they lose all medical staff to other services that are not capped?

So there's a reason, but you are not going to like it.

The reason is simply that the people who work there are generally bad, or they are retired who don't care, or they are students who are using the tuition forgiveness program to get their loans eliminate, and thus are just tolerating it.

People hate hearing that, but it's the reality. You have a few students fresh out of school, that are still learning how to use a needle, that are there because they are putting up with it so they can get their loans forgiven. Then you have some people way over the hill, in their 60s and 70s, who are only doing this to get them out of the house.

And lastly you have people that are just bad. People that got fired from their good paying job, because they were bad, and the hospital found them a liability. So they got a job at Medicare/Medicaid facilities because such clinics are desperate for anyone, since no one wants to work for peanuts. So they hire people that no profit driven hospital would ever hire. As much as left-wingers decry profit motive.... profit motive keeps patients alive and healing, because dead people don't pay bills.

Socialist hospitals have no such worry, since the government pays the bills. A dead patient isn't a negative at all to the finances.

So without a profit motive, socialist clinics doing Medicare and Medicaid patients, have no problem hiring unwanted Nurses and Doctors.


In, a healthier economy with a better labor market, even that would not be enough. THey would HAVE to offer better wages even to keep the dregs.


Have you ever been in a position, where as the employEE, you have the leverage and your employER, needed you more than you needed the job?


I have. It was glorious.


I want to share that joy, with as many of my fellow workers as possible.

No, that's not true. Unwanted employees can easily be held onto at below market wages. I know this because I talk to these people, and they openly tell me why they were for below market wages.

Also you need to understand a fundamental difference between typical employment, and health care employment.

When I mean that some of the nurses or doctors are bad... I mean that they are employees that private care systems simply don't want at any price.

The example I always point to, is this story from over 10 years ago, about a doctor at a VA hospital. So this guy went in for routine minor surgery. The kind of surgery that less than half a percent die in. He died, and his wife was in the hospital, when a nurse approached her, and whispered 'get a lawyer' and walked away. So she hired a lawyer and investigator, and found out this doctor had been fired from 3 private hospitals for killing patients.

But of course, the VA desperate for doctors because government run anything is crap, and pays nothing, had no problem hiring a doctor that can't get employment anywhere else, because he was terrible. Remember a VA hospital doesn't lose any money when a Vet dies. It just means the wait list is one shorter now.

That's what I'm talking about. Some of the people who work at Medicare and Medicaid clinics, are people who are so bad at their jobs, they are simply not wanted in the market. So yes, if this clinic is a Medicare Medicaid clinic, then it is likely desperate for people willing to work for less, and people who simply suck too bad to work in private clinics, will have no problem working there, even for below market wages.

Have you ever been in a position, where as the employEE, you have the leverage and your employER, needed you more than you needed the job?

Sure. I've been in that position most of my life. Out of my last... 10 employers I'd guess, at least 8 of them did everything they could to prevent me from leaving the company.

But you need to grasp that this is because I'm a good employee. I'd say at least 1/3 to almost half, are terrible employees, and them leaving is a positive more than a negative. None of these people are likely to be paid more, and most likely less, anywhere else.

In fact I've heard that first hand. "I deserve a raise! I'm worth more than this!" Ok... go get a job that pays more. (long pause) "Well no one else will pay me as much as I'm earning here"..... dur... then you are not worth more than this, are you? In fact maybe this company is over paying you, if any other employer would pay you less.

I've not seen gross incompetence like you suggest.

What I have seen is job openings that get massive numbers of applicants so there is no pressure on the employer to work to hold onto a good employee.


Or to raise wages.
Here employers complain they can’t get good people. doesn’t seem to raise wages though. The market is broke for the reasons I’ve explained.

Well that's true.

They can't get good people. And that is exactly why they don't raise wages.

The two are connected.

Paying more, doesn't magically make the people good. Sucky people, get sucky wages.

One of the more interesting times in my life, was 2007-2010. So during those years, my wages went up, several times in fact. Now this was fascinating, because during that time, everyone was having a melt down that no one could find a job, and no one was getting pay raise, and everyone was having a horrible time.

Meanwhile, I found jobs, and get pay raises. Why was this? Because I showed up on time, worked my entire shift, and did whatever was required to get the job done.

Fact is, most people do as little as possible, do as low quality work as possible, and then expect a raise in pay... not coming. Best advice I've heard, was your raise will be effective when you are.
Economists are all baffled by the lack of wage growth. It’s strange you choose to ignore it’s been poor...

Scott B. Sumner (born 1955) is an American economist. He is the Director of the Program on Monetary Policy at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute, and professor who teaches at Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts.

During the past 4 years, NGDP growth has been running at 4.05%/year, well below the historical norms. So why is wage growth running at only about 2.5%/year? The answer is simple; payroll employment has been growing at 1.78% over that same period. The predicted growth in average hourly earnings is 2.27%, whereas actual wage growth has been running at 2.47%. The recent puzzle is why is wage growth so high, not low.

SO..... economists are not "baffled" by this. In fact, given the increase in employment, wages are growing pretty well.

So maybe what is strange is that you choose to ignore that it's been pretty decent.

I'm 100% for it. Regardless we have to continue exports to maintain our status as world power, otherwise we'd give that status to China. If countries were to become isolated, then yes, no country would complete with the USA, we'd be set.

I think we should also end foreigners owning U.S. real estate. That said millennial's already screwed the pooch on that one. Many figured they were above property ownership. They didn't take into account they'll be paying the Chinese rent in the form of 5Kish by their 60th B-days.
Isolated countries fail economically.


To be fair, there has never been an isolated country on a scale of the US.

AND, as we seen to be destined to be fucked by any trading partner, isolation could be a competitive policy.


THe choice seems to be either be the world's bitch, or take our ball and go home.
How do you mean? The USSR failed miserably. Pretty big country.


Failed because they tried to have a big empire AND we fought them.

Not because they were isolated.
Being isolated is bad for capitalism. Very bad .


Being the world's bitch on trade, hasn't been that great either.

If only there was a third option. But there does not seem to be one.
We have the biggest economy in the world with the most wealth and we’ve had super low unemployment. Seems to be fine.


No, we're not. Our middle class wages have stagnated and our middle class and lower class have lost faith in the future.

People are dying from this shit. To the point that our life expectancy is actually FALLING.


Good macro economic numbers have been hiding generations of pain.


Try to change policy.
That is an internal problem . We have the wealth and jobs. That wouldn’t change if we were isolated.


It is not an internal problem. It is a problem caused by external trade and the inflow of labor.


Time to change policy.
What do you base that on. Again, tons of wealth and jobs. That’s the formula for good wages. If we had too much inflow we’d have high unemployment and certainly wouldn’t have labor shortages. Your claim is baseless. Learn some economics.



Because we have NOT had rising wages for the middle class and working poor.

If it is the formula for "good wages" something went wrong.
Yes something is wrong. Has nothing to do with trade. We have near monopolies, wage collusion, government corruption... internal problems have hurt the market.


How do you know which factors are causing the issue? Cause the reduction of demand, by losing so many manufacturing jobs, while flooding the labor market, seems, like two factors that could have quite an impact.
Good question. I would say you want to first start by following the money. The wealth is here, we have plenty of jobs, where is the money going? I think we know the answer to that. So then why are markets so broken? Here is a good article I mostly agree with you should read.


MARKET CONCENTRATION, the economist’s term for how much an industry is dominated by one or a few firms, touches ever more aspects of American life. From the obvious (the Amazons and Walmarts of the retail economy) to the obscure (the beer industry, which may appear diverse, is dominated by two firms), market concentration has increased in three-quarters of U.S. industries during the twenty-first century. This has had wide-ranging effects not only on consumers, but also, economists increasingly believe, on labor. “Fewer firms in a given industry makes it easier for them to have more bargaining power [over employees], and harder for workers to switch to another employer,” says Jason Furman, professor of the practice of economic policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and former chair of the Obama administration’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Today’s labor markets increasingly look like a monopsony: a market in which there is only one buyer—the inverse of a monopoly, in which there is only one seller. The more an industry is dominated by a small number of corporations, the more those companies can control the cost of labor. Traditionally, Furman says, economists have relied on a supply-and-demand story about the labor market: “There’s a supply of workers and demand for workers, and the wage is what clears the market, just like the price of wheat is what clears the market for wheat. That explains a lot about wages, but it probably doesn’t explain everything…[T]hat research program went as far as it could.”

In the last three years, Furman explains, economists have looked to monopsony and other factors beyond market competition to explain the stagnation of Americans’ wages during the last few decades. Fewer companies in a given industry make it easier for those companies to coordinate, either indirectly or through overt collusion, to keep wages low. Think of a town with two big-box retail stores: each store knows what the other pays its cashiers, and neither wants to raise wages. Firms can also use noncompete agreements, which ban employees from taking jobs at rival companies, to prevent workers from finding new jobs elsewhere. About 24.5 percent of the American work force has signed a noncompete, according to one Brookings Institution analysis, and this number is not much lower (about 21 percent) for workers earning less than the median salary.



But wages stagnation is across the board, not limited to "given industries".
There are few industries I can think of that don't have some form of this. The use of noncompete agreements is all over.


Why are you limiting the discussion to industries? Nothing prevents labor from moving from industry to service jobs.
What service jobs aren't tied to some industry?


Financial, Medical, Food, Bars, off the top of my head.
Aren't many finance jobs for companies that might have a near monopoly in their industry? What type of medical? It certainly exists in food with huge companies like Mcdonalds. Bars? Is that a big employer?

All industry is interconnected.

Everything is interconnected to everything.



Which is irrelevant to the question. That a dialysis center might be "connected" to the local hospital, does not mean that the local hospital will not hire a nurse from the lower paying center, if the center is a bunch of cheap bastards that are under paying her.

So just as someone who has been around cheap clinics.....

I don't know the specifics of this center, but if the clinic is getting Medicare or Medicaid patients, then this means they are capped at what they are paid by the government for service.

It may not be that "They are cheap!"... it might be they simply are not capable of paying more money.


So, why don't they lose all medical staff to other services that are not capped?

So there's a reason, but you are not going to like it.

The reason is simply that the people who work there are generally bad, or they are retired who don't care, or they are students who are using the tuition forgiveness program to get their loans eliminate, and thus are just tolerating it.

People hate hearing that, but it's the reality. You have a few students fresh out of school, that are still learning how to use a needle, that are there because they are putting up with it so they can get their loans forgiven. Then you have some people way over the hill, in their 60s and 70s, who are only doing this to get them out of the house.

And lastly you have people that are just bad. People that got fired from their good paying job, because they were bad, and the hospital found them a liability. So they got a job at Medicare/Medicaid facilities because such clinics are desperate for anyone, since no one wants to work for peanuts. So they hire people that no profit driven hospital would ever hire. As much as left-wingers decry profit motive.... profit motive keeps patients alive and healing, because dead people don't pay bills.

Socialist hospitals have no such worry, since the government pays the bills. A dead patient isn't a negative at all to the finances.

So without a profit motive, socialist clinics doing Medicare and Medicaid patients, have no problem hiring unwanted Nurses and Doctors.


In, a healthier economy with a better labor market, even that would not be enough. THey would HAVE to offer better wages even to keep the dregs.


Have you ever been in a position, where as the employEE, you have the leverage and your employER, needed you more than you needed the job?


I have. It was glorious.


I want to share that joy, with as many of my fellow workers as possible.

No, that's not true. Unwanted employees can easily be held onto at below market wages. I know this because I talk to these people, and they openly tell me why they were for below market wages.

Also you need to understand a fundamental difference between typical employment, and health care employment.

When I mean that some of the nurses or doctors are bad... I mean that they are employees that private care systems simply don't want at any price.

The example I always point to, is this story from over 10 years ago, about a doctor at a VA hospital. So this guy went in for routine minor surgery. The kind of surgery that less than half a percent die in. He died, and his wife was in the hospital, when a nurse approached her, and whispered 'get a lawyer' and walked away. So she hired a lawyer and investigator, and found out this doctor had been fired from 3 private hospitals for killing patients.

But of course, the VA desperate for doctors because government run anything is crap, and pays nothing, had no problem hiring a doctor that can't get employment anywhere else, because he was terrible. Remember a VA hospital doesn't lose any money when a Vet dies. It just means the wait list is one shorter now.

That's what I'm talking about. Some of the people who work at Medicare and Medicaid clinics, are people who are so bad at their jobs, they are simply not wanted in the market. So yes, if this clinic is a Medicare Medicaid clinic, then it is likely desperate for people willing to work for less, and people who simply suck too bad to work in private clinics, will have no problem working there, even for below market wages.

Have you ever been in a position, where as the employEE, you have the leverage and your employER, needed you more than you needed the job?

Sure. I've been in that position most of my life. Out of my last... 10 employers I'd guess, at least 8 of them did everything they could to prevent me from leaving the company.

But you need to grasp that this is because I'm a good employee. I'd say at least 1/3 to almost half, are terrible employees, and them leaving is a positive more than a negative. None of these people are likely to be paid more, and most likely less, anywhere else.

In fact I've heard that first hand. "I deserve a raise! I'm worth more than this!" Ok... go get a job that pays more. (long pause) "Well no one else will pay me as much as I'm earning here"..... dur... then you are not worth more than this, are you? In fact maybe this company is over paying you, if any other employer would pay you less.

I've not seen gross incompetence like you suggest.

What I have seen is job openings that get massive numbers of applicants so there is no pressure on the employer to work to hold onto a good employee.


Or to raise wages.
Here employers complain they can’t get good people. doesn’t seem to raise wages though. The market is broke for the reasons I’ve explained.


You've explained your opinion about why that is.

Stating it again, and more confidently, is good technique.

I though, am beyond being convinced by such tricks.

Perhaps, if you do it again and with more passion? Perhaps, that will sway me.
Yes you choose to believe in nonsense you can’t even explain. Funny.


I explained it, as well as you did.
You are delusional. You made claims you couldn’t even prove. I gave you work by actual economists.


Your citing of failed Authority figures means nothing.
Economists are failed authority figures? You been drinking?


Have you? You didn't notice when Free Trade did not deliver the promised results?
You can’t even show what those promised results were. I’ll be waiting for a link. You are a joke.


The goal was not generations of wage stagnation and a declining life expectancy.

I remember. I did not read it online. I was there, and the goal was improved productivity and a return to winning. And it was not supposed to take forever either.


NOW? Now people are talking about the American worker being fucked until EVERY THIRD WORLD SHIT HOLE, is brought up to our level?


That is not a sane policy. That is reason to rise up and burn down the Lord's castle.
Yeah where is the link? You just babble nonsense. Link to support your claim.


Did you read what I posted? I did not read it online. I heard it when I was there. This is not ancient history to me, but living memory.

Are you high?
Yeah it happened and wasn’t documented in any way. Definitely not on the internet anywhere. You have some imagination kid. Let me know when you step into reality.


Not what I said. Why you making up so much shit?

Oh, you know that, right, and your just playing a silly game?
You are playing a game, just making shit up.


If I go and find some documentation, for what I recall personally, you know that you will just dismiss it.


Just tell us the reason you will dismiss it, and save me the time of finding something from pre-internet era. And we can move the discussion forward without wasting anyone's time.


Because, you are not open to changing your mind, due to new information, are you?
You can’t cause you are making shit up.


Just tell us the reason you will dismiss it, and save me the time of finding something from pre-internet era. And we can move the discussion forward without wasting anyone's time.


We both know that you already have your reason for dismissing it, already picked out.
If it existed you could have found it by now. Instead you seem to have lots of time making excuses.


Just tell us the reason you will dismiss it, and save me the time of finding something from pre-internet era. And we can move the discussion forward without wasting anyone's time.


We both know that you already have your reason for dismissing it, already picked out.
Again, you could have found it by now if it existed. Clearly it doesn't and you'd rather babble.


Just tell us the reason you will dismiss it, and save me the time of finding something from pre-internet era. And we can move the discussion forward without wasting anyone's time.


We both know that you already have your reason for dismissing it, already picked out.
Just admit you are full of shit. You waste time repeating yourself cause you can't back up your claim.
 
it was a bad move to start to let manufacturing leave to China... How far back do you want to throw the blame but Trump is the only President in decades to fight the move.
 
I'm 100% for it. Regardless we have to continue exports to maintain our status as world power, otherwise we'd give that status to China. If countries were to become isolated, then yes, no country would complete with the USA, we'd be set.

I think we should also end foreigners owning U.S. real estate. That said millennial's already screwed the pooch on that one. Many figured they were above property ownership. They didn't take into account they'll be paying the Chinese rent in the form of 5Kish by their 60th B-days.
Isolated countries fail economically.


To be fair, there has never been an isolated country on a scale of the US.

AND, as we seen to be destined to be fucked by any trading partner, isolation could be a competitive policy.


THe choice seems to be either be the world's bitch, or take our ball and go home.
How do you mean? The USSR failed miserably. Pretty big country.


Failed because they tried to have a big empire AND we fought them.

Not because they were isolated.
Being isolated is bad for capitalism. Very bad .


Being the world's bitch on trade, hasn't been that great either.

If only there was a third option. But there does not seem to be one.
We have the biggest economy in the world with the most wealth and we’ve had super low unemployment. Seems to be fine.


No, we're not. Our middle class wages have stagnated and our middle class and lower class have lost faith in the future.

People are dying from this shit. To the point that our life expectancy is actually FALLING.


Good macro economic numbers have been hiding generations of pain.


Try to change policy.
That is an internal problem . We have the wealth and jobs. That wouldn’t change if we were isolated.


It is not an internal problem. It is a problem caused by external trade and the inflow of labor.


Time to change policy.
What do you base that on. Again, tons of wealth and jobs. That’s the formula for good wages. If we had too much inflow we’d have high unemployment and certainly wouldn’t have labor shortages. Your claim is baseless. Learn some economics.



Because we have NOT had rising wages for the middle class and working poor.

If it is the formula for "good wages" something went wrong.
Yes something is wrong. Has nothing to do with trade. We have near monopolies, wage collusion, government corruption... internal problems have hurt the market.


How do you know which factors are causing the issue? Cause the reduction of demand, by losing so many manufacturing jobs, while flooding the labor market, seems, like two factors that could have quite an impact.
Good question. I would say you want to first start by following the money. The wealth is here, we have plenty of jobs, where is the money going? I think we know the answer to that. So then why are markets so broken? Here is a good article I mostly agree with you should read.


MARKET CONCENTRATION, the economist’s term for how much an industry is dominated by one or a few firms, touches ever more aspects of American life. From the obvious (the Amazons and Walmarts of the retail economy) to the obscure (the beer industry, which may appear diverse, is dominated by two firms), market concentration has increased in three-quarters of U.S. industries during the twenty-first century. This has had wide-ranging effects not only on consumers, but also, economists increasingly believe, on labor. “Fewer firms in a given industry makes it easier for them to have more bargaining power [over employees], and harder for workers to switch to another employer,” says Jason Furman, professor of the practice of economic policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and former chair of the Obama administration’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Today’s labor markets increasingly look like a monopsony: a market in which there is only one buyer—the inverse of a monopoly, in which there is only one seller. The more an industry is dominated by a small number of corporations, the more those companies can control the cost of labor. Traditionally, Furman says, economists have relied on a supply-and-demand story about the labor market: “There’s a supply of workers and demand for workers, and the wage is what clears the market, just like the price of wheat is what clears the market for wheat. That explains a lot about wages, but it probably doesn’t explain everything…[T]hat research program went as far as it could.”

In the last three years, Furman explains, economists have looked to monopsony and other factors beyond market competition to explain the stagnation of Americans’ wages during the last few decades. Fewer companies in a given industry make it easier for those companies to coordinate, either indirectly or through overt collusion, to keep wages low. Think of a town with two big-box retail stores: each store knows what the other pays its cashiers, and neither wants to raise wages. Firms can also use noncompete agreements, which ban employees from taking jobs at rival companies, to prevent workers from finding new jobs elsewhere. About 24.5 percent of the American work force has signed a noncompete, according to one Brookings Institution analysis, and this number is not much lower (about 21 percent) for workers earning less than the median salary.



But wages stagnation is across the board, not limited to "given industries".
There are few industries I can think of that don't have some form of this. The use of noncompete agreements is all over.


Why are you limiting the discussion to industries? Nothing prevents labor from moving from industry to service jobs.
What service jobs aren't tied to some industry?


Financial, Medical, Food, Bars, off the top of my head.
Aren't many finance jobs for companies that might have a near monopoly in their industry? What type of medical? It certainly exists in food with huge companies like Mcdonalds. Bars? Is that a big employer?

All industry is interconnected.

Everything is interconnected to everything.



Which is irrelevant to the question. That a dialysis center might be "connected" to the local hospital, does not mean that the local hospital will not hire a nurse from the lower paying center, if the center is a bunch of cheap bastards that are under paying her.

So just as someone who has been around cheap clinics.....

I don't know the specifics of this center, but if the clinic is getting Medicare or Medicaid patients, then this means they are capped at what they are paid by the government for service.

It may not be that "They are cheap!"... it might be they simply are not capable of paying more money.


So, why don't they lose all medical staff to other services that are not capped?

So there's a reason, but you are not going to like it.

The reason is simply that the people who work there are generally bad, or they are retired who don't care, or they are students who are using the tuition forgiveness program to get their loans eliminate, and thus are just tolerating it.

People hate hearing that, but it's the reality. You have a few students fresh out of school, that are still learning how to use a needle, that are there because they are putting up with it so they can get their loans forgiven. Then you have some people way over the hill, in their 60s and 70s, who are only doing this to get them out of the house.

And lastly you have people that are just bad. People that got fired from their good paying job, because they were bad, and the hospital found them a liability. So they got a job at Medicare/Medicaid facilities because such clinics are desperate for anyone, since no one wants to work for peanuts. So they hire people that no profit driven hospital would ever hire. As much as left-wingers decry profit motive.... profit motive keeps patients alive and healing, because dead people don't pay bills.

Socialist hospitals have no such worry, since the government pays the bills. A dead patient isn't a negative at all to the finances.

So without a profit motive, socialist clinics doing Medicare and Medicaid patients, have no problem hiring unwanted Nurses and Doctors.


In, a healthier economy with a better labor market, even that would not be enough. THey would HAVE to offer better wages even to keep the dregs.


Have you ever been in a position, where as the employEE, you have the leverage and your employER, needed you more than you needed the job?


I have. It was glorious.


I want to share that joy, with as many of my fellow workers as possible.

No, that's not true. Unwanted employees can easily be held onto at below market wages. I know this because I talk to these people, and they openly tell me why they were for below market wages.

Also you need to understand a fundamental difference between typical employment, and health care employment.

When I mean that some of the nurses or doctors are bad... I mean that they are employees that private care systems simply don't want at any price.

The example I always point to, is this story from over 10 years ago, about a doctor at a VA hospital. So this guy went in for routine minor surgery. The kind of surgery that less than half a percent die in. He died, and his wife was in the hospital, when a nurse approached her, and whispered 'get a lawyer' and walked away. So she hired a lawyer and investigator, and found out this doctor had been fired from 3 private hospitals for killing patients.

But of course, the VA desperate for doctors because government run anything is crap, and pays nothing, had no problem hiring a doctor that can't get employment anywhere else, because he was terrible. Remember a VA hospital doesn't lose any money when a Vet dies. It just means the wait list is one shorter now.

That's what I'm talking about. Some of the people who work at Medicare and Medicaid clinics, are people who are so bad at their jobs, they are simply not wanted in the market. So yes, if this clinic is a Medicare Medicaid clinic, then it is likely desperate for people willing to work for less, and people who simply suck too bad to work in private clinics, will have no problem working there, even for below market wages.

Have you ever been in a position, where as the employEE, you have the leverage and your employER, needed you more than you needed the job?

Sure. I've been in that position most of my life. Out of my last... 10 employers I'd guess, at least 8 of them did everything they could to prevent me from leaving the company.

But you need to grasp that this is because I'm a good employee. I'd say at least 1/3 to almost half, are terrible employees, and them leaving is a positive more than a negative. None of these people are likely to be paid more, and most likely less, anywhere else.

In fact I've heard that first hand. "I deserve a raise! I'm worth more than this!" Ok... go get a job that pays more. (long pause) "Well no one else will pay me as much as I'm earning here"..... dur... then you are not worth more than this, are you? In fact maybe this company is over paying you, if any other employer would pay you less.

I've not seen gross incompetence like you suggest.

What I have seen is job openings that get massive numbers of applicants so there is no pressure on the employer to work to hold onto a good employee.


Or to raise wages.
Here employers complain they can’t get good people. doesn’t seem to raise wages though. The market is broke for the reasons I’ve explained.

Well that's true.

They can't get good people. And that is exactly why they don't raise wages.

The two are connected.

Paying more, doesn't magically make the people good. Sucky people, get sucky wages.

One of the more interesting times in my life, was 2007-2010. So during those years, my wages went up, several times in fact. Now this was fascinating, because during that time, everyone was having a melt down that no one could find a job, and no one was getting pay raise, and everyone was having a horrible time.

Meanwhile, I found jobs, and get pay raises. Why was this? Because I showed up on time, worked my entire shift, and did whatever was required to get the job done.

Fact is, most people do as little as possible, do as low quality work as possible, and then expect a raise in pay... not coming. Best advice I've heard, was your raise will be effective when you are.
Economists are all baffled by the lack of wage growth. It’s strange you choose to ignore it’s been poor...

Scott B. Sumner (born 1955) is an American economist. He is the Director of the Program on Monetary Policy at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute, and professor who teaches at Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts.

During the past 4 years, NGDP growth has been running at 4.05%/year, well below the historical norms. So why is wage growth running at only about 2.5%/year? The answer is simple; payroll employment has been growing at 1.78% over that same period. The predicted growth in average hourly earnings is 2.27%, whereas actual wage growth has been running at 2.47%. The recent puzzle is why is wage growth so high, not low.

SO..... economists are not "baffled" by this. In fact, given the increase in employment, wages are growing pretty well.

So maybe what is strange is that you choose to ignore that it's been pretty decent.

I'm 100% for it. Regardless we have to continue exports to maintain our status as world power, otherwise we'd give that status to China. If countries were to become isolated, then yes, no country would complete with the USA, we'd be set.

I think we should also end foreigners owning U.S. real estate. That said millennial's already screwed the pooch on that one. Many figured they were above property ownership. They didn't take into account they'll be paying the Chinese rent in the form of 5Kish by their 60th B-days.
Isolated countries fail economically.


To be fair, there has never been an isolated country on a scale of the US.

AND, as we seen to be destined to be fucked by any trading partner, isolation could be a competitive policy.


THe choice seems to be either be the world's bitch, or take our ball and go home.
How do you mean? The USSR failed miserably. Pretty big country.


Failed because they tried to have a big empire AND we fought them.

Not because they were isolated.
Being isolated is bad for capitalism. Very bad .


Being the world's bitch on trade, hasn't been that great either.

If only there was a third option. But there does not seem to be one.
We have the biggest economy in the world with the most wealth and we’ve had super low unemployment. Seems to be fine.


No, we're not. Our middle class wages have stagnated and our middle class and lower class have lost faith in the future.

People are dying from this shit. To the point that our life expectancy is actually FALLING.


Good macro economic numbers have been hiding generations of pain.


Try to change policy.
That is an internal problem . We have the wealth and jobs. That wouldn’t change if we were isolated.


It is not an internal problem. It is a problem caused by external trade and the inflow of labor.


Time to change policy.
What do you base that on. Again, tons of wealth and jobs. That’s the formula for good wages. If we had too much inflow we’d have high unemployment and certainly wouldn’t have labor shortages. Your claim is baseless. Learn some economics.



Because we have NOT had rising wages for the middle class and working poor.

If it is the formula for "good wages" something went wrong.
Yes something is wrong. Has nothing to do with trade. We have near monopolies, wage collusion, government corruption... internal problems have hurt the market.


How do you know which factors are causing the issue? Cause the reduction of demand, by losing so many manufacturing jobs, while flooding the labor market, seems, like two factors that could have quite an impact.
Good question. I would say you want to first start by following the money. The wealth is here, we have plenty of jobs, where is the money going? I think we know the answer to that. So then why are markets so broken? Here is a good article I mostly agree with you should read.


MARKET CONCENTRATION, the economist’s term for how much an industry is dominated by one or a few firms, touches ever more aspects of American life. From the obvious (the Amazons and Walmarts of the retail economy) to the obscure (the beer industry, which may appear diverse, is dominated by two firms), market concentration has increased in three-quarters of U.S. industries during the twenty-first century. This has had wide-ranging effects not only on consumers, but also, economists increasingly believe, on labor. “Fewer firms in a given industry makes it easier for them to have more bargaining power [over employees], and harder for workers to switch to another employer,” says Jason Furman, professor of the practice of economic policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and former chair of the Obama administration’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Today’s labor markets increasingly look like a monopsony: a market in which there is only one buyer—the inverse of a monopoly, in which there is only one seller. The more an industry is dominated by a small number of corporations, the more those companies can control the cost of labor. Traditionally, Furman says, economists have relied on a supply-and-demand story about the labor market: “There’s a supply of workers and demand for workers, and the wage is what clears the market, just like the price of wheat is what clears the market for wheat. That explains a lot about wages, but it probably doesn’t explain everything…[T]hat research program went as far as it could.”

In the last three years, Furman explains, economists have looked to monopsony and other factors beyond market competition to explain the stagnation of Americans’ wages during the last few decades. Fewer companies in a given industry make it easier for those companies to coordinate, either indirectly or through overt collusion, to keep wages low. Think of a town with two big-box retail stores: each store knows what the other pays its cashiers, and neither wants to raise wages. Firms can also use noncompete agreements, which ban employees from taking jobs at rival companies, to prevent workers from finding new jobs elsewhere. About 24.5 percent of the American work force has signed a noncompete, according to one Brookings Institution analysis, and this number is not much lower (about 21 percent) for workers earning less than the median salary.



But wages stagnation is across the board, not limited to "given industries".
There are few industries I can think of that don't have some form of this. The use of noncompete agreements is all over.


Why are you limiting the discussion to industries? Nothing prevents labor from moving from industry to service jobs.
What service jobs aren't tied to some industry?


Financial, Medical, Food, Bars, off the top of my head.
Aren't many finance jobs for companies that might have a near monopoly in their industry? What type of medical? It certainly exists in food with huge companies like Mcdonalds. Bars? Is that a big employer?

All industry is interconnected.

Everything is interconnected to everything.



Which is irrelevant to the question. That a dialysis center might be "connected" to the local hospital, does not mean that the local hospital will not hire a nurse from the lower paying center, if the center is a bunch of cheap bastards that are under paying her.

So just as someone who has been around cheap clinics.....

I don't know the specifics of this center, but if the clinic is getting Medicare or Medicaid patients, then this means they are capped at what they are paid by the government for service.

It may not be that "They are cheap!"... it might be they simply are not capable of paying more money.


So, why don't they lose all medical staff to other services that are not capped?

So there's a reason, but you are not going to like it.

The reason is simply that the people who work there are generally bad, or they are retired who don't care, or they are students who are using the tuition forgiveness program to get their loans eliminate, and thus are just tolerating it.

People hate hearing that, but it's the reality. You have a few students fresh out of school, that are still learning how to use a needle, that are there because they are putting up with it so they can get their loans forgiven. Then you have some people way over the hill, in their 60s and 70s, who are only doing this to get them out of the house.

And lastly you have people that are just bad. People that got fired from their good paying job, because they were bad, and the hospital found them a liability. So they got a job at Medicare/Medicaid facilities because such clinics are desperate for anyone, since no one wants to work for peanuts. So they hire people that no profit driven hospital would ever hire. As much as left-wingers decry profit motive.... profit motive keeps patients alive and healing, because dead people don't pay bills.

Socialist hospitals have no such worry, since the government pays the bills. A dead patient isn't a negative at all to the finances.

So without a profit motive, socialist clinics doing Medicare and Medicaid patients, have no problem hiring unwanted Nurses and Doctors.


In, a healthier economy with a better labor market, even that would not be enough. THey would HAVE to offer better wages even to keep the dregs.


Have you ever been in a position, where as the employEE, you have the leverage and your employER, needed you more than you needed the job?


I have. It was glorious.


I want to share that joy, with as many of my fellow workers as possible.

No, that's not true. Unwanted employees can easily be held onto at below market wages. I know this because I talk to these people, and they openly tell me why they were for below market wages.

Also you need to understand a fundamental difference between typical employment, and health care employment.

When I mean that some of the nurses or doctors are bad... I mean that they are employees that private care systems simply don't want at any price.

The example I always point to, is this story from over 10 years ago, about a doctor at a VA hospital. So this guy went in for routine minor surgery. The kind of surgery that less than half a percent die in. He died, and his wife was in the hospital, when a nurse approached her, and whispered 'get a lawyer' and walked away. So she hired a lawyer and investigator, and found out this doctor had been fired from 3 private hospitals for killing patients.

But of course, the VA desperate for doctors because government run anything is crap, and pays nothing, had no problem hiring a doctor that can't get employment anywhere else, because he was terrible. Remember a VA hospital doesn't lose any money when a Vet dies. It just means the wait list is one shorter now.

That's what I'm talking about. Some of the people who work at Medicare and Medicaid clinics, are people who are so bad at their jobs, they are simply not wanted in the market. So yes, if this clinic is a Medicare Medicaid clinic, then it is likely desperate for people willing to work for less, and people who simply suck too bad to work in private clinics, will have no problem working there, even for below market wages.

Have you ever been in a position, where as the employEE, you have the leverage and your employER, needed you more than you needed the job?

Sure. I've been in that position most of my life. Out of my last... 10 employers I'd guess, at least 8 of them did everything they could to prevent me from leaving the company.

But you need to grasp that this is because I'm a good employee. I'd say at least 1/3 to almost half, are terrible employees, and them leaving is a positive more than a negative. None of these people are likely to be paid more, and most likely less, anywhere else.

In fact I've heard that first hand. "I deserve a raise! I'm worth more than this!" Ok... go get a job that pays more. (long pause) "Well no one else will pay me as much as I'm earning here"..... dur... then you are not worth more than this, are you? In fact maybe this company is over paying you, if any other employer would pay you less.

I've not seen gross incompetence like you suggest.

What I have seen is job openings that get massive numbers of applicants so there is no pressure on the employer to work to hold onto a good employee.


Or to raise wages.
Here employers complain they can’t get good people. doesn’t seem to raise wages though. The market is broke for the reasons I’ve explained.


You've explained your opinion about why that is.

Stating it again, and more confidently, is good technique.

I though, am beyond being convinced by such tricks.

Perhaps, if you do it again and with more passion? Perhaps, that will sway me.
Yes you choose to believe in nonsense you can’t even explain. Funny.


I explained it, as well as you did.
You are delusional. You made claims you couldn’t even prove. I gave you work by actual economists.


Your citing of failed Authority figures means nothing.
Economists are failed authority figures? You been drinking?


Have you? You didn't notice when Free Trade did not deliver the promised results?
You can’t even show what those promised results were. I’ll be waiting for a link. You are a joke.


The goal was not generations of wage stagnation and a declining life expectancy.

I remember. I did not read it online. I was there, and the goal was improved productivity and a return to winning. And it was not supposed to take forever either.


NOW? Now people are talking about the American worker being fucked until EVERY THIRD WORLD SHIT HOLE, is brought up to our level?


That is not a sane policy. That is reason to rise up and burn down the Lord's castle.
Yeah where is the link? You just babble nonsense. Link to support your claim.


Did you read what I posted? I did not read it online. I heard it when I was there. This is not ancient history to me, but living memory.

Are you high?
Yeah it happened and wasn’t documented in any way. Definitely not on the internet anywhere. You have some imagination kid. Let me know when you step into reality.


Not what I said. Why you making up so much shit?

Oh, you know that, right, and your just playing a silly game?
You are playing a game, just making shit up.


If I go and find some documentation, for what I recall personally, you know that you will just dismiss it.


Just tell us the reason you will dismiss it, and save me the time of finding something from pre-internet era. And we can move the discussion forward without wasting anyone's time.


Because, you are not open to changing your mind, due to new information, are you?
You can’t cause you are making shit up.


Just tell us the reason you will dismiss it, and save me the time of finding something from pre-internet era. And we can move the discussion forward without wasting anyone's time.


We both know that you already have your reason for dismissing it, already picked out.
If it existed you could have found it by now. Instead you seem to have lots of time making excuses.


Just tell us the reason you will dismiss it, and save me the time of finding something from pre-internet era. And we can move the discussion forward without wasting anyone's time.


We both know that you already have your reason for dismissing it, already picked out.
Again, you could have found it by now if it existed. Clearly it doesn't and you'd rather babble.


Just tell us the reason you will dismiss it, and save me the time of finding something from pre-internet era. And we can move the discussion forward without wasting anyone's time.


We both know that you already have your reason for dismissing it, already picked out.
Just admit you are full of shit. You waste time repeating yourself cause you can't back up your claim.


We both know that you already have your reason for dismissing it, already picked out. Just share that reason, and we can move on.


I note that you have not argued that you are open to changing your mind, if the new information proved you wrong.


So, why do you want to waste my time?
 
I'm 100% for it. Regardless we have to continue exports to maintain our status as world power, otherwise we'd give that status to China. If countries were to become isolated, then yes, no country would complete with the USA, we'd be set.

I think we should also end foreigners owning U.S. real estate. That said millennial's already screwed the pooch on that one. Many figured they were above property ownership. They didn't take into account they'll be paying the Chinese rent in the form of 5Kish by their 60th B-days.
Isolated countries fail economically.
Oh, but we won't be isolated, once the manufacturing jobs are forced back on-shore...

We'll be exporting manufactured goods to others, again.
 
I'm 100% for it. Regardless we have to continue exports to maintain our status as world power, otherwise we'd give that status to China. If countries were to become isolated, then yes, no country would complete with the USA, we'd be set.

I think we should also end foreigners owning U.S. real estate. That said millennial's already screwed the pooch on that one. Many figured they were above property ownership. They didn't take into account they'll be paying the Chinese rent in the form of 5Kish by their 60th B-days.
Isolated countries fail economically.
Oh, but we won't be isolated, once the manufacturing jobs are forced back on-shore...

We'll be exporting manufactured goods to others, again.

Sigh....

Do you not see the problem with your own logic? Do you think that any person, elsewhere in the world, is not thinking the exact same thing?

If you intend to use the power of government to impose protectionism to force manufacturing back into the US..... What do you think other countries will do?

They are going to put in place those exact same protectionist barriers against the US.

Again, just look at the Smoot-Hawley tariff in the 1930s.

Why didn't US exports go up? Why did US exports drop? Because all the countries that had tariffs levied against them, turned around and levied tariffs against the US.

The perfect example of this was the iron and steel tariffs.

So the US put in place tariffs on Iron ore. Canada put in place tariffs on steel. So the pittsburgh steel found itself paying massively high prices for iron ore because import tariffs on ore from Canada, and then found the price of steel crashed because one of the biggest demands for steel was exports that now had tariffs on steel from the US.

17 Months after the Smoot-Hawley protectionist tariffs were put in place, 11 different banks operating in Pittsburgh crashed and went insolvent.

Again, if you think we are going to have protectionism, and force companies to locate in the US, and all the other countries are going to be perfectly happy buying US exports... that is not a logical position to have. Other countries are going to do the same. And instead, you are going to destroy $2.4 Trillion in exports we make yearly. And not having imports is also going to destroy jobs.
 
I'm 100% for it. Regardless we have to continue exports to maintain our status as world power, otherwise we'd give that status to China. If countries were to become isolated, then yes, no country would complete with the USA, we'd be set.

I think we should also end foreigners owning U.S. real estate. That said millennial's already screwed the pooch on that one. Many figured they were above property ownership. They didn't take into account they'll be paying the Chinese rent in the form of 5Kish by their 60th B-days.
Isolated countries fail economically.
Oh, but we won't be isolated, once the manufacturing jobs are forced back on-shore...

We'll be exporting manufactured goods to others, again.

Sigh....

Do you not see the problem with your own logic? Do you think that any person, elsewhere in the world, is not thinking the exact same thing?

If you intend to use the power of government to impose protectionism to force manufacturing back into the US..... What do you think other countries will do?

They are going to put in place those exact same protectionist barriers against the US.

Again, just look at the Smoot-Hawley tariff in the 1930s.

Why didn't US exports go up? Why did US exports drop? Because all the countries that had tariffs levied against them, turned around and levied tariffs against the US.

The perfect example of this was the iron and steel tariffs.

So the US put in place tariffs on Iron ore. Canada put in place tariffs on steel. So the pittsburgh steel found itself paying massively high prices for iron ore because import tariffs on ore from Canada, and then found the price of steel crashed because one of the biggest demands for steel was exports that now had tariffs on steel from the US.

17 Months after the Smoot-Hawley protectionist tariffs were put in place, 11 different banks operating in Pittsburgh crashed and went insolvent.

Again, if you think we are going to have protectionism, and force companies to locate in the US, and all the other countries are going to be perfectly happy buying US exports... that is not a logical position to have. Other countries are going to do the same. And instead, you are going to destroy $2.4 Trillion in exports we make yearly. And not having imports is also going to destroy jobs.
The need for domestic manufacturing has now gone beyond mere economics and has entered the realm of survival.

The sooner we take the pain, the sooner it's over with.
 
I'm 100% for it. Regardless we have to continue exports to maintain our status as world power, otherwise we'd give that status to China. If countries were to become isolated, then yes, no country would complete with the USA, we'd be set.

I think we should also end foreigners owning U.S. real estate. That said millennial's already screwed the pooch on that one. Many figured they were above property ownership. They didn't take into account they'll be paying the Chinese rent in the form of 5Kish by their 60th B-days.
Isolated countries fail economically.


To be fair, there has never been an isolated country on a scale of the US.

AND, as we seen to be destined to be fucked by any trading partner, isolation could be a competitive policy.


THe choice seems to be either be the world's bitch, or take our ball and go home.
How do you mean? The USSR failed miserably. Pretty big country.


Failed because they tried to have a big empire AND we fought them.

Not because they were isolated.
Being isolated is bad for capitalism. Very bad .


Being the world's bitch on trade, hasn't been that great either.

If only there was a third option. But there does not seem to be one.
We have the biggest economy in the world with the most wealth and we’ve had super low unemployment. Seems to be fine.


No, we're not. Our middle class wages have stagnated and our middle class and lower class have lost faith in the future.

People are dying from this shit. To the point that our life expectancy is actually FALLING.


Good macro economic numbers have been hiding generations of pain.


Try to change policy.
That is an internal problem . We have the wealth and jobs. That wouldn’t change if we were isolated.


It is not an internal problem. It is a problem caused by external trade and the inflow of labor.


Time to change policy.
What do you base that on. Again, tons of wealth and jobs. That’s the formula for good wages. If we had too much inflow we’d have high unemployment and certainly wouldn’t have labor shortages. Your claim is baseless. Learn some economics.



Because we have NOT had rising wages for the middle class and working poor.

If it is the formula for "good wages" something went wrong.
Yes something is wrong. Has nothing to do with trade. We have near monopolies, wage collusion, government corruption... internal problems have hurt the market.


How do you know which factors are causing the issue? Cause the reduction of demand, by losing so many manufacturing jobs, while flooding the labor market, seems, like two factors that could have quite an impact.
Good question. I would say you want to first start by following the money. The wealth is here, we have plenty of jobs, where is the money going? I think we know the answer to that. So then why are markets so broken? Here is a good article I mostly agree with you should read.


MARKET CONCENTRATION, the economist’s term for how much an industry is dominated by one or a few firms, touches ever more aspects of American life. From the obvious (the Amazons and Walmarts of the retail economy) to the obscure (the beer industry, which may appear diverse, is dominated by two firms), market concentration has increased in three-quarters of U.S. industries during the twenty-first century. This has had wide-ranging effects not only on consumers, but also, economists increasingly believe, on labor. “Fewer firms in a given industry makes it easier for them to have more bargaining power [over employees], and harder for workers to switch to another employer,” says Jason Furman, professor of the practice of economic policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and former chair of the Obama administration’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Today’s labor markets increasingly look like a monopsony: a market in which there is only one buyer—the inverse of a monopoly, in which there is only one seller. The more an industry is dominated by a small number of corporations, the more those companies can control the cost of labor. Traditionally, Furman says, economists have relied on a supply-and-demand story about the labor market: “There’s a supply of workers and demand for workers, and the wage is what clears the market, just like the price of wheat is what clears the market for wheat. That explains a lot about wages, but it probably doesn’t explain everything…[T]hat research program went as far as it could.”

In the last three years, Furman explains, economists have looked to monopsony and other factors beyond market competition to explain the stagnation of Americans’ wages during the last few decades. Fewer companies in a given industry make it easier for those companies to coordinate, either indirectly or through overt collusion, to keep wages low. Think of a town with two big-box retail stores: each store knows what the other pays its cashiers, and neither wants to raise wages. Firms can also use noncompete agreements, which ban employees from taking jobs at rival companies, to prevent workers from finding new jobs elsewhere. About 24.5 percent of the American work force has signed a noncompete, according to one Brookings Institution analysis, and this number is not much lower (about 21 percent) for workers earning less than the median salary.



But wages stagnation is across the board, not limited to "given industries".
There are few industries I can think of that don't have some form of this. The use of noncompete agreements is all over.


Why are you limiting the discussion to industries? Nothing prevents labor from moving from industry to service jobs.
What service jobs aren't tied to some industry?


Financial, Medical, Food, Bars, off the top of my head.
Aren't many finance jobs for companies that might have a near monopoly in their industry? What type of medical? It certainly exists in food with huge companies like Mcdonalds. Bars? Is that a big employer?

All industry is interconnected.

Everything is interconnected to everything.



Which is irrelevant to the question. That a dialysis center might be "connected" to the local hospital, does not mean that the local hospital will not hire a nurse from the lower paying center, if the center is a bunch of cheap bastards that are under paying her.

So just as someone who has been around cheap clinics.....

I don't know the specifics of this center, but if the clinic is getting Medicare or Medicaid patients, then this means they are capped at what they are paid by the government for service.

It may not be that "They are cheap!"... it might be they simply are not capable of paying more money.


So, why don't they lose all medical staff to other services that are not capped?

So there's a reason, but you are not going to like it.

The reason is simply that the people who work there are generally bad, or they are retired who don't care, or they are students who are using the tuition forgiveness program to get their loans eliminate, and thus are just tolerating it.

People hate hearing that, but it's the reality. You have a few students fresh out of school, that are still learning how to use a needle, that are there because they are putting up with it so they can get their loans forgiven. Then you have some people way over the hill, in their 60s and 70s, who are only doing this to get them out of the house.

And lastly you have people that are just bad. People that got fired from their good paying job, because they were bad, and the hospital found them a liability. So they got a job at Medicare/Medicaid facilities because such clinics are desperate for anyone, since no one wants to work for peanuts. So they hire people that no profit driven hospital would ever hire. As much as left-wingers decry profit motive.... profit motive keeps patients alive and healing, because dead people don't pay bills.

Socialist hospitals have no such worry, since the government pays the bills. A dead patient isn't a negative at all to the finances.

So without a profit motive, socialist clinics doing Medicare and Medicaid patients, have no problem hiring unwanted Nurses and Doctors.


In, a healthier economy with a better labor market, even that would not be enough. THey would HAVE to offer better wages even to keep the dregs.


Have you ever been in a position, where as the employEE, you have the leverage and your employER, needed you more than you needed the job?


I have. It was glorious.


I want to share that joy, with as many of my fellow workers as possible.

No, that's not true. Unwanted employees can easily be held onto at below market wages. I know this because I talk to these people, and they openly tell me why they were for below market wages.

Also you need to understand a fundamental difference between typical employment, and health care employment.

When I mean that some of the nurses or doctors are bad... I mean that they are employees that private care systems simply don't want at any price.

The example I always point to, is this story from over 10 years ago, about a doctor at a VA hospital. So this guy went in for routine minor surgery. The kind of surgery that less than half a percent die in. He died, and his wife was in the hospital, when a nurse approached her, and whispered 'get a lawyer' and walked away. So she hired a lawyer and investigator, and found out this doctor had been fired from 3 private hospitals for killing patients.

But of course, the VA desperate for doctors because government run anything is crap, and pays nothing, had no problem hiring a doctor that can't get employment anywhere else, because he was terrible. Remember a VA hospital doesn't lose any money when a Vet dies. It just means the wait list is one shorter now.

That's what I'm talking about. Some of the people who work at Medicare and Medicaid clinics, are people who are so bad at their jobs, they are simply not wanted in the market. So yes, if this clinic is a Medicare Medicaid clinic, then it is likely desperate for people willing to work for less, and people who simply suck too bad to work in private clinics, will have no problem working there, even for below market wages.

Have you ever been in a position, where as the employEE, you have the leverage and your employER, needed you more than you needed the job?

Sure. I've been in that position most of my life. Out of my last... 10 employers I'd guess, at least 8 of them did everything they could to prevent me from leaving the company.

But you need to grasp that this is because I'm a good employee. I'd say at least 1/3 to almost half, are terrible employees, and them leaving is a positive more than a negative. None of these people are likely to be paid more, and most likely less, anywhere else.

In fact I've heard that first hand. "I deserve a raise! I'm worth more than this!" Ok... go get a job that pays more. (long pause) "Well no one else will pay me as much as I'm earning here"..... dur... then you are not worth more than this, are you? In fact maybe this company is over paying you, if any other employer would pay you less.

I've not seen gross incompetence like you suggest.

What I have seen is job openings that get massive numbers of applicants so there is no pressure on the employer to work to hold onto a good employee.


Or to raise wages.
Here employers complain they can’t get good people. doesn’t seem to raise wages though. The market is broke for the reasons I’ve explained.

Well that's true.

They can't get good people. And that is exactly why they don't raise wages.

The two are connected.

Paying more, doesn't magically make the people good. Sucky people, get sucky wages.

One of the more interesting times in my life, was 2007-2010. So during those years, my wages went up, several times in fact. Now this was fascinating, because during that time, everyone was having a melt down that no one could find a job, and no one was getting pay raise, and everyone was having a horrible time.

Meanwhile, I found jobs, and get pay raises. Why was this? Because I showed up on time, worked my entire shift, and did whatever was required to get the job done.

Fact is, most people do as little as possible, do as low quality work as possible, and then expect a raise in pay... not coming. Best advice I've heard, was your raise will be effective when you are.
Economists are all baffled by the lack of wage growth. It’s strange you choose to ignore it’s been poor...

Scott B. Sumner (born 1955) is an American economist. He is the Director of the Program on Monetary Policy at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute, and professor who teaches at Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts.

During the past 4 years, NGDP growth has been running at 4.05%/year, well below the historical norms. So why is wage growth running at only about 2.5%/year? The answer is simple; payroll employment has been growing at 1.78% over that same period. The predicted growth in average hourly earnings is 2.27%, whereas actual wage growth has been running at 2.47%. The recent puzzle is why is wage growth so high, not low.

SO..... economists are not "baffled" by this. In fact, given the increase in employment, wages are growing pretty well.

So maybe what is strange is that you choose to ignore that it's been pretty decent.

I'm 100% for it. Regardless we have to continue exports to maintain our status as world power, otherwise we'd give that status to China. If countries were to become isolated, then yes, no country would complete with the USA, we'd be set.

I think we should also end foreigners owning U.S. real estate. That said millennial's already screwed the pooch on that one. Many figured they were above property ownership. They didn't take into account they'll be paying the Chinese rent in the form of 5Kish by their 60th B-days.
Isolated countries fail economically.


To be fair, there has never been an isolated country on a scale of the US.

AND, as we seen to be destined to be fucked by any trading partner, isolation could be a competitive policy.


THe choice seems to be either be the world's bitch, or take our ball and go home.
How do you mean? The USSR failed miserably. Pretty big country.


Failed because they tried to have a big empire AND we fought them.

Not because they were isolated.
Being isolated is bad for capitalism. Very bad .


Being the world's bitch on trade, hasn't been that great either.

If only there was a third option. But there does not seem to be one.
We have the biggest economy in the world with the most wealth and we’ve had super low unemployment. Seems to be fine.


No, we're not. Our middle class wages have stagnated and our middle class and lower class have lost faith in the future.

People are dying from this shit. To the point that our life expectancy is actually FALLING.


Good macro economic numbers have been hiding generations of pain.


Try to change policy.
That is an internal problem . We have the wealth and jobs. That wouldn’t change if we were isolated.


It is not an internal problem. It is a problem caused by external trade and the inflow of labor.


Time to change policy.
What do you base that on. Again, tons of wealth and jobs. That’s the formula for good wages. If we had too much inflow we’d have high unemployment and certainly wouldn’t have labor shortages. Your claim is baseless. Learn some economics.



Because we have NOT had rising wages for the middle class and working poor.

If it is the formula for "good wages" something went wrong.
Yes something is wrong. Has nothing to do with trade. We have near monopolies, wage collusion, government corruption... internal problems have hurt the market.


How do you know which factors are causing the issue? Cause the reduction of demand, by losing so many manufacturing jobs, while flooding the labor market, seems, like two factors that could have quite an impact.
Good question. I would say you want to first start by following the money. The wealth is here, we have plenty of jobs, where is the money going? I think we know the answer to that. So then why are markets so broken? Here is a good article I mostly agree with you should read.


MARKET CONCENTRATION, the economist’s term for how much an industry is dominated by one or a few firms, touches ever more aspects of American life. From the obvious (the Amazons and Walmarts of the retail economy) to the obscure (the beer industry, which may appear diverse, is dominated by two firms), market concentration has increased in three-quarters of U.S. industries during the twenty-first century. This has had wide-ranging effects not only on consumers, but also, economists increasingly believe, on labor. “Fewer firms in a given industry makes it easier for them to have more bargaining power [over employees], and harder for workers to switch to another employer,” says Jason Furman, professor of the practice of economic policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and former chair of the Obama administration’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Today’s labor markets increasingly look like a monopsony: a market in which there is only one buyer—the inverse of a monopoly, in which there is only one seller. The more an industry is dominated by a small number of corporations, the more those companies can control the cost of labor. Traditionally, Furman says, economists have relied on a supply-and-demand story about the labor market: “There’s a supply of workers and demand for workers, and the wage is what clears the market, just like the price of wheat is what clears the market for wheat. That explains a lot about wages, but it probably doesn’t explain everything…[T]hat research program went as far as it could.”

In the last three years, Furman explains, economists have looked to monopsony and other factors beyond market competition to explain the stagnation of Americans’ wages during the last few decades. Fewer companies in a given industry make it easier for those companies to coordinate, either indirectly or through overt collusion, to keep wages low. Think of a town with two big-box retail stores: each store knows what the other pays its cashiers, and neither wants to raise wages. Firms can also use noncompete agreements, which ban employees from taking jobs at rival companies, to prevent workers from finding new jobs elsewhere. About 24.5 percent of the American work force has signed a noncompete, according to one Brookings Institution analysis, and this number is not much lower (about 21 percent) for workers earning less than the median salary.



But wages stagnation is across the board, not limited to "given industries".
There are few industries I can think of that don't have some form of this. The use of noncompete agreements is all over.


Why are you limiting the discussion to industries? Nothing prevents labor from moving from industry to service jobs.
What service jobs aren't tied to some industry?


Financial, Medical, Food, Bars, off the top of my head.
Aren't many finance jobs for companies that might have a near monopoly in their industry? What type of medical? It certainly exists in food with huge companies like Mcdonalds. Bars? Is that a big employer?

All industry is interconnected.

Everything is interconnected to everything.



Which is irrelevant to the question. That a dialysis center might be "connected" to the local hospital, does not mean that the local hospital will not hire a nurse from the lower paying center, if the center is a bunch of cheap bastards that are under paying her.

So just as someone who has been around cheap clinics.....

I don't know the specifics of this center, but if the clinic is getting Medicare or Medicaid patients, then this means they are capped at what they are paid by the government for service.

It may not be that "They are cheap!"... it might be they simply are not capable of paying more money.


So, why don't they lose all medical staff to other services that are not capped?

So there's a reason, but you are not going to like it.

The reason is simply that the people who work there are generally bad, or they are retired who don't care, or they are students who are using the tuition forgiveness program to get their loans eliminate, and thus are just tolerating it.

People hate hearing that, but it's the reality. You have a few students fresh out of school, that are still learning how to use a needle, that are there because they are putting up with it so they can get their loans forgiven. Then you have some people way over the hill, in their 60s and 70s, who are only doing this to get them out of the house.

And lastly you have people that are just bad. People that got fired from their good paying job, because they were bad, and the hospital found them a liability. So they got a job at Medicare/Medicaid facilities because such clinics are desperate for anyone, since no one wants to work for peanuts. So they hire people that no profit driven hospital would ever hire. As much as left-wingers decry profit motive.... profit motive keeps patients alive and healing, because dead people don't pay bills.

Socialist hospitals have no such worry, since the government pays the bills. A dead patient isn't a negative at all to the finances.

So without a profit motive, socialist clinics doing Medicare and Medicaid patients, have no problem hiring unwanted Nurses and Doctors.


In, a healthier economy with a better labor market, even that would not be enough. THey would HAVE to offer better wages even to keep the dregs.


Have you ever been in a position, where as the employEE, you have the leverage and your employER, needed you more than you needed the job?


I have. It was glorious.


I want to share that joy, with as many of my fellow workers as possible.

No, that's not true. Unwanted employees can easily be held onto at below market wages. I know this because I talk to these people, and they openly tell me why they were for below market wages.

Also you need to understand a fundamental difference between typical employment, and health care employment.

When I mean that some of the nurses or doctors are bad... I mean that they are employees that private care systems simply don't want at any price.

The example I always point to, is this story from over 10 years ago, about a doctor at a VA hospital. So this guy went in for routine minor surgery. The kind of surgery that less than half a percent die in. He died, and his wife was in the hospital, when a nurse approached her, and whispered 'get a lawyer' and walked away. So she hired a lawyer and investigator, and found out this doctor had been fired from 3 private hospitals for killing patients.

But of course, the VA desperate for doctors because government run anything is crap, and pays nothing, had no problem hiring a doctor that can't get employment anywhere else, because he was terrible. Remember a VA hospital doesn't lose any money when a Vet dies. It just means the wait list is one shorter now.

That's what I'm talking about. Some of the people who work at Medicare and Medicaid clinics, are people who are so bad at their jobs, they are simply not wanted in the market. So yes, if this clinic is a Medicare Medicaid clinic, then it is likely desperate for people willing to work for less, and people who simply suck too bad to work in private clinics, will have no problem working there, even for below market wages.

Have you ever been in a position, where as the employEE, you have the leverage and your employER, needed you more than you needed the job?

Sure. I've been in that position most of my life. Out of my last... 10 employers I'd guess, at least 8 of them did everything they could to prevent me from leaving the company.

But you need to grasp that this is because I'm a good employee. I'd say at least 1/3 to almost half, are terrible employees, and them leaving is a positive more than a negative. None of these people are likely to be paid more, and most likely less, anywhere else.

In fact I've heard that first hand. "I deserve a raise! I'm worth more than this!" Ok... go get a job that pays more. (long pause) "Well no one else will pay me as much as I'm earning here"..... dur... then you are not worth more than this, are you? In fact maybe this company is over paying you, if any other employer would pay you less.

I've not seen gross incompetence like you suggest.

What I have seen is job openings that get massive numbers of applicants so there is no pressure on the employer to work to hold onto a good employee.


Or to raise wages.
Here employers complain they can’t get good people. doesn’t seem to raise wages though. The market is broke for the reasons I’ve explained.


You've explained your opinion about why that is.

Stating it again, and more confidently, is good technique.

I though, am beyond being convinced by such tricks.

Perhaps, if you do it again and with more passion? Perhaps, that will sway me.
Yes you choose to believe in nonsense you can’t even explain. Funny.


I explained it, as well as you did.
You are delusional. You made claims you couldn’t even prove. I gave you work by actual economists.


Your citing of failed Authority figures means nothing.
Economists are failed authority figures? You been drinking?


Have you? You didn't notice when Free Trade did not deliver the promised results?
You can’t even show what those promised results were. I’ll be waiting for a link. You are a joke.


The goal was not generations of wage stagnation and a declining life expectancy.

I remember. I did not read it online. I was there, and the goal was improved productivity and a return to winning. And it was not supposed to take forever either.


NOW? Now people are talking about the American worker being fucked until EVERY THIRD WORLD SHIT HOLE, is brought up to our level?


That is not a sane policy. That is reason to rise up and burn down the Lord's castle.
Yeah where is the link? You just babble nonsense. Link to support your claim.


Did you read what I posted? I did not read it online. I heard it when I was there. This is not ancient history to me, but living memory.

Are you high?
Yeah it happened and wasn’t documented in any way. Definitely not on the internet anywhere. You have some imagination kid. Let me know when you step into reality.


Not what I said. Why you making up so much shit?

Oh, you know that, right, and your just playing a silly game?
You are playing a game, just making shit up.


If I go and find some documentation, for what I recall personally, you know that you will just dismiss it.


Just tell us the reason you will dismiss it, and save me the time of finding something from pre-internet era. And we can move the discussion forward without wasting anyone's time.


Because, you are not open to changing your mind, due to new information, are you?
You can’t cause you are making shit up.


Just tell us the reason you will dismiss it, and save me the time of finding something from pre-internet era. And we can move the discussion forward without wasting anyone's time.


We both know that you already have your reason for dismissing it, already picked out.
If it existed you could have found it by now. Instead you seem to have lots of time making excuses.


Just tell us the reason you will dismiss it, and save me the time of finding something from pre-internet era. And we can move the discussion forward without wasting anyone's time.


We both know that you already have your reason for dismissing it, already picked out.
Again, you could have found it by now if it existed. Clearly it doesn't and you'd rather babble.


Just tell us the reason you will dismiss it, and save me the time of finding something from pre-internet era. And we can move the discussion forward without wasting anyone's time.


We both know that you already have your reason for dismissing it, already picked out.
Just admit you are full of shit. You waste time repeating yourself cause you can't back up your claim.


We both know that you already have your reason for dismissing it, already picked out. Just share that reason, and we can move on.


I note that you have not argued that you are open to changing your mind, if the new information proved you wrong.


So, why do you want to waste my time?
It’s cute how you stupidly repeat yourself rather than back up your claim. You are a complete joke.
 
I'm 100% for it. Regardless we have to continue exports to maintain our status as world power, otherwise we'd give that status to China. If countries were to become isolated, then yes, no country would complete with the USA, we'd be set.

I think we should also end foreigners owning U.S. real estate. That said millennial's already screwed the pooch on that one. Many figured they were above property ownership. They didn't take into account they'll be paying the Chinese rent in the form of 5Kish by their 60th B-days.
Isolated countries fail economically.
Oh, but we won't be isolated, once the manufacturing jobs are forced back on-shore...

We'll be exporting manufactured goods to others, again.

Sigh....

Do you not see the problem with your own logic? Do you think that any person, elsewhere in the world, is not thinking the exact same thing?

If you intend to use the power of government to impose protectionism to force manufacturing back into the US..... What do you think other countries will do?

They are going to put in place those exact same protectionist barriers against the US.

Again, just look at the Smoot-Hawley tariff in the 1930s.

Why didn't US exports go up? Why did US exports drop? Because all the countries that had tariffs levied against them, turned around and levied tariffs against the US.

The perfect example of this was the iron and steel tariffs.

So the US put in place tariffs on Iron ore. Canada put in place tariffs on steel. So the pittsburgh steel found itself paying massively high prices for iron ore because import tariffs on ore from Canada, and then found the price of steel crashed because one of the biggest demands for steel was exports that now had tariffs on steel from the US.

17 Months after the Smoot-Hawley protectionist tariffs were put in place, 11 different banks operating in Pittsburgh crashed and went insolvent.

Again, if you think we are going to have protectionism, and force companies to locate in the US, and all the other countries are going to be perfectly happy buying US exports... that is not a logical position to have. Other countries are going to do the same. And instead, you are going to destroy $2.4 Trillion in exports we make yearly. And not having imports is also going to destroy jobs.


They are already doing it to US. They have been for decades. We have been their bitch while they profit from fucking US.
 
I'm 100% for it. Regardless we have to continue exports to maintain our status as world power, otherwise we'd give that status to China. If countries were to become isolated, then yes, no country would complete with the USA, we'd be set.

I think we should also end foreigners owning U.S. real estate. That said millennial's already screwed the pooch on that one. Many figured they were above property ownership. They didn't take into account they'll be paying the Chinese rent in the form of 5Kish by their 60th B-days.
Isolated countries fail economically.


To be fair, there has never been an isolated country on a scale of the US.

AND, as we seen to be destined to be fucked by any trading partner, isolation could be a competitive policy.


THe choice seems to be either be the world's bitch, or take our ball and go home.
How do you mean? The USSR failed miserably. Pretty big country.


Failed because they tried to have a big empire AND we fought them.

Not because they were isolated.
Being isolated is bad for capitalism. Very bad .


Being the world's bitch on trade, hasn't been that great either.

If only there was a third option. But there does not seem to be one.
We have the biggest economy in the world with the most wealth and we’ve had super low unemployment. Seems to be fine.


No, we're not. Our middle class wages have stagnated and our middle class and lower class have lost faith in the future.

People are dying from this shit. To the point that our life expectancy is actually FALLING.


Good macro economic numbers have been hiding generations of pain.


Try to change policy.
That is an internal problem . We have the wealth and jobs. That wouldn’t change if we were isolated.


It is not an internal problem. It is a problem caused by external trade and the inflow of labor.


Time to change policy.
What do you base that on. Again, tons of wealth and jobs. That’s the formula for good wages. If we had too much inflow we’d have high unemployment and certainly wouldn’t have labor shortages. Your claim is baseless. Learn some economics.



Because we have NOT had rising wages for the middle class and working poor.

If it is the formula for "good wages" something went wrong.
Yes something is wrong. Has nothing to do with trade. We have near monopolies, wage collusion, government corruption... internal problems have hurt the market.


How do you know which factors are causing the issue? Cause the reduction of demand, by losing so many manufacturing jobs, while flooding the labor market, seems, like two factors that could have quite an impact.
Good question. I would say you want to first start by following the money. The wealth is here, we have plenty of jobs, where is the money going? I think we know the answer to that. So then why are markets so broken? Here is a good article I mostly agree with you should read.


MARKET CONCENTRATION, the economist’s term for how much an industry is dominated by one or a few firms, touches ever more aspects of American life. From the obvious (the Amazons and Walmarts of the retail economy) to the obscure (the beer industry, which may appear diverse, is dominated by two firms), market concentration has increased in three-quarters of U.S. industries during the twenty-first century. This has had wide-ranging effects not only on consumers, but also, economists increasingly believe, on labor. “Fewer firms in a given industry makes it easier for them to have more bargaining power [over employees], and harder for workers to switch to another employer,” says Jason Furman, professor of the practice of economic policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and former chair of the Obama administration’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Today’s labor markets increasingly look like a monopsony: a market in which there is only one buyer—the inverse of a monopoly, in which there is only one seller. The more an industry is dominated by a small number of corporations, the more those companies can control the cost of labor. Traditionally, Furman says, economists have relied on a supply-and-demand story about the labor market: “There’s a supply of workers and demand for workers, and the wage is what clears the market, just like the price of wheat is what clears the market for wheat. That explains a lot about wages, but it probably doesn’t explain everything…[T]hat research program went as far as it could.”

In the last three years, Furman explains, economists have looked to monopsony and other factors beyond market competition to explain the stagnation of Americans’ wages during the last few decades. Fewer companies in a given industry make it easier for those companies to coordinate, either indirectly or through overt collusion, to keep wages low. Think of a town with two big-box retail stores: each store knows what the other pays its cashiers, and neither wants to raise wages. Firms can also use noncompete agreements, which ban employees from taking jobs at rival companies, to prevent workers from finding new jobs elsewhere. About 24.5 percent of the American work force has signed a noncompete, according to one Brookings Institution analysis, and this number is not much lower (about 21 percent) for workers earning less than the median salary.



But wages stagnation is across the board, not limited to "given industries".
There are few industries I can think of that don't have some form of this. The use of noncompete agreements is all over.


Why are you limiting the discussion to industries? Nothing prevents labor from moving from industry to service jobs.
What service jobs aren't tied to some industry?


Financial, Medical, Food, Bars, off the top of my head.
Aren't many finance jobs for companies that might have a near monopoly in their industry? What type of medical? It certainly exists in food with huge companies like Mcdonalds. Bars? Is that a big employer?

All industry is interconnected.

Everything is interconnected to everything.



Which is irrelevant to the question. That a dialysis center might be "connected" to the local hospital, does not mean that the local hospital will not hire a nurse from the lower paying center, if the center is a bunch of cheap bastards that are under paying her.

So just as someone who has been around cheap clinics.....

I don't know the specifics of this center, but if the clinic is getting Medicare or Medicaid patients, then this means they are capped at what they are paid by the government for service.

It may not be that "They are cheap!"... it might be they simply are not capable of paying more money.


So, why don't they lose all medical staff to other services that are not capped?

So there's a reason, but you are not going to like it.

The reason is simply that the people who work there are generally bad, or they are retired who don't care, or they are students who are using the tuition forgiveness program to get their loans eliminate, and thus are just tolerating it.

People hate hearing that, but it's the reality. You have a few students fresh out of school, that are still learning how to use a needle, that are there because they are putting up with it so they can get their loans forgiven. Then you have some people way over the hill, in their 60s and 70s, who are only doing this to get them out of the house.

And lastly you have people that are just bad. People that got fired from their good paying job, because they were bad, and the hospital found them a liability. So they got a job at Medicare/Medicaid facilities because such clinics are desperate for anyone, since no one wants to work for peanuts. So they hire people that no profit driven hospital would ever hire. As much as left-wingers decry profit motive.... profit motive keeps patients alive and healing, because dead people don't pay bills.

Socialist hospitals have no such worry, since the government pays the bills. A dead patient isn't a negative at all to the finances.

So without a profit motive, socialist clinics doing Medicare and Medicaid patients, have no problem hiring unwanted Nurses and Doctors.


In, a healthier economy with a better labor market, even that would not be enough. THey would HAVE to offer better wages even to keep the dregs.


Have you ever been in a position, where as the employEE, you have the leverage and your employER, needed you more than you needed the job?


I have. It was glorious.


I want to share that joy, with as many of my fellow workers as possible.

No, that's not true. Unwanted employees can easily be held onto at below market wages. I know this because I talk to these people, and they openly tell me why they were for below market wages.

Also you need to understand a fundamental difference between typical employment, and health care employment.

When I mean that some of the nurses or doctors are bad... I mean that they are employees that private care systems simply don't want at any price.

The example I always point to, is this story from over 10 years ago, about a doctor at a VA hospital. So this guy went in for routine minor surgery. The kind of surgery that less than half a percent die in. He died, and his wife was in the hospital, when a nurse approached her, and whispered 'get a lawyer' and walked away. So she hired a lawyer and investigator, and found out this doctor had been fired from 3 private hospitals for killing patients.

But of course, the VA desperate for doctors because government run anything is crap, and pays nothing, had no problem hiring a doctor that can't get employment anywhere else, because he was terrible. Remember a VA hospital doesn't lose any money when a Vet dies. It just means the wait list is one shorter now.

That's what I'm talking about. Some of the people who work at Medicare and Medicaid clinics, are people who are so bad at their jobs, they are simply not wanted in the market. So yes, if this clinic is a Medicare Medicaid clinic, then it is likely desperate for people willing to work for less, and people who simply suck too bad to work in private clinics, will have no problem working there, even for below market wages.

Have you ever been in a position, where as the employEE, you have the leverage and your employER, needed you more than you needed the job?

Sure. I've been in that position most of my life. Out of my last... 10 employers I'd guess, at least 8 of them did everything they could to prevent me from leaving the company.

But you need to grasp that this is because I'm a good employee. I'd say at least 1/3 to almost half, are terrible employees, and them leaving is a positive more than a negative. None of these people are likely to be paid more, and most likely less, anywhere else.

In fact I've heard that first hand. "I deserve a raise! I'm worth more than this!" Ok... go get a job that pays more. (long pause) "Well no one else will pay me as much as I'm earning here"..... dur... then you are not worth more than this, are you? In fact maybe this company is over paying you, if any other employer would pay you less.

I've not seen gross incompetence like you suggest.

What I have seen is job openings that get massive numbers of applicants so there is no pressure on the employer to work to hold onto a good employee.


Or to raise wages.
Here employers complain they can’t get good people. doesn’t seem to raise wages though. The market is broke for the reasons I’ve explained.

Well that's true.

They can't get good people. And that is exactly why they don't raise wages.

The two are connected.

Paying more, doesn't magically make the people good. Sucky people, get sucky wages.

One of the more interesting times in my life, was 2007-2010. So during those years, my wages went up, several times in fact. Now this was fascinating, because during that time, everyone was having a melt down that no one could find a job, and no one was getting pay raise, and everyone was having a horrible time.

Meanwhile, I found jobs, and get pay raises. Why was this? Because I showed up on time, worked my entire shift, and did whatever was required to get the job done.

Fact is, most people do as little as possible, do as low quality work as possible, and then expect a raise in pay... not coming. Best advice I've heard, was your raise will be effective when you are.
Economists are all baffled by the lack of wage growth. It’s strange you choose to ignore it’s been poor...

Scott B. Sumner (born 1955) is an American economist. He is the Director of the Program on Monetary Policy at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute, and professor who teaches at Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts.

During the past 4 years, NGDP growth has been running at 4.05%/year, well below the historical norms. So why is wage growth running at only about 2.5%/year? The answer is simple; payroll employment has been growing at 1.78% over that same period. The predicted growth in average hourly earnings is 2.27%, whereas actual wage growth has been running at 2.47%. The recent puzzle is why is wage growth so high, not low.

SO..... economists are not "baffled" by this. In fact, given the increase in employment, wages are growing pretty well.

So maybe what is strange is that you choose to ignore that it's been pretty decent.

I'm 100% for it. Regardless we have to continue exports to maintain our status as world power, otherwise we'd give that status to China. If countries were to become isolated, then yes, no country would complete with the USA, we'd be set.

I think we should also end foreigners owning U.S. real estate. That said millennial's already screwed the pooch on that one. Many figured they were above property ownership. They didn't take into account they'll be paying the Chinese rent in the form of 5Kish by their 60th B-days.
Isolated countries fail economically.


To be fair, there has never been an isolated country on a scale of the US.

AND, as we seen to be destined to be fucked by any trading partner, isolation could be a competitive policy.


THe choice seems to be either be the world's bitch, or take our ball and go home.
How do you mean? The USSR failed miserably. Pretty big country.


Failed because they tried to have a big empire AND we fought them.

Not because they were isolated.
Being isolated is bad for capitalism. Very bad .


Being the world's bitch on trade, hasn't been that great either.

If only there was a third option. But there does not seem to be one.
We have the biggest economy in the world with the most wealth and we’ve had super low unemployment. Seems to be fine.


No, we're not. Our middle class wages have stagnated and our middle class and lower class have lost faith in the future.

People are dying from this shit. To the point that our life expectancy is actually FALLING.


Good macro economic numbers have been hiding generations of pain.


Try to change policy.
That is an internal problem . We have the wealth and jobs. That wouldn’t change if we were isolated.


It is not an internal problem. It is a problem caused by external trade and the inflow of labor.


Time to change policy.
What do you base that on. Again, tons of wealth and jobs. That’s the formula for good wages. If we had too much inflow we’d have high unemployment and certainly wouldn’t have labor shortages. Your claim is baseless. Learn some economics.



Because we have NOT had rising wages for the middle class and working poor.

If it is the formula for "good wages" something went wrong.
Yes something is wrong. Has nothing to do with trade. We have near monopolies, wage collusion, government corruption... internal problems have hurt the market.


How do you know which factors are causing the issue? Cause the reduction of demand, by losing so many manufacturing jobs, while flooding the labor market, seems, like two factors that could have quite an impact.
Good question. I would say you want to first start by following the money. The wealth is here, we have plenty of jobs, where is the money going? I think we know the answer to that. So then why are markets so broken? Here is a good article I mostly agree with you should read.


MARKET CONCENTRATION, the economist’s term for how much an industry is dominated by one or a few firms, touches ever more aspects of American life. From the obvious (the Amazons and Walmarts of the retail economy) to the obscure (the beer industry, which may appear diverse, is dominated by two firms), market concentration has increased in three-quarters of U.S. industries during the twenty-first century. This has had wide-ranging effects not only on consumers, but also, economists increasingly believe, on labor. “Fewer firms in a given industry makes it easier for them to have more bargaining power [over employees], and harder for workers to switch to another employer,” says Jason Furman, professor of the practice of economic policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and former chair of the Obama administration’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Today’s labor markets increasingly look like a monopsony: a market in which there is only one buyer—the inverse of a monopoly, in which there is only one seller. The more an industry is dominated by a small number of corporations, the more those companies can control the cost of labor. Traditionally, Furman says, economists have relied on a supply-and-demand story about the labor market: “There’s a supply of workers and demand for workers, and the wage is what clears the market, just like the price of wheat is what clears the market for wheat. That explains a lot about wages, but it probably doesn’t explain everything…[T]hat research program went as far as it could.”

In the last three years, Furman explains, economists have looked to monopsony and other factors beyond market competition to explain the stagnation of Americans’ wages during the last few decades. Fewer companies in a given industry make it easier for those companies to coordinate, either indirectly or through overt collusion, to keep wages low. Think of a town with two big-box retail stores: each store knows what the other pays its cashiers, and neither wants to raise wages. Firms can also use noncompete agreements, which ban employees from taking jobs at rival companies, to prevent workers from finding new jobs elsewhere. About 24.5 percent of the American work force has signed a noncompete, according to one Brookings Institution analysis, and this number is not much lower (about 21 percent) for workers earning less than the median salary.



But wages stagnation is across the board, not limited to "given industries".
There are few industries I can think of that don't have some form of this. The use of noncompete agreements is all over.


Why are you limiting the discussion to industries? Nothing prevents labor from moving from industry to service jobs.
What service jobs aren't tied to some industry?


Financial, Medical, Food, Bars, off the top of my head.
Aren't many finance jobs for companies that might have a near monopoly in their industry? What type of medical? It certainly exists in food with huge companies like Mcdonalds. Bars? Is that a big employer?

All industry is interconnected.

Everything is interconnected to everything.



Which is irrelevant to the question. That a dialysis center might be "connected" to the local hospital, does not mean that the local hospital will not hire a nurse from the lower paying center, if the center is a bunch of cheap bastards that are under paying her.

So just as someone who has been around cheap clinics.....

I don't know the specifics of this center, but if the clinic is getting Medicare or Medicaid patients, then this means they are capped at what they are paid by the government for service.

It may not be that "They are cheap!"... it might be they simply are not capable of paying more money.


So, why don't they lose all medical staff to other services that are not capped?

So there's a reason, but you are not going to like it.

The reason is simply that the people who work there are generally bad, or they are retired who don't care, or they are students who are using the tuition forgiveness program to get their loans eliminate, and thus are just tolerating it.

People hate hearing that, but it's the reality. You have a few students fresh out of school, that are still learning how to use a needle, that are there because they are putting up with it so they can get their loans forgiven. Then you have some people way over the hill, in their 60s and 70s, who are only doing this to get them out of the house.

And lastly you have people that are just bad. People that got fired from their good paying job, because they were bad, and the hospital found them a liability. So they got a job at Medicare/Medicaid facilities because such clinics are desperate for anyone, since no one wants to work for peanuts. So they hire people that no profit driven hospital would ever hire. As much as left-wingers decry profit motive.... profit motive keeps patients alive and healing, because dead people don't pay bills.

Socialist hospitals have no such worry, since the government pays the bills. A dead patient isn't a negative at all to the finances.

So without a profit motive, socialist clinics doing Medicare and Medicaid patients, have no problem hiring unwanted Nurses and Doctors.


In, a healthier economy with a better labor market, even that would not be enough. THey would HAVE to offer better wages even to keep the dregs.


Have you ever been in a position, where as the employEE, you have the leverage and your employER, needed you more than you needed the job?


I have. It was glorious.


I want to share that joy, with as many of my fellow workers as possible.

No, that's not true. Unwanted employees can easily be held onto at below market wages. I know this because I talk to these people, and they openly tell me why they were for below market wages.

Also you need to understand a fundamental difference between typical employment, and health care employment.

When I mean that some of the nurses or doctors are bad... I mean that they are employees that private care systems simply don't want at any price.

The example I always point to, is this story from over 10 years ago, about a doctor at a VA hospital. So this guy went in for routine minor surgery. The kind of surgery that less than half a percent die in. He died, and his wife was in the hospital, when a nurse approached her, and whispered 'get a lawyer' and walked away. So she hired a lawyer and investigator, and found out this doctor had been fired from 3 private hospitals for killing patients.

But of course, the VA desperate for doctors because government run anything is crap, and pays nothing, had no problem hiring a doctor that can't get employment anywhere else, because he was terrible. Remember a VA hospital doesn't lose any money when a Vet dies. It just means the wait list is one shorter now.

That's what I'm talking about. Some of the people who work at Medicare and Medicaid clinics, are people who are so bad at their jobs, they are simply not wanted in the market. So yes, if this clinic is a Medicare Medicaid clinic, then it is likely desperate for people willing to work for less, and people who simply suck too bad to work in private clinics, will have no problem working there, even for below market wages.

Have you ever been in a position, where as the employEE, you have the leverage and your employER, needed you more than you needed the job?

Sure. I've been in that position most of my life. Out of my last... 10 employers I'd guess, at least 8 of them did everything they could to prevent me from leaving the company.

But you need to grasp that this is because I'm a good employee. I'd say at least 1/3 to almost half, are terrible employees, and them leaving is a positive more than a negative. None of these people are likely to be paid more, and most likely less, anywhere else.

In fact I've heard that first hand. "I deserve a raise! I'm worth more than this!" Ok... go get a job that pays more. (long pause) "Well no one else will pay me as much as I'm earning here"..... dur... then you are not worth more than this, are you? In fact maybe this company is over paying you, if any other employer would pay you less.

I've not seen gross incompetence like you suggest.

What I have seen is job openings that get massive numbers of applicants so there is no pressure on the employer to work to hold onto a good employee.


Or to raise wages.
Here employers complain they can’t get good people. doesn’t seem to raise wages though. The market is broke for the reasons I’ve explained.


You've explained your opinion about why that is.

Stating it again, and more confidently, is good technique.

I though, am beyond being convinced by such tricks.

Perhaps, if you do it again and with more passion? Perhaps, that will sway me.
Yes you choose to believe in nonsense you can’t even explain. Funny.


I explained it, as well as you did.
You are delusional. You made claims you couldn’t even prove. I gave you work by actual economists.


Your citing of failed Authority figures means nothing.
Economists are failed authority figures? You been drinking?


Have you? You didn't notice when Free Trade did not deliver the promised results?
You can’t even show what those promised results were. I’ll be waiting for a link. You are a joke.


The goal was not generations of wage stagnation and a declining life expectancy.

I remember. I did not read it online. I was there, and the goal was improved productivity and a return to winning. And it was not supposed to take forever either.


NOW? Now people are talking about the American worker being fucked until EVERY THIRD WORLD SHIT HOLE, is brought up to our level?


That is not a sane policy. That is reason to rise up and burn down the Lord's castle.
Yeah where is the link? You just babble nonsense. Link to support your claim.


Did you read what I posted? I did not read it online. I heard it when I was there. This is not ancient history to me, but living memory.

Are you high?
Yeah it happened and wasn’t documented in any way. Definitely not on the internet anywhere. You have some imagination kid. Let me know when you step into reality.


Not what I said. Why you making up so much shit?

Oh, you know that, right, and your just playing a silly game?
You are playing a game, just making shit up.


If I go and find some documentation, for what I recall personally, you know that you will just dismiss it.


Just tell us the reason you will dismiss it, and save me the time of finding something from pre-internet era. And we can move the discussion forward without wasting anyone's time.


Because, you are not open to changing your mind, due to new information, are you?
You can’t cause you are making shit up.


Just tell us the reason you will dismiss it, and save me the time of finding something from pre-internet era. And we can move the discussion forward without wasting anyone's time.


We both know that you already have your reason for dismissing it, already picked out.
If it existed you could have found it by now. Instead you seem to have lots of time making excuses.


Just tell us the reason you will dismiss it, and save me the time of finding something from pre-internet era. And we can move the discussion forward without wasting anyone's time.


We both know that you already have your reason for dismissing it, already picked out.
Again, you could have found it by now if it existed. Clearly it doesn't and you'd rather babble.


Just tell us the reason you will dismiss it, and save me the time of finding something from pre-internet era. And we can move the discussion forward without wasting anyone's time.


We both know that you already have your reason for dismissing it, already picked out.
Just admit you are full of shit. You waste time repeating yourself cause you can't back up your claim.


We both know that you already have your reason for dismissing it, already picked out. Just share that reason, and we can move on.


I note that you have not argued that you are open to changing your mind, if the new information proved you wrong.


So, why do you want to waste my time?
It’s cute how you stupidly repeat yourself rather than back up your claim. You are a complete joke.

You've given me every indication that you don't care about any facts I might post. I've tired to prompt you to make some claim of being open to new information, to get you to commit to taking any new information seriously,


but you have not bitten.

Nor have you been honest about that, and just presented your next line of attack, to keep the discussion moving.


I don't know why, or how, you can put the blame for our impasse on me, when it is obviously you.
 
I like it! Bye bye China!

And here's a great way we can start addressing our trade, immigration and drug issues in ONE STRATEGY:

Band Aids, Borders, Burritos & Bejing


Not bad. Would be worth trying, though I think the three big issues are

number one has as lot of negative effects.

and it would be tough to get Latin American nations to accept a give and take relationship, whey they are so used to just taking.


And three, to make it work, we would really have to cut off much of the rest of the Third World, if not much of the rest of the world.



BUT, far better than the status quo.
 
I'm 100% for it. Regardless we have to continue exports to maintain our status as world power, otherwise we'd give that status to China. If countries were to become isolated, then yes, no country would complete with the USA, we'd be set.

I think we should also end foreigners owning U.S. real estate. That said millennial's already screwed the pooch on that one. Many figured they were above property ownership. They didn't take into account they'll be paying the Chinese rent in the form of 5Kish by their 60th B-days.
Isolated countries fail economically.
Oh, but we won't be isolated, once the manufacturing jobs are forced back on-shore...

We'll be exporting manufactured goods to others, again.

Sigh....

Do you not see the problem with your own logic? Do you think that any person, elsewhere in the world, is not thinking the exact same thing?

If you intend to use the power of government to impose protectionism to force manufacturing back into the US..... What do you think other countries will do?

They are going to put in place those exact same protectionist barriers against the US.

Again, just look at the Smoot-Hawley tariff in the 1930s.

Why didn't US exports go up? Why did US exports drop? Because all the countries that had tariffs levied against them, turned around and levied tariffs against the US.

The perfect example of this was the iron and steel tariffs.

So the US put in place tariffs on Iron ore. Canada put in place tariffs on steel. So the pittsburgh steel found itself paying massively high prices for iron ore because import tariffs on ore from Canada, and then found the price of steel crashed because one of the biggest demands for steel was exports that now had tariffs on steel from the US.

17 Months after the Smoot-Hawley protectionist tariffs were put in place, 11 different banks operating in Pittsburgh crashed and went insolvent.

Again, if you think we are going to have protectionism, and force companies to locate in the US, and all the other countries are going to be perfectly happy buying US exports... that is not a logical position to have. Other countries are going to do the same. And instead, you are going to destroy $2.4 Trillion in exports we make yearly. And not having imports is also going to destroy jobs.
The need for domestic manufacturing has now gone beyond mere economics and has entered the realm of survival.

The sooner we take the pain, the sooner it's over with.
Nonsense.
 
I'm 100% for it. Regardless we have to continue exports to maintain our status as world power, otherwise we'd give that status to China. If countries were to become isolated, then yes, no country would complete with the USA, we'd be set.

I think we should also end foreigners owning U.S. real estate. That said millennial's already screwed the pooch on that one. Many figured they were above property ownership. They didn't take into account they'll be paying the Chinese rent in the form of 5Kish by their 60th B-days.
Isolated countries fail economically.
Oh, but we won't be isolated, once the manufacturing jobs are forced back on-shore...

We'll be exporting manufactured goods to others, again.

Sigh....

Do you not see the problem with your own logic? Do you think that any person, elsewhere in the world, is not thinking the exact same thing?

If you intend to use the power of government to impose protectionism to force manufacturing back into the US..... What do you think other countries will do?

They are going to put in place those exact same protectionist barriers against the US.

Again, just look at the Smoot-Hawley tariff in the 1930s.

Why didn't US exports go up? Why did US exports drop? Because all the countries that had tariffs levied against them, turned around and levied tariffs against the US.

The perfect example of this was the iron and steel tariffs.

So the US put in place tariffs on Iron ore. Canada put in place tariffs on steel. So the pittsburgh steel found itself paying massively high prices for iron ore because import tariffs on ore from Canada, and then found the price of steel crashed because one of the biggest demands for steel was exports that now had tariffs on steel from the US.

17 Months after the Smoot-Hawley protectionist tariffs were put in place, 11 different banks operating in Pittsburgh crashed and went insolvent.

Again, if you think we are going to have protectionism, and force companies to locate in the US, and all the other countries are going to be perfectly happy buying US exports... that is not a logical position to have. Other countries are going to do the same. And instead, you are going to destroy $2.4 Trillion in exports we make yearly. And not having imports is also going to destroy jobs.


They are already doing it to US. They have been for decades. We have been their bitch while they profit from fucking US.

The US is the third largest exporter in the world today. We are only the 3rd largest, if you include the European Union as one country. Otherwise, we're the 2nd largest.

Further, China is our forth largest buyer. But even that is misleading, because the 2nd and 3rd largest is Mexico and Canada, which is primarily defined by oil imports and exports to refineries.

If you exclude oil flowing in and out across the boarders with Mexico and Canada, That would leave the top 2 buyers of US exports as China and the EU. Which again requires you take the entire European Union, as one giant country. If you look at the EU as separate countries.....

The the number one, largest buyer of US produced goods is China.

The US is a huge exporter, and China is a huge buyer of US exports.

You claim that China has been doing this for decades? Then they really suck at doing it.
 
Last edited:
I'm 100% for it. Regardless we have to continue exports to maintain our status as world power, otherwise we'd give that status to China. If countries were to become isolated, then yes, no country would complete with the USA, we'd be set.

I think we should also end foreigners owning U.S. real estate. That said millennial's already screwed the pooch on that one. Many figured they were above property ownership. They didn't take into account they'll be paying the Chinese rent in the form of 5Kish by their 60th B-days.
Isolated countries fail economically.
Oh, but we won't be isolated, once the manufacturing jobs are forced back on-shore...

We'll be exporting manufactured goods to others, again.

Sigh....

Do you not see the problem with your own logic? Do you think that any person, elsewhere in the world, is not thinking the exact same thing?

If you intend to use the power of government to impose protectionism to force manufacturing back into the US..... What do you think other countries will do?

They are going to put in place those exact same protectionist barriers against the US.

Again, just look at the Smoot-Hawley tariff in the 1930s.

Why didn't US exports go up? Why did US exports drop? Because all the countries that had tariffs levied against them, turned around and levied tariffs against the US.

The perfect example of this was the iron and steel tariffs.

So the US put in place tariffs on Iron ore. Canada put in place tariffs on steel. So the pittsburgh steel found itself paying massively high prices for iron ore because import tariffs on ore from Canada, and then found the price of steel crashed because one of the biggest demands for steel was exports that now had tariffs on steel from the US.

17 Months after the Smoot-Hawley protectionist tariffs were put in place, 11 different banks operating in Pittsburgh crashed and went insolvent.

Again, if you think we are going to have protectionism, and force companies to locate in the US, and all the other countries are going to be perfectly happy buying US exports... that is not a logical position to have. Other countries are going to do the same. And instead, you are going to destroy $2.4 Trillion in exports we make yearly. And not having imports is also going to destroy jobs.


They are already doing it to US. They have been for decades. We have been their bitch while they profit from fucking US.

The US is the third largest exporter in the world today. We are only the 3rd largest, if you include the European Union as one country. Otherwise, we're the 2nd largest.

Further, China is our forth largest buyer. But even that is misleading, because the 2nd and 3rd largest is Mexico and Canada, which is primarily defined by oil imports and exports to refineries.

If you exclude oil flowing in an out across the boarders with Mexico and Canada, That would leave the top 2 buyers of US exports as China and the EU. Which again requires you take the entire European Union, as one giant country. If you look at the EU as separate countries.....

The the number one, largest buyer of US produced goods is China.

The US is a huge exporter, and China is a huge buyer of US exports.

You claim that China has been doing this for decades? Then they really suck at doing it.


Very nice spin. I sure that there are many Free Trade Ideologues and people who make money off the status quo who will be happy to accept that perception of reality and pretend that everything is fine.


Meanwhile, our society is so fucked that our life spans are actually DROPPING.
 
I'm 100% for it. Regardless we have to continue exports to maintain our status as world power, otherwise we'd give that status to China. If countries were to become isolated, then yes, no country would complete with the USA, we'd be set.

I think we should also end foreigners owning U.S. real estate. That said millennial's already screwed the pooch on that one. Many figured they were above property ownership. They didn't take into account they'll be paying the Chinese rent in the form of 5Kish by their 60th B-days.
Isolated countries fail economically.
Oh, but we won't be isolated, once the manufacturing jobs are forced back on-shore...

We'll be exporting manufactured goods to others, again.

Sigh....

Do you not see the problem with your own logic? Do you think that any person, elsewhere in the world, is not thinking the exact same thing?

If you intend to use the power of government to impose protectionism to force manufacturing back into the US..... What do you think other countries will do?

They are going to put in place those exact same protectionist barriers against the US.

Again, just look at the Smoot-Hawley tariff in the 1930s.

Why didn't US exports go up? Why did US exports drop? Because all the countries that had tariffs levied against them, turned around and levied tariffs against the US.

The perfect example of this was the iron and steel tariffs.

So the US put in place tariffs on Iron ore. Canada put in place tariffs on steel. So the pittsburgh steel found itself paying massively high prices for iron ore because import tariffs on ore from Canada, and then found the price of steel crashed because one of the biggest demands for steel was exports that now had tariffs on steel from the US.

17 Months after the Smoot-Hawley protectionist tariffs were put in place, 11 different banks operating in Pittsburgh crashed and went insolvent.

Again, if you think we are going to have protectionism, and force companies to locate in the US, and all the other countries are going to be perfectly happy buying US exports... that is not a logical position to have. Other countries are going to do the same. And instead, you are going to destroy $2.4 Trillion in exports we make yearly. And not having imports is also going to destroy jobs.


They are already doing it to US. They have been for decades. We have been their bitch while they profit from fucking US.

The US is the third largest exporter in the world today. We are only the 3rd largest, if you include the European Union as one country. Otherwise, we're the 2nd largest.

Further, China is our forth largest buyer. But even that is misleading, because the 2nd and 3rd largest is Mexico and Canada, which is primarily defined by oil imports and exports to refineries.

If you exclude oil flowing in an out across the boarders with Mexico and Canada, That would leave the top 2 buyers of US exports as China and the EU. Which again requires you take the entire European Union, as one giant country. If you look at the EU as separate countries.....

The the number one, largest buyer of US produced goods is China.

The US is a huge exporter, and China is a huge buyer of US exports.

You claim that China has been doing this for decades? Then they really suck at doing it.


Very nice spin. I sure that there are many Free Trade Ideologues and people who make money off the status quo who will be happy to accept that perception of reality and pretend that everything is fine.


Meanwhile, our society is so fucked that our life spans are actually DROPPING.

Life span and economics are not directly connected.

That's a strange argument to make.

Why are you trying to tie societal break down, to economics?

That's a strange position to take. That somehow, if we eliminated international trade, that magically people would no longer die in auto accidents? Or cancer and heart disease?

Those are the top 3 causes of death in the US. Which of those, would magically be reduced by protectionism?

Even suicide and self harm, heroin and such... which of those would magically be reduced by protectionism?

How would being charged a higher price for all goods, make any of those causes of death reduced?

Or murder even. Murder and homocides drastically reduce life expectancy. How does protectionism reduce that?
 
I'm 100% for it. Regardless we have to continue exports to maintain our status as world power, otherwise we'd give that status to China. If countries were to become isolated, then yes, no country would complete with the USA, we'd be set.

I think we should also end foreigners owning U.S. real estate. That said millennial's already screwed the pooch on that one. Many figured they were above property ownership. They didn't take into account they'll be paying the Chinese rent in the form of 5Kish by their 60th B-days.
Isolated countries fail economically.
Oh, but we won't be isolated, once the manufacturing jobs are forced back on-shore...

We'll be exporting manufactured goods to others, again.

Sigh....

Do you not see the problem with your own logic? Do you think that any person, elsewhere in the world, is not thinking the exact same thing?

If you intend to use the power of government to impose protectionism to force manufacturing back into the US..... What do you think other countries will do?

They are going to put in place those exact same protectionist barriers against the US.

Again, just look at the Smoot-Hawley tariff in the 1930s.

Why didn't US exports go up? Why did US exports drop? Because all the countries that had tariffs levied against them, turned around and levied tariffs against the US.

The perfect example of this was the iron and steel tariffs.

So the US put in place tariffs on Iron ore. Canada put in place tariffs on steel. So the pittsburgh steel found itself paying massively high prices for iron ore because import tariffs on ore from Canada, and then found the price of steel crashed because one of the biggest demands for steel was exports that now had tariffs on steel from the US.

17 Months after the Smoot-Hawley protectionist tariffs were put in place, 11 different banks operating in Pittsburgh crashed and went insolvent.

Again, if you think we are going to have protectionism, and force companies to locate in the US, and all the other countries are going to be perfectly happy buying US exports... that is not a logical position to have. Other countries are going to do the same. And instead, you are going to destroy $2.4 Trillion in exports we make yearly. And not having imports is also going to destroy jobs.


They are already doing it to US. They have been for decades. We have been their bitch while they profit from fucking US.

The US is the third largest exporter in the world today. We are only the 3rd largest, if you include the European Union as one country. Otherwise, we're the 2nd largest.

Further, China is our forth largest buyer. But even that is misleading, because the 2nd and 3rd largest is Mexico and Canada, which is primarily defined by oil imports and exports to refineries.

If you exclude oil flowing in an out across the boarders with Mexico and Canada, That would leave the top 2 buyers of US exports as China and the EU. Which again requires you take the entire European Union, as one giant country. If you look at the EU as separate countries.....

The the number one, largest buyer of US produced goods is China.

The US is a huge exporter, and China is a huge buyer of US exports.

You claim that China has been doing this for decades? Then they really suck at doing it.


Very nice spin. I sure that there are many Free Trade Ideologues and people who make money off the status quo who will be happy to accept that perception of reality and pretend that everything is fine.


Meanwhile, our society is so fucked that our life spans are actually DROPPING.

Life span and economics are not directly connected.

That's a strange argument to make.

Why are you trying to tie societal break down, to economics?

That's a strange position to take. That somehow, if we eliminated international trade, that magically people would no longer die in auto accidents? Or cancer and heart disease?

Those are the top 3 causes of death in the US. Which of those, would magically be reduced by protectionism?

Even suicide and self harm, heroin and such... which of those would magically be reduced by protectionism?

How would being charged a higher price for all goods, make any of those causes of death reduced?

Or murder even. Murder and homocides drastically reduce life expectancy. How does protectionism reduce that?


Correct. Life span and economics are not directly connected.

The export of manufacturing jobs, combined with the flooding of our labor market has created long term wage stagnation for large portions of our working poor and middle class. This has led to economic pain, real economic pain that INDIRECTLY leads to, for example,

1. Lower income, which leads to higher rates of cancer and hearth disease.

2. Lower income, which leads to higher rates of risky behavior leading to drug abuse and alcoholism and various life shortening issues that come with those.

3. Broken families, which lead to suicide and drug abuse, both in the parents and in the children.

4. Lower incomes, which lead to lower rates of marriage, which leads to higher rates of risky behaviors.
 
I'm 100% for it. Regardless we have to continue exports to maintain our status as world power, otherwise we'd give that status to China. If countries were to become isolated, then yes, no country would complete with the USA, we'd be set.

I think we should also end foreigners owning U.S. real estate. That said millennial's already screwed the pooch on that one. Many figured they were above property ownership. They didn't take into account they'll be paying the Chinese rent in the form of 5Kish by their 60th B-days.
Isolated countries fail economically.
Oh, but we won't be isolated, once the manufacturing jobs are forced back on-shore...

We'll be exporting manufactured goods to others, again.

Sigh....

Do you not see the problem with your own logic? Do you think that any person, elsewhere in the world, is not thinking the exact same thing?

If you intend to use the power of government to impose protectionism to force manufacturing back into the US..... What do you think other countries will do?

They are going to put in place those exact same protectionist barriers against the US.

Again, just look at the Smoot-Hawley tariff in the 1930s.

Why didn't US exports go up? Why did US exports drop? Because all the countries that had tariffs levied against them, turned around and levied tariffs against the US.

The perfect example of this was the iron and steel tariffs.

So the US put in place tariffs on Iron ore. Canada put in place tariffs on steel. So the pittsburgh steel found itself paying massively high prices for iron ore because import tariffs on ore from Canada, and then found the price of steel crashed because one of the biggest demands for steel was exports that now had tariffs on steel from the US.

17 Months after the Smoot-Hawley protectionist tariffs were put in place, 11 different banks operating in Pittsburgh crashed and went insolvent.

Again, if you think we are going to have protectionism, and force companies to locate in the US, and all the other countries are going to be perfectly happy buying US exports... that is not a logical position to have. Other countries are going to do the same. And instead, you are going to destroy $2.4 Trillion in exports we make yearly. And not having imports is also going to destroy jobs.


They are already doing it to US. They have been for decades. We have been their bitch while they profit from fucking US.

The US is the third largest exporter in the world today. We are only the 3rd largest, if you include the European Union as one country. Otherwise, we're the 2nd largest.

Further, China is our forth largest buyer. But even that is misleading, because the 2nd and 3rd largest is Mexico and Canada, which is primarily defined by oil imports and exports to refineries.

If you exclude oil flowing in an out across the boarders with Mexico and Canada, That would leave the top 2 buyers of US exports as China and the EU. Which again requires you take the entire European Union, as one giant country. If you look at the EU as separate countries.....

The the number one, largest buyer of US produced goods is China.

The US is a huge exporter, and China is a huge buyer of US exports.

You claim that China has been doing this for decades? Then they really suck at doing it.


Very nice spin. I sure that there are many Free Trade Ideologues and people who make money off the status quo who will be happy to accept that perception of reality and pretend that everything is fine.


Meanwhile, our society is so fucked that our life spans are actually DROPPING.

Life span and economics are not directly connected.

That's a strange argument to make.

Why are you trying to tie societal break down, to economics?

That's a strange position to take. That somehow, if we eliminated international trade, that magically people would no longer die in auto accidents? Or cancer and heart disease?

Those are the top 3 causes of death in the US. Which of those, would magically be reduced by protectionism?

Even suicide and self harm, heroin and such... which of those would magically be reduced by protectionism?

How would being charged a higher price for all goods, make any of those causes of death reduced?

Or murder even. Murder and homocides drastically reduce life expectancy. How does protectionism reduce that?


Correct. Life span and economics are not directly connected.

The export of manufacturing jobs, combined with the flooding of our labor market has created long term wage stagnation for large portions of our working poor and middle class. This has led to economic pain, real economic pain that INDIRECTLY leads to, for example,

1. Lower income, which leads to higher rates of cancer and hearth disease.

2. Lower income, which leads to higher rates of risky behavior leading to drug abuse and alcoholism and various life shortening issues that come with those.

3. Broken families, which lead to suicide and drug abuse, both in the parents and in the children.

4. Lower incomes, which lead to lower rates of marriage, which leads to higher rates of risky behaviors.

There is zero evidence that the middle class has long term wage stagnation.
Moreover, if you are not happy with your wages, it is up to you the individual to do something of higher value.

If you as an individual refuse to do higher value work, then no amount of controls on labor or export of manufacturing jobs, is going to help that.

Moreover, manufacturing jobs are declining, with or without exporting of jobs.

As automation continues, the number of jobs in manufacturing will continue to decrease. This will happen, with or without, manufacturing outside the US.

1. Lower income, which leads to higher rates of cancer and hearth disease.


False. Cancer and heart disease is not caused by low wages.

2. Lower income, which leads to higher rates of risky behavior leading to drug abuse and alcoholism and various life shortening issues that come with those.

False. Risky behavior and drug abuse is not caused by low wages. In fact, the very opposite is true. Risk behavior and drug abuse, results in low wages, because people on drugs are lousy employees, and often can only get the lowest wage jobs, because they suck. As someone who has hired and fired people, and guarantee you I promoted people to higher wage positions because they were quality employees, and I can't count the number of people I fired because they were on drugs, and crap employees.

3. Broken families, which lead to suicide and drug abuse, both in the parents and in the children.

False. Suicide are more often of affluent people. Poor people are less likely to commit suicide.

False. Broken families are not caused by low wages. In fact the very reverse is often the case. As someone whose father does marriage counseling, it is more often that people in marriages with good jobs, often after divorce end up losing their jobs, specifically because the destruction of their home life, ends up damaging their performance at work.
 
I'm 100% for it. Regardless we have to continue exports to maintain our status as world power, otherwise we'd give that status to China. If countries were to become isolated, then yes, no country would complete with the USA, we'd be set.

I think we should also end foreigners owning U.S. real estate. That said millennial's already screwed the pooch on that one. Many figured they were above property ownership. They didn't take into account they'll be paying the Chinese rent in the form of 5Kish by their 60th B-days.
Isolated countries fail economically.
Oh, but we won't be isolated, once the manufacturing jobs are forced back on-shore...

We'll be exporting manufactured goods to others, again.

Sigh....

Do you not see the problem with your own logic? Do you think that any person, elsewhere in the world, is not thinking the exact same thing?

If you intend to use the power of government to impose protectionism to force manufacturing back into the US..... What do you think other countries will do?

They are going to put in place those exact same protectionist barriers against the US.

Again, just look at the Smoot-Hawley tariff in the 1930s.

Why didn't US exports go up? Why did US exports drop? Because all the countries that had tariffs levied against them, turned around and levied tariffs against the US.

The perfect example of this was the iron and steel tariffs.

So the US put in place tariffs on Iron ore. Canada put in place tariffs on steel. So the pittsburgh steel found itself paying massively high prices for iron ore because import tariffs on ore from Canada, and then found the price of steel crashed because one of the biggest demands for steel was exports that now had tariffs on steel from the US.

17 Months after the Smoot-Hawley protectionist tariffs were put in place, 11 different banks operating in Pittsburgh crashed and went insolvent.

Again, if you think we are going to have protectionism, and force companies to locate in the US, and all the other countries are going to be perfectly happy buying US exports... that is not a logical position to have. Other countries are going to do the same. And instead, you are going to destroy $2.4 Trillion in exports we make yearly. And not having imports is also going to destroy jobs.


They are already doing it to US. They have been for decades. We have been their bitch while they profit from fucking US.

The US is the third largest exporter in the world today. We are only the 3rd largest, if you include the European Union as one country. Otherwise, we're the 2nd largest.

Further, China is our forth largest buyer. But even that is misleading, because the 2nd and 3rd largest is Mexico and Canada, which is primarily defined by oil imports and exports to refineries.

If you exclude oil flowing in an out across the boarders with Mexico and Canada, That would leave the top 2 buyers of US exports as China and the EU. Which again requires you take the entire European Union, as one giant country. If you look at the EU as separate countries.....

The the number one, largest buyer of US produced goods is China.

The US is a huge exporter, and China is a huge buyer of US exports.

You claim that China has been doing this for decades? Then they really suck at doing it.


Very nice spin. I sure that there are many Free Trade Ideologues and people who make money off the status quo who will be happy to accept that perception of reality and pretend that everything is fine.


Meanwhile, our society is so fucked that our life spans are actually DROPPING.

Life span and economics are not directly connected.

That's a strange argument to make.

Why are you trying to tie societal break down, to economics?

That's a strange position to take. That somehow, if we eliminated international trade, that magically people would no longer die in auto accidents? Or cancer and heart disease?

Those are the top 3 causes of death in the US. Which of those, would magically be reduced by protectionism?

Even suicide and self harm, heroin and such... which of those would magically be reduced by protectionism?

How would being charged a higher price for all goods, make any of those causes of death reduced?

Or murder even. Murder and homocides drastically reduce life expectancy. How does protectionism reduce that?


Correct. Life span and economics are not directly connected.

The export of manufacturing jobs, combined with the flooding of our labor market has created long term wage stagnation for large portions of our working poor and middle class. This has led to economic pain, real economic pain that INDIRECTLY leads to, for example,

1. Lower income, which leads to higher rates of cancer and hearth disease.

2. Lower income, which leads to higher rates of risky behavior leading to drug abuse and alcoholism and various life shortening issues that come with those.

3. Broken families, which lead to suicide and drug abuse, both in the parents and in the children.

4. Lower incomes, which lead to lower rates of marriage, which leads to higher rates of risky behaviors.

There is zero evidence that the middle class has long term wage stagnation.
Moreover, if you are not happy with your wages, it is up to you the individual to do something of higher value.

If you as an individual refuse to do higher value work, then no amount of controls on labor or export of manufacturing jobs, is going to help that.

Moreover, manufacturing jobs are declining, with or without exporting of jobs.

As automation continues, the number of jobs in manufacturing will continue to decrease. This will happen, with or without, manufacturing outside the US.

1. Lower income, which leads to higher rates of cancer and hearth disease.

False. Cancer and heart disease is not caused by low wages.

2. Lower income, which leads to higher rates of risky behavior leading to drug abuse and alcoholism and various life shortening issues that come with those.

False. Risky behavior and drug abuse is not caused by low wages. In fact, the very opposite is true. Risk behavior and drug abuse, results in low wages, because people on drugs are lousy employees, and often can only get the lowest wage jobs, because they suck. As someone who has hired and fired people, and guarantee you I promoted people to higher wage positions because they were quality employees, and I can't count the number of people I fired because they were on drugs, and crap employees.

3. Broken families, which lead to suicide and drug abuse, both in the parents and in the children.

False. Suicide are more often of affluent people. Poor people are less likely to commit suicide.

False. Broken families are not caused by low wages. In fact the very reverse is often the case. As someone whose father does marriage counseling, it is more often that people in marriages with good jobs, often after divorce end up losing their jobs, specifically because the destruction of their home life, ends up damaging their performance at work.





1. Middle class wage stagnation is a given. Lower class wage stagnation is a given. YOur denial is silly.


2. Discussing policies to encourage wage growth is completely legitimate. YOur denial of this is not reasonable.

3. YOur pretense of not understanding that I was talking of indirect connections, is dismissed.

4. The connection between the decline in life spans and long term economic pain, has been discussed by medical authorities. Taking this into account, when making policy, is reasonable.
 
I'm 100% for it. Regardless we have to continue exports to maintain our status as world power, otherwise we'd give that status to China. If countries were to become isolated, then yes, no country would complete with the USA, we'd be set.

I think we should also end foreigners owning U.S. real estate. That said millennial's already screwed the pooch on that one. Many figured they were above property ownership. They didn't take into account they'll be paying the Chinese rent in the form of 5Kish by their 60th B-days.
Isolated countries fail economically.
Oh, but we won't be isolated, once the manufacturing jobs are forced back on-shore...

We'll be exporting manufactured goods to others, again.

Sigh....

Do you not see the problem with your own logic? Do you think that any person, elsewhere in the world, is not thinking the exact same thing?

If you intend to use the power of government to impose protectionism to force manufacturing back into the US..... What do you think other countries will do?

They are going to put in place those exact same protectionist barriers against the US.

Again, just look at the Smoot-Hawley tariff in the 1930s.

Why didn't US exports go up? Why did US exports drop? Because all the countries that had tariffs levied against them, turned around and levied tariffs against the US.

The perfect example of this was the iron and steel tariffs.

So the US put in place tariffs on Iron ore. Canada put in place tariffs on steel. So the pittsburgh steel found itself paying massively high prices for iron ore because import tariffs on ore from Canada, and then found the price of steel crashed because one of the biggest demands for steel was exports that now had tariffs on steel from the US.

17 Months after the Smoot-Hawley protectionist tariffs were put in place, 11 different banks operating in Pittsburgh crashed and went insolvent.

Again, if you think we are going to have protectionism, and force companies to locate in the US, and all the other countries are going to be perfectly happy buying US exports... that is not a logical position to have. Other countries are going to do the same. And instead, you are going to destroy $2.4 Trillion in exports we make yearly. And not having imports is also going to destroy jobs.


They are already doing it to US. They have been for decades. We have been their bitch while they profit from fucking US.

The US is the third largest exporter in the world today. We are only the 3rd largest, if you include the European Union as one country. Otherwise, we're the 2nd largest.

Further, China is our forth largest buyer. But even that is misleading, because the 2nd and 3rd largest is Mexico and Canada, which is primarily defined by oil imports and exports to refineries.

If you exclude oil flowing in an out across the boarders with Mexico and Canada, That would leave the top 2 buyers of US exports as China and the EU. Which again requires you take the entire European Union, as one giant country. If you look at the EU as separate countries.....

The the number one, largest buyer of US produced goods is China.

The US is a huge exporter, and China is a huge buyer of US exports.

You claim that China has been doing this for decades? Then they really suck at doing it.


Very nice spin. I sure that there are many Free Trade Ideologues and people who make money off the status quo who will be happy to accept that perception of reality and pretend that everything is fine.


Meanwhile, our society is so fucked that our life spans are actually DROPPING.

Life span and economics are not directly connected.

That's a strange argument to make.

Why are you trying to tie societal break down, to economics?

That's a strange position to take. That somehow, if we eliminated international trade, that magically people would no longer die in auto accidents? Or cancer and heart disease?

Those are the top 3 causes of death in the US. Which of those, would magically be reduced by protectionism?

Even suicide and self harm, heroin and such... which of those would magically be reduced by protectionism?

How would being charged a higher price for all goods, make any of those causes of death reduced?

Or murder even. Murder and homocides drastically reduce life expectancy. How does protectionism reduce that?


Correct. Life span and economics are not directly connected.

The export of manufacturing jobs, combined with the flooding of our labor market has created long term wage stagnation for large portions of our working poor and middle class. This has led to economic pain, real economic pain that INDIRECTLY leads to, for example,

1. Lower income, which leads to higher rates of cancer and hearth disease.

2. Lower income, which leads to higher rates of risky behavior leading to drug abuse and alcoholism and various life shortening issues that come with those.

3. Broken families, which lead to suicide and drug abuse, both in the parents and in the children.

4. Lower incomes, which lead to lower rates of marriage, which leads to higher rates of risky behaviors.

There is zero evidence that the middle class has long term wage stagnation.
Moreover, if you are not happy with your wages, it is up to you the individual to do something of higher value.

If you as an individual refuse to do higher value work, then no amount of controls on labor or export of manufacturing jobs, is going to help that.

Moreover, manufacturing jobs are declining, with or without exporting of jobs.

As automation continues, the number of jobs in manufacturing will continue to decrease. This will happen, with or without, manufacturing outside the US.

1. Lower income, which leads to higher rates of cancer and hearth disease.

False. Cancer and heart disease is not caused by low wages.

2. Lower income, which leads to higher rates of risky behavior leading to drug abuse and alcoholism and various life shortening issues that come with those.

False. Risky behavior and drug abuse is not caused by low wages. In fact, the very opposite is true. Risk behavior and drug abuse, results in low wages, because people on drugs are lousy employees, and often can only get the lowest wage jobs, because they suck. As someone who has hired and fired people, and guarantee you I promoted people to higher wage positions because they were quality employees, and I can't count the number of people I fired because they were on drugs, and crap employees.

3. Broken families, which lead to suicide and drug abuse, both in the parents and in the children.

False. Suicide are more often of affluent people. Poor people are less likely to commit suicide.

False. Broken families are not caused by low wages. In fact the very reverse is often the case. As someone whose father does marriage counseling, it is more often that people in marriages with good jobs, often after divorce end up losing their jobs, specifically because the destruction of their home life, ends up damaging their performance at work.





1. Middle class wage stagnation is a given. Lower class wage stagnation is a given. YOur denial is silly.


2. Discussing policies to encourage wage growth is completely legitimate. YOur denial of this is not reasonable.

3. YOur pretense of not understanding that I was talking of indirect connections, is dismissed.

4. The connection between the decline in life spans and long term economic pain, has been discussed by medical authorities. Taking this into account, when making policy, is reasonable.

No, the fact.... FACT.... that wages are not static, is a proven by the evidence, which I already linked to.

It's not debatable.... it's an empirical fact that wages are not stagnate.

If you want me to look up the article and repost it, I'll be happy to do so.

Further, discussion the policies to encourage wage growth is ridiculous. A: they don't work. B: we have the highest standard of living in the world. Stop being a spoiled brat.

Moreover, for someone as ignorant as you, I don't really care what you claim to "dismiss" or not.

No, there is no connection between declining life span, and the economics of the united states. None. It's ridiculous to even attempt to make that connection, given the fact.... FACT.... that our standard of living is higher than anywhere else in the world.
 

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