Obama proposes cuts to social security and medicare

[recuperi]

It wasn't an argument against raising wages, he used it to support both that minimum wage wasn't necessary, and that lowering that number, since it's already established, wouldn't be healthy for the economy. (I think)

I'd seriously lol if you two had been arguing this whole time about the graph when you were both on the same side.

Edit: I might be wrong there. I just remembered someone saying lowering wages would create jobs, so it may have been the reason he used it. Too many pages back.

Just so I can't be accused of derailing: older people tend to hit the extreme ends easier since most are focusing more on quality of life by then. If they had decided to make cuts to SS and Medicare, we're likely to have more of them staying in the workforce

[archibaldcrane]

There were cuts to SS and Medicare?

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S 4G using Tapatalk

[recuperi]

I'll have to chalk that up to typing without much thought, but yeah my bad on that lol. I read at one point that Medicaid was safe but social security and medicare were on the table, but that was before a final deal I think. That's probably where that came from. From what I gather, it's still possibly on the table since they have $1.5 trillion more they have to cut from somewhere? Doesn't sound likely as much as they conceded to keep them the same the first round.

[Dimmauk]

ITT: Anything without a citation, even if it's from a bullshit freeper propaganda website, is only a gut feeling.

Now to get things back on topic, here's something you all should've seen coming. The GOP's now attacking Obama for putting Medicare on the table.

LOL wow

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

Uhh, where did they attack him?

[volcanicweather]

In an attempt to try and draw people away from debating the trend line in a graph, here's some thoughts from former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich (’68) about the the U.S. government’s economic policy:

The United States is in a “vicious cycle” of depressed consumer demand and unemployment, and the government must shift its focus to improving the economy rather than slashing deficits, according to former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich ’68, who spoke to a packed Moore Theater in the Hopkins Center for the Arts on Thursday afternoon. Reich was the seventh speaker in the “Leading Voices in Politics and Policy” lecture series.

Reich — who teaches public policy at the University of California, Berkeley — said that policymakers in Washington, D.C., have spent too much time addressing the national debt, which he referred to as a “non-issue” in the current economy. The true problems, he said, are severe lags in jobs, wages and economic growth, caused by depressed consumer demand.

Since the late 1970s, median wages in the United States have stagnated, and for a long time consumers were able to keep spending due to three “coping mechanisms,” according to Reich. These mechanisms were women’s entry into the workforce, longer average work weeks and increasing consumer debt using long-term assets such as homes as collateral.

The current economic crisis has caused the value of homes and other long-term investments to plummet, which, when paired with rising unemployment and lack of consumer confidence, has made consumers less likely and willing to spend money, he said.

Unemployment acts circularly to depress consumer demand, keeping unemployment high, according to Reich.

“No business in its right mind would make the investment in additional capacity if there are no customers,” he said. “That’s the vicious cycle we’re in.”

To make matters worse, the federal government’s “hands are tied” in terms of providing an extra boost to the economy, thanks to the debt ceiling deal reached this week, he said.

Reich said that consumer demand for luxury goods has remained high among the wealthiest Americans, but added that the vast majority of consumers — whose spending constitutes 70 percent of the United States economy — have lost confidence and are unable or unwilling to spend more money. As a result, the economy has not “bounced back” as much as it has following previous recessions, he said.

The stimulus package passed in 2009 helped save 3 million jobs and slightly improve the economy, but it was not nearly large enough to allow for a full recovery, he said.

In response to a question from an audience member about what steps should be taken to address the faltering economy, Reich cited a number of possible actions, including an extension of the earned income tax credit, payroll tax exemptions, tax benefits for employers who hire more workers and increased financing for infrastructure projects.

“There’s no lack of ideas,” he said. “There’s a lack of political will, which is made more difficult by the deal that was just signed into law.”

Responding to a question posed last week by former New York City public schools Chancellor Joel Klein, Reich said that increased spending on early childhood and public education is important for the country’s economic future, adding that he thought public university tuition should be free for all students.

In the short-term, however, public funds should be spent on increasing the amount of money that consumers spend, according to Reich.

Despite the bad economic signs, Reich said he remained optimistic about the future of the country, particularly as politicians returned home to their districts for the summer recess. He added that he was confident that the public would realize the nature of the current economic crisis, and there would be “mounting pressure” on politicians to address the poor economic situation.

“As the country begins to wake up to the fact that debt is not the crisis, but that jobs and wages and growth are the crisis, that may change politics,” he said.

The country has faced far more challenging crises than the current one, and the United States can easily weather the bad economy as long as the right policy steps are taken, he said.

Above all, citizens must be more active to make sure policymakers take action, Reich said.

“Nothing good happens in Washington unless the public is mobilized, energized and organized to make sure it does happen,” he said.

[Pirian]

It is true. I can't be bothered to back it up at this hour, but it is. Almost everyone's actual experiences will never reach the backward bend though. To someone just viewing specific data points that have already happened for almost everyone, it will look like a standard supply curve. The backward bend is actually there to take reality into account. Otherwise, it would just assume people would keep working more and more, which even a kid could tell you can't happen, because there are only so many hours in a day.

Perhaps it's true, but if the bolded is the case then the graph is extremely misleading. It's just a graph that basically proves absolutely nothing except for what you should know via common sense. Majority of people will never hit the backward bend, thus using this graph in an argument against raising wages seems exceptionally dense and I almost have to question if the original poster even understands this.

The labor supply of China is so big, such that a single Chinese worker knows that they are competing against many other workers who are more than willing to take low wage (for this same reason, unfortunately), and thus they are willing to take the low wage they are offered. Lets suppose that a Chinese worker is working 15 hours a day, 7 days a week, and is making $155 a month(here). Tomorrow, if the Chinese government decided to impose a wage floor at $2 a day, then suddenly the worker that is accustomed to making 50 cents a day suddenly realizes that they can work a quarter as much and earn the same amount, and thus finds them self on the backward bend of the curve. If the worker is able to adjust their own hours, then they will surely adjust it to the point W2 Q2 point on the curve.

[recuperi]

The labor supply of China is so big, such that a single Chinese worker knows that they are competing against many other workers who are more than willing to take low wage (for this same reason, unfortunately), and thus they are willing to take the low wage they are offered. Lets suppose that a Chinese worker is working 15 hours a day, 7 days a week, and is making $155 a month(here). Tomorrow, if the Chinese government decided to impose a wage floor at $2 a day, then suddenly the worker that is accustomed to making 50 cents a day suddenly realizes that they can work a quarter as much and earn the same amount, and thus finds them self on the backward bend of the curve. If the worker is able to adjust their own hours, then they will surely adjust it to the point W2 Q2 point on the curve.

What you said seems like 2 separate thoughts combined: if they're adjusting to the W2Q2 then they can only add hours. Adjusting themselves to the W2Q2 from the backward bend would mean deliberately reducing your pay rate, which I'm sure you didn't mean. Instead, did you mean they would adjust their hours to match their personal "graph?" If so, then yes, if they had the option to adjust their own hours, they would tend to follow a backward bending curve. But $2 doesn't necessarily mean they will have reached the backward bend. Instead, they could have an extreme spike at the 15 hour mark, meaning they could work for a wide range at that level. Our average Chinese worker could still be working 15 hours a day like nothing had ever changed, since his has such an incredibly low starting point

[Plow]

It's the economy, stupid.

Yeah, pretty much.

[Pirian]

The labor supply of China is so big, such that a single Chinese worker knows that they are competing against many other workers who are more than willing to take low wage (for this same reason, unfortunately), and thus they are willing to take the low wage they are offered. Lets suppose that a Chinese worker is working 15 hours a day, 7 days a week, and is making $155 a month(here). Tomorrow, if the Chinese government decided to impose a wage floor at $2 a day, then suddenly the worker that is accustomed to making 50 cents a day suddenly realizes that they can work a quarter as much and earn the same amount, and thus finds them self on the backward bend of the curve. If the worker is able to adjust their own hours, then they will surely adjust it to the point W2 Q2 point on the curve.

sorry this part is wrong, I have no idea why I wrote it.

What you said seems like 2 separate thoughts combined: if they're adjusting to the W2Q2 then they can only add hours. Adjusting themselves to the W2Q2 from the backward bend would mean deliberately reducing your pay rate, which I'm sure you didn't mean. Instead, did you mean they would adjust their hours to match their personal "graph?" If so, then yes, if they had the option to adjust their own hours, they would tend to follow a backward bending curve. But $2 doesn't necessarily mean they will have reached the backward bend. Instead, they could have an extreme spike at the 15 hour mark, meaning they could work for a wide range at that level. Our average Chinese worker could still be working 15 hours a day like nothing had ever changed, since his has such an incredibly low starting point

Sorry I didn't mean to cause confusion. I went back and added that last line after I posted it thinking I was finishing my thought, but I was thinking about something else.

The Chinese labor market over abundant with people willing to work for that 50c a day. Whether they are happy with the entire situation or not, they are still at the W2/Q2 position on the graph at that point in time. I do not believe you can justifiably say that a quadrupling of the wage would not bring the average amount of time worked by 1 worker down, and that is why it means that they would be on the backwards bend. Yes, some people would still be working the 15 hours in order to get paid more, but many still would decrease their hours.

If all this is irrelevant because of my mistake then I apologize

[Plow]

The irony of the whole discussion being that if we're talking quantity of work that raises the mathematical limit on number of jobs because there are more hours to fill.

[Pirian]

The irony of the whole discussion being that if we're talking quantity of work that raises the mathematical limit on number of jobs because there are more hours to fill.

In that respect, yup!

But it also means that the firm is paying more for labor and could strike back the workforce to make up for having to pay more.

[Kaslo]

http://s3.amazonaws.com/kym-assets/p...jpg?1312415918

[Yabby]

Enough people believe you should hide under an overpass when a tornado is coming that a tornado in Oklahoma in 99 hit 3 overpasses and killed 1 person at each, along with countless injuries and pretty high property damage from the fact that so many people stopped there the road was blocked and people that knew better couldn't get through.

I was just fucking around with Sol, was stuck at work and nothing to do. Also, i lived in oklahoma for almost 18 years. 90% of those people are fucking retarded, even if they passed the sad excuse they call high school there.

[notorious bum]

Replace theoretical Chinese worker with the newer, extremely popular, and more efficient slave labor in prisons = Bend-over backwards curve?

0.20/hr, "Made in America" stamp, lesser or no import/export fees; Now, we're making $$$ bitches.