More economic GOOD News...DOW hits new record..on track to hit 17K.

[RKMBrown]

Last numbers I found, they used household income.

Which numbers are you using?

Personal income...

Summaries here:
Personal income in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Data from here:
PINC-01--Part 1

There are a number of ways to try to explain the changes to personal income. When you look at professional wages being flat and/or being lowered, one may point to offshoring, early retirement, layoffs, freshout hiring programs, and h1b visa programs designed reduce said salary base.

When you look at the overall average wage going down you can also point to changing demographics, with more uneducated immigrants your gonna have a lower average personal income. This mirrors the average scores that go down when you bring in kids with no education. Zero's bring the averages down by a large margin. Not to just blame immigrants, we also can blame welfare. Any program designed to benefit people who work part time at 30hrs minimum wage by giving them checks to stay that way is gonna set the low bar for work to 30hrs minimum wage. Duh...

First, the second link, was from CPS data.

CPS data which is conducted through the US Census B, is based on household income. They go to a persons home, and ask how much their household income is. That is exactly what I was referring to above. As students no longer stay at home, and as divorce breaks families apart, the numbers go down.

Your Wiki link, actually validates my claims:

The Census Bureau releases estimates of household money income as medians, percent distributions by income categories, and on a per capita basis.

The wiki article also refers to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), which does a completely different survey. What they do, is look at payroll numbers. The problem with the BEA, is the reverse equal opposite problem.

With the CPS, you look at household income, because you know everyone is sharing resources, and thus even though the teenage college student is minimum wage, working part time, earning only $10,000 a year, he's not living poor. He's actually living in a very nice home, with all the food an amenities he could want. He's not paying rent, not paying for food, not paying for much of anything.

It's logical to combine those incomes.

In the BEA, you look at each person as an individual tax unit. After all, it's from payroll data.

But then you have a problem. Two people, not married, shacking up together. According to the BEA data, they would be counted as completely separate tax units, when in reality they are sharing all resources together, just like a real married couple would. But in the data, they would be counted separately.

So they could have a household income of $100K, while in the data have a $60K and $40K income, including their student son, making $10K while going to school.

So let's look at some of your points:

When you look at professional wages being flat and/or being lowered, one may point to offshoring, early retirement, layoffs, freshout hiring programs, and h1b visa programs designed reduce said salary base.

Does off-shoring lower wages? Possibly, but only if you assume those jobs would exist either way.

There is a myth that off-shoring is this super rich guy earning $250 Million a year, and found out that if he off-shores, he can earn $250.1 Million.

That's simply not the case in the vast majority of situations. I work for a company that outsourced the building of our CPU boards. Originally we built them in-house. Now they are out sourced to China. The CEO said very openly that he did this because, the only other alternative was to close. Our customers were not willing to pay enough to make in-house builds profitable. The company would have closed. The only choice was to off-shore the production. Without off-shoring, there might be more higher paying jobs.... for a time. Until the company closed.

Same is true for layoffs. GM didn't lay off anyone until they went bankrupt, then they laid off a ton of people. Better a few people now, then a ton later.

Same with early retirement. If the company is willing to pay you to leave, there's a reason.

I'm not sure how fresh out programs, harm wage rates, unless you assume that grads would not join the labor market without the program. You'll have to explain that one to me.

Your wrong because you are focused like a laser on the combined numbers. Read the data again. The numbers are both combined in the case of per household income and separated in the case of personal income. See head of household, aka householder, spouse of householder, child of householder, other relative of householder, and non relatives. Note the separation of 5 different classifications, spouse, child, other relatives, and non relatives are not combined into householder in the section called relationship to householder.

Your CEO had to offshore to compete because our Government is making it so.

 

[Sallow]

Last numbers I found, they used household income.

Which numbers are you using?

Personal income...

Summaries here:
Personal income in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Data from here:
PINC-01--Part 1

There are a number of ways to try to explain the changes to personal income. When you look at professional wages being flat and/or being lowered, one may point to offshoring, early retirement, layoffs, freshout hiring programs, and h1b visa programs designed reduce said salary base.

When you look at the overall average wage going down you can also point to changing demographics, with more uneducated immigrants your gonna have a lower average personal income. This mirrors the average scores that go down when you bring in kids with no education. Zero's bring the averages down by a large margin. Not to just blame immigrants, we also can blame welfare. Any program designed to benefit people who work part time at 30hrs minimum wage by giving them checks to stay that way is gonna set the low bar for work to 30hrs minimum wage. Duh...

First, the second link, was from CPS data.

CPS data which is conducted through the US Census B, is based on household income. They go to a persons home, and ask how much their household income is. That is exactly what I was referring to above. As students no longer stay at home, and as divorce breaks families apart, the numbers go down.

Your Wiki link, actually validates my claims:

The Census Bureau releases estimates of household money income as medians, percent distributions by income categories, and on a per capita basis.

The wiki article also refers to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), which does a completely different survey. What they do, is look at payroll numbers. The problem with the BEA, is the reverse equal opposite problem.

With the CPS, you look at household income, because you know everyone is sharing resources, and thus even though the teenage college student is minimum wage, working part time, earning only $10,000 a year, he's not living poor. He's actually living in a very nice home, with all the food an amenities he could want. He's not paying rent, not paying for food, not paying for much of anything.

It's logical to combine those incomes.

In the BEA, you look at each person as an individual tax unit. After all, it's from payroll data.

But then you have a problem. Two people, not married, shacking up together. According to the BEA data, they would be counted as completely separate tax units, when in reality they are sharing all resources together, just like a real married couple would. But in the data, they would be counted separately.

So they could have a household income of $100K, while in the data have a $60K and $40K income, including their student son, making $10K while going to school.

So let's look at some of your points:

When you look at professional wages being flat and/or being lowered, one may point to offshoring, early retirement, layoffs, freshout hiring programs, and h1b visa programs designed reduce said salary base.

Does off-shoring lower wages? Possibly, but only if you assume those jobs would exist either way.

There is a myth that off-shoring is this super rich guy earning $250 Million a year, and found out that if he off-shores, he can earn $250.1 Million.

That's simply not the case in the vast majority of situations. I work for a company that outsourced the building of our CPU boards. Originally we built them in-house. Now they are out sourced to China. The CEO said very openly that he did this because, the only other alternative was to close. Our customers were not willing to pay enough to make in-house builds profitable. The company would have closed. The only choice was to off-shore the production. Without off-shoring, there might be more higher paying jobs.... for a time. Until the company closed.

Same is true for layoffs. GM didn't lay off anyone until they went bankrupt, then they laid off a ton of people. Better a few people now, then a ton later.

Same with early retirement. If the company is willing to pay you to leave, there's a reason.

I'm not sure how fresh out programs, harm wage rates, unless you assume that grads would not join the labor market without the program. You'll have to explain that one to me.

Your CPU board company offshored because they could get labor for pennies on the dollar. And if they were "about to close", it was because they were competing with other companies that outsourced and dramatically dropped the prices on the boards. Sorta like what Walmart did..

And GM didn't go "bankrupt" because of labor. They went bankrupt because they were building mostly SUVs. And once the American market was saturated with them? They couldn't sell them overseas? Why? Because the cost of keeping them filled with gas was to great for people in Asia and Europe.

 

[Andylusion]

Personal income...

Summaries here:
Personal income in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Data from here:
PINC-01--Part 1

There are a number of ways to try to explain the changes to personal income. When you look at professional wages being flat and/or being lowered, one may point to offshoring, early retirement, layoffs, freshout hiring programs, and h1b visa programs designed reduce said salary base.

When you look at the overall average wage going down you can also point to changing demographics, with more uneducated immigrants your gonna have a lower average personal income. This mirrors the average scores that go down when you bring in kids with no education. Zero's bring the averages down by a large margin. Not to just blame immigrants, we also can blame welfare. Any program designed to benefit people who work part time at 30hrs minimum wage by giving them checks to stay that way is gonna set the low bar for work to 30hrs minimum wage. Duh...

First, the second link, was from CPS data.

CPS data which is conducted through the US Census B, is based on household income. They go to a persons home, and ask how much their household income is. That is exactly what I was referring to above. As students no longer stay at home, and as divorce breaks families apart, the numbers go down.

Your Wiki link, actually validates my claims:


The wiki article also refers to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), which does a completely different survey. What they do, is look at payroll numbers. The problem with the BEA, is the reverse equal opposite problem.

With the CPS, you look at household income, because you know everyone is sharing resources, and thus even though the teenage college student is minimum wage, working part time, earning only $10,000 a year, he's not living poor. He's actually living in a very nice home, with all the food an amenities he could want. He's not paying rent, not paying for food, not paying for much of anything.

It's logical to combine those incomes.

In the BEA, you look at each person as an individual tax unit. After all, it's from payroll data.

But then you have a problem. Two people, not married, shacking up together. According to the BEA data, they would be counted as completely separate tax units, when in reality they are sharing all resources together, just like a real married couple would. But in the data, they would be counted separately.

So they could have a household income of $100K, while in the data have a $60K and $40K income, including their student son, making $10K while going to school.

So let's look at some of your points:

When you look at professional wages being flat and/or being lowered, one may point to offshoring, early retirement, layoffs, freshout hiring programs, and h1b visa programs designed reduce said salary base.

Does off-shoring lower wages? Possibly, but only if you assume those jobs would exist either way.

There is a myth that off-shoring is this super rich guy earning $250 Million a year, and found out that if he off-shores, he can earn $250.1 Million.

That's simply not the case in the vast majority of situations. I work for a company that outsourced the building of our CPU boards. Originally we built them in-house. Now they are out sourced to China. The CEO said very openly that he did this because, the only other alternative was to close. Our customers were not willing to pay enough to make in-house builds profitable. The company would have closed. The only choice was to off-shore the production. Without off-shoring, there might be more higher paying jobs.... for a time. Until the company closed.

Same is true for layoffs. GM didn't lay off anyone until they went bankrupt, then they laid off a ton of people. Better a few people now, then a ton later.

Same with early retirement. If the company is willing to pay you to leave, there's a reason.

I'm not sure how fresh out programs, harm wage rates, unless you assume that grads would not join the labor market without the program. You'll have to explain that one to me.

Your wrong because you are focused like a laser on the combined numbers. Read the data again. The numbers are both combined in the case of per household income and separated in the case of personal income. See head of household, aka householder, spouse of householder, child of householder, other relative of householder, and non relatives. Note the separation of 5 different classifications, spouse, child, other relatives, and non relatives are not combined into householder in the section called relationship to householder.

Your CEO had to offshore to compete because our Government is making it so.

But that doesn't matter. The wife's income, should be combined with the husbands. Many women intentionally take part time, or low-er wage jobs, so they have more flexibility to make family needs. She's not paying her husband rent, nor the husband paying the wife rent.

If you want to look at what the standard of living is in America, you include such things combined. Which is exactly why when the CPS puts out their report on income, they look at household income.

When I was in high school, I had a part time job, where I earned barely $6,000 a year. Would you consider me impoverished, even while I had no living expenses at all? My income should rightly be combined with my household, which was over $100K.

To NOT combine income of the family, would mean you believe it's possible to be impoverished while living a $100K life style.

Explain how the government is 'forcing' my company to off-shore instead of the market?

 

[Andylusion]

Your CPU board company offshored because they could get labor for pennies on the dollar. And if they were "about to close", it was because they were competing with other companies that outsourced and dramatically dropped the prices on the boards. Sorta like what Walmart did..

And GM didn't go "bankrupt" because of labor. They went bankrupt because they were building mostly SUVs. And once the American market was saturated with them? They couldn't sell them overseas? Why? Because the cost of keeping them filled with gas was to great for people in Asia and Europe.

Not true at all. Completely not true. It's amazing how quick you people on the left, are to make up answers to things you know absolutely nothing about. Have you been with the CEOs or upper management of my company, or any company? I doubt it.

My company makes specialized custom built industrial printers. It's a vertical market. There actually is no other company that I know of, that makes the type of printers we build. There is no real competition.

The myth in left-wing world, is that if there is a monopoly, that means you can charge as much as you want. But in reality, customers don't buy if the price is too high, whether there is competition or a monopoly.

At one point we had an assembly line of workers, stuffing parts into circuit boards, sending them through a wave solder machine, running them through a cleaner and cutter machine, and then inspecting them.

However the price was going up to fast, too high. Customers started canceling their orders. We were never "just about to close", but it was clear from the quarterly data, that we were losing ground.

We needed to move to surface mount CPU boards. Cheaper parts, cheaper CPU, shorter thus cheaper build time.

The problem then became we need tons of high tech, aka super expensive equipment. One MC-388, can easily cost over $100K. Then you need an oven which can be $50K. You need a stencil printer for $70K. Then PCB loaders, and unloaders, and conveyors, cooling racks, and lastly a cleaner and defluxer unit, all of which can add up to an easy $70K. Oh and I almost forgot, you need an inspection unit, to inspect the boards after they are completed, for another $50K. If that's not enough, you have to have power systems installed to power the entire line. This isn't a 120 volt 3 plug deal. This is massive power.

The entire thing, can easily set you back half a million dollars.

Not only does our company not have a spare half million laying around in the spare-change-fund, but we then have a problem with the consistently inconsistent production runs.

For example, our top model '6500', last year we built about a thousand of them year long. This year, we've built 50. Small business like ours, doesn't have 10 year contracts with steady work. And even with a bumper year, we're talking 3,000 units.

So you spend half a million, build 3,000 CPUs in one month, and the rest of the year, your half million dollars in equipment is standing idle.

There are other companies that have the business to make use of such equipment year round, and make it a worth while investment. We do not.

Therefore, we tried to find a local domestic supplier to build our boards. But we had some problems. Local suppliers wanted big money to run our boards, or they gave us very bad service. Obviously, since we are a low-volume builder, our orders were along the lines of 25 to 50 boards, of different types, every month or so.

The problem there was, if you are a big manufacturer, and you have big customers with 200,000 unit orders, and one customer with a 25 unit order, who do you give priority to? Obviously, the big customers that are spending the big bucks. We would put in an order, and end up getting it a month late.

If we paid through the teeth, we got it on time, but that defeated the purpose of outsourcing it locally to save money.

China, and Mexico, were the only two places that could give us the price point we needed, and gave us the prompt service that we needed, in order to survive. We went with China.

The bottom line is this....

The only possible way we would not have off-shored the production, would be if we had bought that production line.

Yet even then, we would still have laid off the majority of our staff, because instead of dozens making boards by hand, we would have had about 3 people, building them by machine.

But the fact is, there is no way would could have bought that whole setup. We would have ended up closed.

Off-shoring is the ONLY reason I have a job today. That's all there is to it.

 

[Sallow]

Your CPU board company offshored because they could get labor for pennies on the dollar. And if they were "about to close", it was because they were competing with other companies that outsourced and dramatically dropped the prices on the boards. Sorta like what Walmart did..

And GM didn't go "bankrupt" because of labor. They went bankrupt because they were building mostly SUVs. And once the American market was saturated with them? They couldn't sell them overseas? Why? Because the cost of keeping them filled with gas was to great for people in Asia and Europe.

Not true at all. Completely not true. It's amazing how quick you people on the left, are to make up answers to things you know absolutely nothing about. Have you been with the CEOs or upper management of my company, or any company? I doubt it.

My company makes specialized custom built industrial printers. It's a vertical market. There actually is no other company that I know of, that makes the type of printers we build. There is no real competition.

The myth in left-wing world, is that if there is a monopoly, that means you can charge as much as you want. But in reality, customers don't buy if the price is too high, whether there is competition or a monopoly.

At one point we had an assembly line of workers, stuffing parts into circuit boards, sending them through a wave solder machine, running them through a cleaner and cutter machine, and then inspecting them.

However the price was going up to fast, too high. Customers started canceling their orders. We were never "just about to close", but it was clear from the quarterly data, that we were losing ground.

We needed to move to surface mount CPU boards. Cheaper parts, cheaper CPU, shorter thus cheaper build time.

The problem then became we need tons of high tech, aka super expensive equipment. One MC-388, can easily cost over $100K. Then you need an oven which can be $50K. You need a stencil printer for $70K. Then PCB loaders, and unloaders, and conveyors, cooling racks, and lastly a cleaner and defluxer unit, all of which can add up to an easy $70K. Oh and I almost forgot, you need an inspection unit, to inspect the boards after they are completed, for another $50K. If that's not enough, you have to have power systems installed to power the entire line. This isn't a 120 volt 3 plug deal. This is massive power.

The entire thing, can easily set you back half a million dollars.

Not only does our company not have a spare half million laying around in the spare-change-fund, but we then have a problem with the consistently inconsistent production runs.

For example, our top model '6500', last year we built about a thousand of them year long. This year, we've built 50. Small business like ours, doesn't have 10 year contracts with steady work. And even with a bumper year, we're talking 3,000 units.

So you spend half a million, build 3,000 CPUs in one month, and the rest of the year, your half million dollars in equipment is standing idle.

There are other companies that have the business to make use of such equipment year round, and make it a worth while investment. We do not.

Therefore, we tried to find a local domestic supplier to build our boards. But we had some problems. Local suppliers wanted big money to run our boards, or they gave us very bad service. Obviously, since we are a low-volume builder, our orders were along the lines of 25 to 50 boards, of different types, every month or so.

The problem there was, if you are a big manufacturer, and you have big customers with 200,000 unit orders, and one customer with a 25 unit order, who do you give priority to? Obviously, the big customers that are spending the big bucks. We would put in an order, and end up getting it a month late.

If we paid through the teeth, we got it on time, but that defeated the purpose of outsourcing it locally to save money.

China, and Mexico, were the only two places that could give us the price point we needed, and gave us the prompt service that we needed, in order to survive. We went with China.

The bottom line is this....

The only possible way we would not have off-shored the production, would be if we had bought that production line.

Yet even then, we would still have laid off the majority of our staff, because instead of dozens making boards by hand, we would have had about 3 people, building them by machine.

But the fact is, there is no way would could have bought that whole setup. We would have ended up closed.

Off-shoring is the ONLY reason I have a job today. That's all there is to it.

I don't believe you.

Simple as that.

 

[RKMBrown]

First, the second link, was from CPS data.

CPS data which is conducted through the US Census B, is based on household income. They go to a persons home, and ask how much their household income is. That is exactly what I was referring to above. As students no longer stay at home, and as divorce breaks families apart, the numbers go down.

Your Wiki link, actually validates my claims:


The wiki article also refers to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), which does a completely different survey. What they do, is look at payroll numbers. The problem with the BEA, is the reverse equal opposite problem.

With the CPS, you look at household income, because you know everyone is sharing resources, and thus even though the teenage college student is minimum wage, working part time, earning only $10,000 a year, he's not living poor. He's actually living in a very nice home, with all the food an amenities he could want. He's not paying rent, not paying for food, not paying for much of anything.

It's logical to combine those incomes.

In the BEA, you look at each person as an individual tax unit. After all, it's from payroll data.

But then you have a problem. Two people, not married, shacking up together. According to the BEA data, they would be counted as completely separate tax units, when in reality they are sharing all resources together, just like a real married couple would. But in the data, they would be counted separately.

So they could have a household income of $100K, while in the data have a $60K and $40K income, including their student son, making $10K while going to school.

So let's look at some of your points:


Does off-shoring lower wages? Possibly, but only if you assume those jobs would exist either way.

There is a myth that off-shoring is this super rich guy earning $250 Million a year, and found out that if he off-shores, he can earn $250.1 Million.

That's simply not the case in the vast majority of situations. I work for a company that outsourced the building of our CPU boards. Originally we built them in-house. Now they are out sourced to China. The CEO said very openly that he did this because, the only other alternative was to close. Our customers were not willing to pay enough to make in-house builds profitable. The company would have closed. The only choice was to off-shore the production. Without off-shoring, there might be more higher paying jobs.... for a time. Until the company closed.

Same is true for layoffs. GM didn't lay off anyone until they went bankrupt, then they laid off a ton of people. Better a few people now, then a ton later.

Same with early retirement. If the company is willing to pay you to leave, there's a reason.

I'm not sure how fresh out programs, harm wage rates, unless you assume that grads would not join the labor market without the program. You'll have to explain that one to me.

Your wrong because you are focused like a laser on the combined numbers. Read the data again. The numbers are both combined in the case of per household income and separated in the case of personal income. See head of household, aka householder, spouse of householder, child of householder, other relative of householder, and non relatives. Note the separation of 5 different classifications, spouse, child, other relatives, and non relatives are not combined into householder in the section called relationship to householder.

Your CEO had to offshore to compete because our Government is making it so.

But that doesn't matter. The wife's income, should be combined with the husbands. Many women intentionally take part time, or low-er wage jobs, so they have more flexibility to make family needs. She's not paying her husband rent, nor the husband paying the wife rent.

If you want to look at what the standard of living is in America, you include such things combined. Which is exactly why when the CPS puts out their report on income, they look at household income.

When I was in high school, I had a part time job, where I earned barely $6,000 a year. Would you consider me impoverished, even while I had no living expenses at all? My income should rightly be combined with my household, which was over $100K.

To NOT combine income of the family, would mean you believe it's possible to be impoverished while living a $100K life style.

Explain how the government is 'forcing' my company to off-shore instead of the market?

Let me get this straight, I was talking about personal income data that was not combined. You said it did not exist only combined data was there. Now you say well ok it does exist but it does not matter only combined data matters. Your point was combined data does not matter because of the changing dynamics of the family unit. My point was to the uncombined data. You said show me the uncombined data. Now you say it does not matter because only the combined data is interesting.

I never said anything about your family being impoverished while living on 100k household income. The discussion was stagnant salary. You seem to be making some asinine argument that stagnant salaries can be fixed by having everyone in the house get a job. Yes 4 salaries at 30k added together in one house is a larger amount of household income than 1 salary at 100k. Congratulations you learned addition. However 30k is not better than 100k for the one person. It would be better if the one person was making 100k and the other people we also making 100k. You see 400k is greater than 120k.

Why are you acting ignorant with regard to the USA's actions to offshore work? One would have to be a camel with it's head in the sand to not know what this government has done to offshore American labor.

 

[Andylusion]

Your wrong because you are focused like a laser on the combined numbers. Read the data again. The numbers are both combined in the case of per household income and separated in the case of personal income. See head of household, aka householder, spouse of householder, child of householder, other relative of householder, and non relatives. Note the separation of 5 different classifications, spouse, child, other relatives, and non relatives are not combined into householder in the section called relationship to householder.

Your CEO had to offshore to compete because our Government is making it so.

But that doesn't matter. The wife's income, should be combined with the husbands. Many women intentionally take part time, or low-er wage jobs, so they have more flexibility to make family needs. She's not paying her husband rent, nor the husband paying the wife rent.

If you want to look at what the standard of living is in America, you include such things combined. Which is exactly why when the CPS puts out their report on income, they look at household income.

When I was in high school, I had a part time job, where I earned barely $6,000 a year. Would you consider me impoverished, even while I had no living expenses at all? My income should rightly be combined with my household, which was over $100K.

To NOT combine income of the family, would mean you believe it's possible to be impoverished while living a $100K life style.

Explain how the government is 'forcing' my company to off-shore instead of the market?

Let me get this straight, I was talking about personal income data that was not combined. You said it did not exist only combined data was there. Now you say well ok it does exist but it does not matter only combined data matters. Your point was combined data does not matter because of the changing dynamics of the family unit. My point was to the uncombined data. You said show me the uncombined data. Now you say it does not matter because only the combined data is interesting.

I never said anything about your family being impoverished while living on 100k household income. The discussion was stagnant salary. You seem to be making some asinine argument that stagnant salaries can be fixed by having everyone in the house get a job. Yes 4 salaries at 30k added together in one house is a larger amount of household income than 1 salary at 100k. Congratulations you learned addition. However 30k is not better than 100k for the one person. It would be better if the one person was making 100k and the other people we also making 100k. You see 400k is greater than 120k.

No, I never said the data didn't exist. When people claim that wages have fallen, those reports look at household income.... which they should.... but the problem is culturally households have changed, lowering the number.

And yes, it would be great if all 3 people were making $100K... but what if they don't want that? My sister was on track to get a college degree, but changed her mind after she got pregnant by her husband, and decided she wanted to stay at home with her kids, which she now has 5 kids.

She's earning not earning $100K, because she likes being mother.

Equally, when I was still living at home, I could have worked more for sure.... but I didn't want to. I worked part time, because.... I could. I didn't need the money really, I just wanted some spending cash. If I had been making $100K, I would have moved out. That's the point.

Why are you acting ignorant with regard to the USA's actions to offshore work? One would have to be a camel with it's head in the sand to not know what this government has done to offshore American labor.

Humor me. I'm the camel with it's head in the sand. What are you referring too, that the USA is off shoring work?

 

[RKMBrown]

Last numbers I found, they used household income.

Which numbers are you using?

Personal income...

Summaries here:
Personal income in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Data from here:
PINC-01--Part 1

There are a number of ways to try to explain the changes to personal income. When you look at professional wages being flat and/or being lowered, one may point to offshoring, early retirement, layoffs, freshout hiring programs, and h1b visa programs designed reduce said salary base.

When you look at the overall average wage going down you can also point to changing demographics, with more uneducated immigrants your gonna have a lower average personal income. This mirrors the average scores that go down when you bring in kids with no education. Zero's bring the averages down by a large margin. Not to just blame immigrants, we also can blame welfare. Any program designed to benefit people who work part time at 30hrs minimum wage by giving them checks to stay that way is gonna set the low bar for work to 30hrs minimum wage. Duh...

First, the second link, was from CPS data.

CPS data which is conducted through the US Census B, is based on household income. They go to a persons home, and ask how much their household income is. That is exactly what I was referring to above. As students no longer stay at home, and as divorce breaks families apart, the numbers go down.

Your Wiki link, actually validates my claims:

The Census Bureau releases estimates of household money income as medians, percent distributions by income categories, and on a per capita basis.

The wiki article also refers to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), which does a completely different survey. What they do, is look at payroll numbers. The problem with the BEA, is the reverse equal opposite problem.

With the CPS, you look at household income, because you know everyone is sharing resources, and thus even though the teenage college student is minimum wage, working part time, earning only $10,000 a year, he's not living poor. He's actually living in a very nice home, with all the food an amenities he could want. He's not paying rent, not paying for food, not paying for much of anything.

It's logical to combine those incomes.

In the BEA, you look at each person as an individual tax unit. After all, it's from payroll data.

But then you have a problem. Two people, not married, shacking up together. According to the BEA data, they would be counted as completely separate tax units, when in reality they are sharing all resources together, just like a real married couple would. But in the data, they would be counted separately.

So they could have a household income of $100K, while in the data have a $60K and $40K income, including their student son, making $10K while going to school.

So let's look at some of your points:

When you look at professional wages being flat and/or being lowered, one may point to offshoring, early retirement, layoffs, freshout hiring programs, and h1b visa programs designed reduce said salary base.

Does off-shoring lower wages? Possibly, but only if you assume those jobs would exist either way.

There is a myth that off-shoring is this super rich guy earning $250 Million a year, and found out that if he off-shores, he can earn $250.1 Million.

That's simply not the case in the vast majority of situations. I work for a company that outsourced the building of our CPU boards. Originally we built them in-house. Now they are out sourced to China. The CEO said very openly that he did this because, the only other alternative was to close. Our customers were not willing to pay enough to make in-house builds profitable. The company would have closed. The only choice was to off-shore the production. Without off-shoring, there might be more higher paying jobs.... for a time. Until the company closed.

Same is true for layoffs. GM didn't lay off anyone until they went bankrupt, then they laid off a ton of people. Better a few people now, then a ton later.

Same with early retirement. If the company is willing to pay you to leave, there's a reason.

I'm not sure how fresh out programs, harm wage rates, unless you assume that grads would not join the labor market without the program. You'll have to explain that one to me.

Make up your mind. I'm not gonna let you wag the dog. You're being obtuse. Again you are focused like a laser on your situation and your household income. The issue being discussed was the issue of STAGNANT SALARY. Not household income. You are arguing salaries are stagnant because people don't "want to earn more." Total bullshit. Just because you were a lazy ass living in you moms basement does not mean the rest of us are working part time. I linked to the data that showed full time workers who are heads of household and you said, no that's household income. I then made you look at the data again and you started squirming and eventually said that you never said the data isn't available. Yet again ignoring that the data I linked you to includes the evidence of STAGNANT SALARY.

Now you want to ask me to explain, yet again, what this government does to offshore? Puleze. Look it up yourself cause clearly you're not gonna believe anything anyone says that is not from your beloved democrat party.

 

[Andylusion]

Personal income...

Summaries here:
Personal income in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Data from here:
PINC-01--Part 1

There are a number of ways to try to explain the changes to personal income. When you look at professional wages being flat and/or being lowered, one may point to offshoring, early retirement, layoffs, freshout hiring programs, and h1b visa programs designed reduce said salary base.

When you look at the overall average wage going down you can also point to changing demographics, with more uneducated immigrants your gonna have a lower average personal income. This mirrors the average scores that go down when you bring in kids with no education. Zero's bring the averages down by a large margin. Not to just blame immigrants, we also can blame welfare. Any program designed to benefit people who work part time at 30hrs minimum wage by giving them checks to stay that way is gonna set the low bar for work to 30hrs minimum wage. Duh...

First, the second link, was from CPS data.

CPS data which is conducted through the US Census B, is based on household income. They go to a persons home, and ask how much their household income is. That is exactly what I was referring to above. As students no longer stay at home, and as divorce breaks families apart, the numbers go down.

Your Wiki link, actually validates my claims:


The wiki article also refers to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), which does a completely different survey. What they do, is look at payroll numbers. The problem with the BEA, is the reverse equal opposite problem.

With the CPS, you look at household income, because you know everyone is sharing resources, and thus even though the teenage college student is minimum wage, working part time, earning only $10,000 a year, he's not living poor. He's actually living in a very nice home, with all the food an amenities he could want. He's not paying rent, not paying for food, not paying for much of anything.

It's logical to combine those incomes.

In the BEA, you look at each person as an individual tax unit. After all, it's from payroll data.

But then you have a problem. Two people, not married, shacking up together. According to the BEA data, they would be counted as completely separate tax units, when in reality they are sharing all resources together, just like a real married couple would. But in the data, they would be counted separately.

So they could have a household income of $100K, while in the data have a $60K and $40K income, including their student son, making $10K while going to school.

So let's look at some of your points:

When you look at professional wages being flat and/or being lowered, one may point to offshoring, early retirement, layoffs, freshout hiring programs, and h1b visa programs designed reduce said salary base.

Does off-shoring lower wages? Possibly, but only if you assume those jobs would exist either way.

There is a myth that off-shoring is this super rich guy earning $250 Million a year, and found out that if he off-shores, he can earn $250.1 Million.

That's simply not the case in the vast majority of situations. I work for a company that outsourced the building of our CPU boards. Originally we built them in-house. Now they are out sourced to China. The CEO said very openly that he did this because, the only other alternative was to close. Our customers were not willing to pay enough to make in-house builds profitable. The company would have closed. The only choice was to off-shore the production. Without off-shoring, there might be more higher paying jobs.... for a time. Until the company closed.

Same is true for layoffs. GM didn't lay off anyone until they went bankrupt, then they laid off a ton of people. Better a few people now, then a ton later.

Same with early retirement. If the company is willing to pay you to leave, there's a reason.

I'm not sure how fresh out programs, harm wage rates, unless you assume that grads would not join the labor market without the program. You'll have to explain that one to me.

Make up your mind. I'm not gonna let you wag the dog. You're being obtuse. Again you are focused like a laser on your situation and your household income. The issue being discussed was the issue of STAGNANT SALARY. Not household income. You are arguing salaries are stagnant because people don't "want to earn more." Total bullshit. Just because you were a lazy ass living in you moms basement does not mean the rest of us are working part time. I linked to the data that showed full time workers who are heads of household and you said, no that's household income. I then made you look at the data again and you started squirming and eventually said that you never said the data isn't available. Yet again ignoring that the data I linked you to includes the evidence of STAGNANT SALARY.

Now you want to ask me to explain, yet again, what this government does to offshore? Puleze. Look it up yourself cause clearly you're not gonna believe anything anyone says that is not from your beloved democrat party.

I promise you, I am not trying to annoy you. If anything, I'm trying to figure out where we are not communicating. You have not been a jerk, so I am treating your position with complete respect.

You did link to wiki, and to the CPS. The CPS does not show stagnant salaries. It doesn't. I don't know how else to say it.

The BLS certainly does not.

Year-over-year change in nominal hourly earnings of all employees on private nonfarm payrolls, 2007-2014 | State of Working America

I swear I'm not trying to be obtuse. The payroll data from the BLS shows wages are still going up. Not as quickly as during the Bush years, but certainly they are not stagnant.

The only time I ever see someone saying that wages are Stagnant, is when they look at household income.

 

[Andylusion]

Your CPU board company offshored because they could get labor for pennies on the dollar. And if they were "about to close", it was because they were competing with other companies that outsourced and dramatically dropped the prices on the boards. Sorta like what Walmart did..

And GM didn't go "bankrupt" because of labor. They went bankrupt because they were building mostly SUVs. And once the American market was saturated with them? They couldn't sell them overseas? Why? Because the cost of keeping them filled with gas was to great for people in Asia and Europe.

Not true at all. Completely not true. It's amazing how quick you people on the left, are to make up answers to things you know absolutely nothing about. Have you been with the CEOs or upper management of my company, or any company? I doubt it.

My company makes specialized custom built industrial printers. It's a vertical market. There actually is no other company that I know of, that makes the type of printers we build. There is no real competition.

The myth in left-wing world, is that if there is a monopoly, that means you can charge as much as you want. But in reality, customers don't buy if the price is too high, whether there is competition or a monopoly.

At one point we had an assembly line of workers, stuffing parts into circuit boards, sending them through a wave solder machine, running them through a cleaner and cutter machine, and then inspecting them.

However the price was going up to fast, too high. Customers started canceling their orders. We were never "just about to close", but it was clear from the quarterly data, that we were losing ground.

We needed to move to surface mount CPU boards. Cheaper parts, cheaper CPU, shorter thus cheaper build time.

The problem then became we need tons of high tech, aka super expensive equipment. One MC-388, can easily cost over $100K. Then you need an oven which can be $50K. You need a stencil printer for $70K. Then PCB loaders, and unloaders, and conveyors, cooling racks, and lastly a cleaner and defluxer unit, all of which can add up to an easy $70K. Oh and I almost forgot, you need an inspection unit, to inspect the boards after they are completed, for another $50K. If that's not enough, you have to have power systems installed to power the entire line. This isn't a 120 volt 3 plug deal. This is massive power.

The entire thing, can easily set you back half a million dollars.

Not only does our company not have a spare half million laying around in the spare-change-fund, but we then have a problem with the consistently inconsistent production runs.

For example, our top model '6500', last year we built about a thousand of them year long. This year, we've built 50. Small business like ours, doesn't have 10 year contracts with steady work. And even with a bumper year, we're talking 3,000 units.

So you spend half a million, build 3,000 CPUs in one month, and the rest of the year, your half million dollars in equipment is standing idle.

There are other companies that have the business to make use of such equipment year round, and make it a worth while investment. We do not.

Therefore, we tried to find a local domestic supplier to build our boards. But we had some problems. Local suppliers wanted big money to run our boards, or they gave us very bad service. Obviously, since we are a low-volume builder, our orders were along the lines of 25 to 50 boards, of different types, every month or so.

The problem there was, if you are a big manufacturer, and you have big customers with 200,000 unit orders, and one customer with a 25 unit order, who do you give priority to? Obviously, the big customers that are spending the big bucks. We would put in an order, and end up getting it a month late.

If we paid through the teeth, we got it on time, but that defeated the purpose of outsourcing it locally to save money.

China, and Mexico, were the only two places that could give us the price point we needed, and gave us the prompt service that we needed, in order to survive. We went with China.

The bottom line is this....

The only possible way we would not have off-shored the production, would be if we had bought that production line.

Yet even then, we would still have laid off the majority of our staff, because instead of dozens making boards by hand, we would have had about 3 people, building them by machine.

But the fact is, there is no way would could have bought that whole setup. We would have ended up closed.

Off-shoring is the ONLY reason I have a job today. That's all there is to it.

I don't believe you.

Simple as that.

That's fine. Everyone has the right to remain ignorant and wrong. You are more than welcome to remain so.

 

[Sallow]

Not true at all. Completely not true. It's amazing how quick you people on the left, are to make up answers to things you know absolutely nothing about. Have you been with the CEOs or upper management of my company, or any company? I doubt it.

My company makes specialized custom built industrial printers. It's a vertical market. There actually is no other company that I know of, that makes the type of printers we build. There is no real competition.

The myth in left-wing world, is that if there is a monopoly, that means you can charge as much as you want. But in reality, customers don't buy if the price is too high, whether there is competition or a monopoly.

At one point we had an assembly line of workers, stuffing parts into circuit boards, sending them through a wave solder machine, running them through a cleaner and cutter machine, and then inspecting them.

However the price was going up to fast, too high. Customers started canceling their orders. We were never "just about to close", but it was clear from the quarterly data, that we were losing ground.

We needed to move to surface mount CPU boards. Cheaper parts, cheaper CPU, shorter thus cheaper build time.

The problem then became we need tons of high tech, aka super expensive equipment. One MC-388, can easily cost over $100K. Then you need an oven which can be $50K. You need a stencil printer for $70K. Then PCB loaders, and unloaders, and conveyors, cooling racks, and lastly a cleaner and defluxer unit, all of which can add up to an easy $70K. Oh and I almost forgot, you need an inspection unit, to inspect the boards after they are completed, for another $50K. If that's not enough, you have to have power systems installed to power the entire line. This isn't a 120 volt 3 plug deal. This is massive power.

The entire thing, can easily set you back half a million dollars.

Not only does our company not have a spare half million laying around in the spare-change-fund, but we then have a problem with the consistently inconsistent production runs.

For example, our top model '6500', last year we built about a thousand of them year long. This year, we've built 50. Small business like ours, doesn't have 10 year contracts with steady work. And even with a bumper year, we're talking 3,000 units.

So you spend half a million, build 3,000 CPUs in one month, and the rest of the year, your half million dollars in equipment is standing idle.

There are other companies that have the business to make use of such equipment year round, and make it a worth while investment. We do not.

Therefore, we tried to find a local domestic supplier to build our boards. But we had some problems. Local suppliers wanted big money to run our boards, or they gave us very bad service. Obviously, since we are a low-volume builder, our orders were along the lines of 25 to 50 boards, of different types, every month or so.

The problem there was, if you are a big manufacturer, and you have big customers with 200,000 unit orders, and one customer with a 25 unit order, who do you give priority to? Obviously, the big customers that are spending the big bucks. We would put in an order, and end up getting it a month late.

If we paid through the teeth, we got it on time, but that defeated the purpose of outsourcing it locally to save money.

China, and Mexico, were the only two places that could give us the price point we needed, and gave us the prompt service that we needed, in order to survive. We went with China.

The bottom line is this....

The only possible way we would not have off-shored the production, would be if we had bought that production line.

Yet even then, we would still have laid off the majority of our staff, because instead of dozens making boards by hand, we would have had about 3 people, building them by machine.

But the fact is, there is no way would could have bought that whole setup. We would have ended up closed.

Off-shoring is the ONLY reason I have a job today. That's all there is to it.

I don't believe you.

Simple as that.

That's fine. Everyone has the right to remain ignorant and wrong. You are more than welcome to remain so.

Which nicely put an end to your "argument".

I work in IT and in the financial industry.

I've also had my own business and kinda know how that works (although since my business failed? I have no claim to "expertise").

Here's the other shoe. My girlfriend works for a large packaging design firm. Her biggest client is Diageo.

People who do industrial printing, these days, are few and far between. It is a highly specialized industry and, curiously enough, in high demand. They charge top dollar for their work.

Thus, if you work for a firm that services that industry and you are the only people to do it? You charge what you like.

And they pass that cost on to companies like the one my girlfriend works for..

If..as you claim..the boards were to "expensive" to make..what was the alternative?

The industrial printing companies were just going to go poof?

Or? They would buy the printers from other vendors.

Which means you are "incorrect" about the "monopoly".

And?

My girlfriend's company tries like mad to outsource the printing. She's been to Brazil and Korea this year..and is making a trip to Poland this month.

Inevitably? The printing still gets done here.

 

[RKMBrown]

First, the second link, was from CPS data.

CPS data which is conducted through the US Census B, is based on household income. They go to a persons home, and ask how much their household income is. That is exactly what I was referring to above. As students no longer stay at home, and as divorce breaks families apart, the numbers go down.

Your Wiki link, actually validates my claims:


The wiki article also refers to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), which does a completely different survey. What they do, is look at payroll numbers. The problem with the BEA, is the reverse equal opposite problem.

With the CPS, you look at household income, because you know everyone is sharing resources, and thus even though the teenage college student is minimum wage, working part time, earning only $10,000 a year, he's not living poor. He's actually living in a very nice home, with all the food an amenities he could want. He's not paying rent, not paying for food, not paying for much of anything.

It's logical to combine those incomes.

In the BEA, you look at each person as an individual tax unit. After all, it's from payroll data.

But then you have a problem. Two people, not married, shacking up together. According to the BEA data, they would be counted as completely separate tax units, when in reality they are sharing all resources together, just like a real married couple would. But in the data, they would be counted separately.

So they could have a household income of $100K, while in the data have a $60K and $40K income, including their student son, making $10K while going to school.

So let's look at some of your points:


Does off-shoring lower wages? Possibly, but only if you assume those jobs would exist either way.

There is a myth that off-shoring is this super rich guy earning $250 Million a year, and found out that if he off-shores, he can earn $250.1 Million.

That's simply not the case in the vast majority of situations. I work for a company that outsourced the building of our CPU boards. Originally we built them in-house. Now they are out sourced to China. The CEO said very openly that he did this because, the only other alternative was to close. Our customers were not willing to pay enough to make in-house builds profitable. The company would have closed. The only choice was to off-shore the production. Without off-shoring, there might be more higher paying jobs.... for a time. Until the company closed.

Same is true for layoffs. GM didn't lay off anyone until they went bankrupt, then they laid off a ton of people. Better a few people now, then a ton later.

Same with early retirement. If the company is willing to pay you to leave, there's a reason.

I'm not sure how fresh out programs, harm wage rates, unless you assume that grads would not join the labor market without the program. You'll have to explain that one to me.

Make up your mind. I'm not gonna let you wag the dog. You're being obtuse. Again you are focused like a laser on your situation and your household income. The issue being discussed was the issue of STAGNANT SALARY. Not household income. You are arguing salaries are stagnant because people don't "want to earn more." Total bullshit. Just because you were a lazy ass living in you moms basement does not mean the rest of us are working part time. I linked to the data that showed full time workers who are heads of household and you said, no that's household income. I then made you look at the data again and you started squirming and eventually said that you never said the data isn't available. Yet again ignoring that the data I linked you to includes the evidence of STAGNANT SALARY.

Now you want to ask me to explain, yet again, what this government does to offshore? Puleze. Look it up yourself cause clearly you're not gonna believe anything anyone says that is not from your beloved democrat party.

I promise you, I am not trying to annoy you. If anything, I'm trying to figure out where we are not communicating. You have not been a jerk, so I am treating your position with complete respect.

You did link to wiki, and to the CPS. The CPS does not show stagnant salaries. It doesn't. I don't know how else to say it.

The BLS certainly does not.

Year-over-year change in nominal hourly earnings of all employees on private nonfarm payrolls, 2007-2014 | State of Working America

I swear I'm not trying to be obtuse. The payroll data from the BLS shows wages are still going up. Not as quickly as during the Bush years, but certainly they are not stagnant.

The only time I ever see someone saying that wages are Stagnant, is when they look at household income.

Ok. Then I'll explain. What I was asking you to do was look for the portions of the data that indicated stagnant salaries. Some segments of income earners are doing fine while others are not.

From the wiki:

Personal income is an individual’s total earnings from wages, investment interest, and other sources. In the United States the most widely cited personal income statistics are the Bureau of Economic Analysis’s personal income and the Census Bureau’s per capita money income. The two statistics spring from different traditions of measurement—personal income from national economic accounts and money income from household surveys. BEA's statistics relate personal income to measures of production, including GDP, and is considered an indicator of consumer spending. Census's statistics provide detail on income distribution and demographics and are used to produce the nation's official poverty statistics. Inflation-adjusted ("real") per-capita disposable personal income rose steadily in the U.S. from 1945 to 2008, but has since remained generally level.[2][3]

Earnings of the top 1.0 percent rebound strongly in the recovery | Economic Policy Institute

As the stock market regained its value in the recovery, one would expect the top 1.0 percent to fare better than other workers—and they have, with annual wages growing 8.2 percent from 2009 to 2011 (the S&P grew 37.4 percent over this period). As the recovery continues and the stock market sustains its growth, the top 1.0 percent of wage earners are likely to quickly recoup all of the ground lost in the downturn.
In contrast, annual wages of the bottom 90 percent of earners eroded by 0.6 percent in the downturn—and by a further 1.2 percent in the 2009–2011 recovery. This is not surprising given the persistently high unemployment over this period. Meanwhile, high-wage earners from the 90th to the 99th percentile enjoyed wage growth in the recovery—and are the only wage earners to have higher wages in 2011 than in 2007.

Thus the plan to save the rich owners of the failed banking cartels, and executives of the fortune 500s has worked out swimmingly for the top 1%.

The combination of less people having income at the bottom rungs and instead becoming welfare dependents, and the 1% getting massive raises and bonuses for cutting payrolls to professionals, is averaging out to the numbers you show in your chart. 2% overall does not tell the whole story. You have to break down the numbers to see what it means to the vast majority of income earners, aka the bottom 90% who's salaries have been stagnant and/or decreasing since the recession hit.

 

[RKMBrown]

Once we've agreed or not agreed to the numbers for the vast majority of income earners, we can dive into the why's and hows these incomes were minimized with assistance by our government. Was your chart inflation adjusted? If not 2% income increase is flat because inflation has averaged 2%.

 

[KissMy]

The only reason wages haven't risen fast yet is because of the massive supply of 18 million unemployed created during the bush years. Obama has brought over half those jobs back so far & job openings hiring demand is much higher than it ever was under Bush admin. "June job openings climb to 13-year high. Unemployed workers still exceeded openings by almost a 2-to-1 margin in June, but that's much improved from the 3-to-1 ratio a year earlier. Job openings climbed for the fifth straight month in June, reaching their highest level since early 2001, the Labor Department said Tuesday."

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

The only reason wages haven't risen fast yet is because of the massive supply of 18 million unemployed created during the bush years. Obama has brought over half those jobs back so far & job openings hiring demand is much higher than it ever was under Bush admin. "June job openings climb to 13-year high. Unemployed workers still exceeded openings by almost a 2-to-1 margin in June, but that's much improved from the 3-to-1 ratio a year earlier. Job openings climbed for the fifth straight month in June, reaching their highest level since early 2001, the Labor Department said Tuesday."

The only reason wages haven't risen fast yet is because of the massive supply of 18 million unemployed created during the bush years.

Don't forget the millions of immigrants, legal and illegal.

 

[Andylusion]

I don't believe you.

Simple as that.

That's fine. Everyone has the right to remain ignorant and wrong. You are more than welcome to remain so.

Which nicely put an end to your "argument".

I work in IT and in the financial industry.

I've also had my own business and kinda know how that works (although since my business failed? I have no claim to "expertise").

Here's the other shoe. My girlfriend works for a large packaging design firm. Her biggest client is Diageo.

People who do industrial printing, these days, are few and far between. It is a highly specialized industry and, curiously enough, in high demand. They charge top dollar for their work.

Thus, if you work for a firm that services that industry and you are the only people to do it? You charge what you like.

And they pass that cost on to companies like the one my girlfriend works for..

If..as you claim..the boards were to "expensive" to make..what was the alternative?

The industrial printing companies were just going to go poof?

Or? They would buy the printers from other vendors.

Which means you are "incorrect" about the "monopoly".

And?

My girlfriend's company tries like mad to outsource the printing. She's been to Brazil and Korea this year..and is making a trip to Poland this month.

Inevitably? The printing still gets done here.

Your argument was "I don't believe you".

How did you, simply denying my real life example from my company, put an end to 'my argument'? You are the one who said "I don't believe you" as your one and only argument. That's doesn't put an end to anything I said. It puts an end to you discussing reality. That's your fail, not mine.

My girlfriend works for a large packaging design firm. Her biggest client is Diageo.

Stop. You said this right here. Do you not see that you just validated my position?

Diageo has off-shored packaging and design to your GFs firm in New York. Without off-shoring..... she would not have a job.

Hello? You just made my point.

The industrial printing companies were just going to go poof?
Or? They would buy the printers from other vendors.

There are not industrial printers like you are thinking of. And that's my fault. I gave a basic outline of what we build, without details.

The closest competitor to us, would be Zebra Printers. The problem with Zebra is, it's a plastic based printer, with limited use, and zero custom ability. Our printers are 100% metal, and last 5 years to a decade, or more. We have printers coming into our service center, that were sold in the 1980s, and are still running.

As I said they are also 100% custom units. Some have crazy security features, like encrypted code. Others have specialized network features, like built in token ring. Some have have specialized printing fonts no one else uses, like Turkish, for Turkish Airlines.

Further, we build to specific size, weight, and deminsions.

Zebra, generally has a mass-produced off the shelf product. Here's their printer, take or leave it. If it lasts more than 2 years, the warrantee is up, and you buy another.

If we jack up our price too high, then companies will either A: switch to a non-custom, non specialized, non-long-term-industrial printer, and use an off the shelf-the-shelf disposable printer... Or they may just not use a printer at all. There are always alternatives to everything.

For example one of our big customers, uses our printer in their inventory system. There are other inventor systems that don't require a printer. Our own inventory system doesn't use a printer.

If we charged too much, they would use a different system, and not buy a printer at all.

There is no other company that I am aware of that does this type of complete custom built, made to spec, durable for decades, type of printer. There could be... but I don't know of them. Technically there is one, but we build their printers. So two separate companies, but it's all us doing the builds.

So to answer your question, none of the companies we have as customers would ever close for lack of a printer. None of them are doing business as a printing company.

The worst case scenario, one of our customers takes the product to another company, and asks them to make it for them.

This is something that even I didn't know about until 2008.

I was working at a different company, called Vanner Power Systems.
Inverter Charger, Power Inverter, Battery Equalizer, Battery Monitoring

Really neat company. They make power systems for commercial vehicles, primarily ones with dual batteries.

Long story short, Vanner was at the start, a monopoly. There was no other source for the systems they built. Well unfortunately they hired a (bad) sales rep, who went to a customer who had a complaint, and told them that they had to just deal with it, because we were the only game in town.

The customer went to a different company, handed them our power unit, and said 'make that for us, and we'll buy it from you'.

There went their monopoly. One bad employee single-handedly created their competition. When the details came out, he was of course instantly fired, but the damage was done.

Again, this idea that if you have a monopoly, means you can charge whatever you want, is a joke. You charge too much, and piss off your customers, and you will be replaced. They'll find someone, or do without. I promise you, you have a monopoly on a product, and charge whatever you want, and suddenly you'll have other people taking your market, or you won't have a market.

 

[Andylusion]

Make up your mind. I'm not gonna let you wag the dog. You're being obtuse. Again you are focused like a laser on your situation and your household income. The issue being discussed was the issue of STAGNANT SALARY. Not household income. You are arguing salaries are stagnant because people don't "want to earn more." Total bullshit. Just because you were a lazy ass living in you moms basement does not mean the rest of us are working part time. I linked to the data that showed full time workers who are heads of household and you said, no that's household income. I then made you look at the data again and you started squirming and eventually said that you never said the data isn't available. Yet again ignoring that the data I linked you to includes the evidence of STAGNANT SALARY.

Now you want to ask me to explain, yet again, what this government does to offshore? Puleze. Look it up yourself cause clearly you're not gonna believe anything anyone says that is not from your beloved democrat party.

I promise you, I am not trying to annoy you. If anything, I'm trying to figure out where we are not communicating. You have not been a jerk, so I am treating your position with complete respect.

You did link to wiki, and to the CPS. The CPS does not show stagnant salaries. It doesn't. I don't know how else to say it.

The BLS certainly does not.

Year-over-year change in nominal hourly earnings of all employees on private nonfarm payrolls, 2007-2014 | State of Working America

I swear I'm not trying to be obtuse. The payroll data from the BLS shows wages are still going up. Not as quickly as during the Bush years, but certainly they are not stagnant.

The only time I ever see someone saying that wages are Stagnant, is when they look at household income.

Ok. Then I'll explain. What I was asking you to do was look for the portions of the data that indicated stagnant salaries. Some segments of income earners are doing fine while others are not.

From the wiki:

Personal income is an individual’s total earnings from wages, investment interest, and other sources. In the United States the most widely cited personal income statistics are the Bureau of Economic Analysis’s personal income and the Census Bureau’s per capita money income. The two statistics spring from different traditions of measurement—personal income from national economic accounts and money income from household surveys. BEA's statistics relate personal income to measures of production, including GDP, and is considered an indicator of consumer spending. Census's statistics provide detail on income distribution and demographics and are used to produce the nation's official poverty statistics. Inflation-adjusted ("real") per-capita disposable personal income rose steadily in the U.S. from 1945 to 2008, but has since remained generally level.[2][3]

Earnings of the top 1.0 percent rebound strongly in the recovery | Economic Policy Institute

As the stock market regained its value in the recovery, one would expect the top 1.0 percent to fare better than other workers—and they have, with annual wages growing 8.2 percent from 2009 to 2011 (the S&P grew 37.4 percent over this period). As the recovery continues and the stock market sustains its growth, the top 1.0 percent of wage earners are likely to quickly recoup all of the ground lost in the downturn.
In contrast, annual wages of the bottom 90 percent of earners eroded by 0.6 percent in the downturn—and by a further 1.2 percent in the 2009–2011 recovery. This is not surprising given the persistently high unemployment over this period. Meanwhile, high-wage earners from the 90th to the 99th percentile enjoyed wage growth in the recovery—and are the only wage earners to have higher wages in 2011 than in 2007.

Thus the plan to save the rich owners of the failed banking cartels, and executives of the fortune 500s has worked out swimmingly for the top 1%.

The combination of less people having income at the bottom rungs and instead becoming welfare dependents, and the 1% getting massive raises and bonuses for cutting payrolls to professionals, is averaging out to the numbers you show in your chart. 2% overall does not tell the whole story. You have to break down the numbers to see what it means to the vast majority of income earners, aka the bottom 90% who's salaries have been stagnant and/or decreasing since the recession hit.

Once we've agreed or not agreed to the numbers for the vast majority of income earners, we can dive into the why's and hows these incomes were minimized with assistance by our government. Was your chart inflation adjusted? If not 2% income increase is flat because inflation has averaged 2%.

The BLS numbers are inflation adjusted.

Your link cites Social Security Administration statistics. Heck I didn't even know the SSA did wage statistics. Exactly how many government agencies do we need spending billions, to all collect the same data? Anyway...

I have no idea where those numbers even come from.

Since I don't know anything about that specific data, I'll just let that go. You want to call that a win, fine with me. Until I know something about it, no point in commenting.

My numbers are accurate from the BEA. Now I will grant you that wages have not risen as fast as prior to 2007. What happened in 2007? Minimum wage increase. Goes to show you jacking up the minimum wage doesn't benefit everyone.

Since then, we've had a massive increase in social programs, and health care legislation. Who pays for that? Employees in lower wages.

None of that surprises me.

The one thing I do have a problem with, is this statement:

Thus the plan to save the rich owners of the failed banking cartels, and executives of the fortune 500s has worked out swimmingly for the top 1%.

The bailout didn't save the banking cartels. First, there is no such thing. But more importantly, go back and look how the bailout worked. It didn't save the wealthy bankers. There is not one banker I know of, whose bank crashed, that is still a banker. At least not a banker at that bank. Might have been hired by a different bank, but he's not CEO of Bear Stearns anymore, or Countrywide, or any failed bank.

The bailout didn't save the banks. It saved the bond holders. Who are the bond holders? Most were Unions, and pension funds, and the vast majority were international.

So why did the top 1% income recover so fast?

Because the compensation of the top 1% is not in money. A little is, but the vast majority is in stocks. Warren Buffet's pay is exactly $100,000. He doesn't earn just $100,000. He get's paid in stocks.

Well when the stock market went on a dive in 2008, the value of his stock compensation went down. When the market recovered, the value of his stocks went up.

His cash income, remained exactly the same from 2006 to 2013. His stock income, went way down, and went way back up during that same time. The number of stocks he is compensated with, is usually a set number. The value of those stocks on the market is what changes.

Had nothing to do with bailouts. Nothing to do with government programs. Nothing to do with any policy.

If you are CEO of some company, and you earn thousand shares in stock options every year, when the market goes down, you get paid less. When the market goes up, you get paid more. Just because the market went up, and your tax return shows a huge increase, doesn't mean you screwed someone over, or got a bailout.

 

[Sallow]

The only reason wages haven't risen fast yet is because of the massive supply of 18 million unemployed created during the bush years. Obama has brought over half those jobs back so far & job openings hiring demand is much higher than it ever was under Bush admin. "June job openings climb to 13-year high. Unemployed workers still exceeded openings by almost a 2-to-1 margin in June, but that's much improved from the 3-to-1 ratio a year earlier. Job openings climbed for the fifth straight month in June, reaching their highest level since early 2001, the Labor Department said Tuesday."

The only reason wages haven't risen fast yet is because of the massive supply of 18 million unemployed created during the bush years.

Don't forget the millions of immigrants, legal and illegal.

"Illegal" immigrants aren't fighting for jobs Americans will do.

H-1Bs? Yep. Absolutely correct.

 

[Andylusion]

The only reason wages haven't risen fast yet is because of the massive supply of 18 million unemployed created during the bush years. Obama has brought over half those jobs back so far & job openings hiring demand is much higher than it ever was under Bush admin. "June job openings climb to 13-year high. Unemployed workers still exceeded openings by almost a 2-to-1 margin in June, but that's much improved from the 3-to-1 ratio a year earlier. Job openings climbed for the fifth straight month in June, reaching their highest level since early 2001, the Labor Department said Tuesday."

The only reason wages haven't risen fast yet is because of the massive supply of 18 million unemployed created during the bush years.

Don't forget the millions of immigrants, legal and illegal.

Not to mention the thousands laid off by the increase in the minimum wage.

The average number of employees per Walmart decreased from 320 to 270, between 2007 and 2010.

 

[Sallow]

That's fine. Everyone has the right to remain ignorant and wrong. You are more than welcome to remain so.

Which nicely put an end to your "argument".

I work in IT and in the financial industry.

I've also had my own business and kinda know how that works (although since my business failed? I have no claim to "expertise").

Here's the other shoe. My girlfriend works for a large packaging design firm. Her biggest client is Diageo.

People who do industrial printing, these days, are few and far between. It is a highly specialized industry and, curiously enough, in high demand. They charge top dollar for their work.

Thus, if you work for a firm that services that industry and you are the only people to do it? You charge what you like.

And they pass that cost on to companies like the one my girlfriend works for..

If..as you claim..the boards were to "expensive" to make..what was the alternative?

The industrial printing companies were just going to go poof?

Or? They would buy the printers from other vendors.

Which means you are "incorrect" about the "monopoly".

And?

My girlfriend's company tries like mad to outsource the printing. She's been to Brazil and Korea this year..and is making a trip to Poland this month.

Inevitably? The printing still gets done here.

Your argument was "I don't believe you".

How did you, simply denying my real life example from my company, put an end to 'my argument'? You are the one who said "I don't believe you" as your one and only argument. That's doesn't put an end to anything I said. It puts an end to you discussing reality. That's your fail, not mine.

My girlfriend works for a large packaging design firm. Her biggest client is Diageo.

Stop. You said this right here. Do you not see that you just validated my position?

Diageo has off-shored packaging and design to your GFs firm in New York. Without off-shoring..... she would not have a job.

Hello? You just made my point.

The industrial printing companies were just going to go poof?
Or? They would buy the printers from other vendors.

There are not industrial printers like you are thinking of. And that's my fault. I gave a basic outline of what we build, without details.

The closest competitor to us, would be Zebra Printers. The problem with Zebra is, it's a plastic based printer, with limited use, and zero custom ability. Our printers are 100% metal, and last 5 years to a decade, or more. We have printers coming into our service center, that were sold in the 1980s, and are still running.

As I said they are also 100% custom units. Some have crazy security features, like encrypted code. Others have specialized network features, like built in token ring. Some have have specialized printing fonts no one else uses, like Turkish, for Turkish Airlines.

Further, we build to specific size, weight, and deminsions.

Zebra, generally has a mass-produced off the shelf product. Here's their printer, take or leave it. If it lasts more than 2 years, the warrantee is up, and you buy another.

If we jack up our price too high, then companies will either A: switch to a non-custom, non specialized, non-long-term-industrial printer, and use an off the shelf-the-shelf disposable printer... Or they may just not use a printer at all. There are always alternatives to everything.

For example one of our big customers, uses our printer in their inventory system. There are other inventor systems that don't require a printer. Our own inventory system doesn't use a printer.

If we charged too much, they would use a different system, and not buy a printer at all.

There is no other company that I am aware of that does this type of complete custom built, made to spec, durable for decades, type of printer. There could be... but I don't know of them. Technically there is one, but we build their printers. So two separate companies, but it's all us doing the builds.

So to answer your question, none of the companies we have as customers would ever close for lack of a printer. None of them are doing business as a printing company.

The worst case scenario, one of our customers takes the product to another company, and asks them to make it for them.

This is something that even I didn't know about until 2008.

I was working at a different company, called Vanner Power Systems.
Inverter Charger, Power Inverter, Battery Equalizer, Battery Monitoring

Really neat company. They make power systems for commercial vehicles, primarily ones with dual batteries.

Long story short, Vanner was at the start, a monopoly. There was no other source for the systems they built. Well unfortunately they hired a (bad) sales rep, who went to a customer who had a complaint, and told them that they had to just deal with it, because we were the only game in town.

The customer went to a different company, handed them our power unit, and said 'make that for us, and we'll buy it from you'.

There went their monopoly. One bad employee single-handedly created their competition. When the details came out, he was of course instantly fired, but the damage was done.

Again, this idea that if you have a monopoly, means you can charge whatever you want, is a joke. You charge too much, and piss off your customers, and you will be replaced. They'll find someone, or do without. I promise you, you have a monopoly on a product, and charge whatever you want, and suddenly you'll have other people taking your market, or you won't have a market.

So..in a nutshell..when I said that you had a competitor, that offshores?

And you said I was wrong?

You were wrong.

Right? Because you've just completely changed your story.