Category Archives: Economics

2012/09/08

Economic Blame – the real culprits are the lazy welfare-sucking poor (UPDATED)

Blaming the poor, those on welfare, and the idiots sitting on their asses who aren’t looking for a job has become very popular as of late.

Surely there aren’t enough jobs just because companies have learned to do more with less, far less. No, there aren’t jobs because the lazy people (not you or me but them!) aren’t working or looking for work. // This is a bit of warped logic to me. So if the lazy people had jobs and thus they had paychecks then that would put more money into our economic system and that would create jobs. Right? Trickle-up economics?!

Very popular on Facebook and on various blogs is the graphic below.

Needy versus Lazy people

Needy versus Lazy people

Are they really lazy? With some 24,000,000 unemployed or underemployed could it be that we’ve become just a nation of people sitting on our asses hoping that the check comes soon?

Or could it be that we are just passing the blame because we’ve run out of ideas … and perhaps the case may also be that business and its cheerleaders are fostering the notion that there are jobs if you just look — so please let’s cut taxes and let’s help business become stable in order to create jobs … even if (mid-to-large) business has achieved historical highs of profitability almost every quarter since early 2010.

So are we just sitting on our asses and being lazy OR are we out there looking?

Premise: I believe that the overwhelming majority of folks are looking for jobs — and if a job is available then they are taking it!

The data seems to support my premise via the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS.gov) JOLTS (Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey) tracking:

BLS JOLTS chart

View most recent BLS JOLTS data.

Sure there are jobs out there. Some. Somewhere.

If folks look carefully at the jobs chart you will see that the number of jobs being filled (the green line) is at the peak of the availability of jobs (the blue line/peak).

What this means is that jobs are being filled as quickly as they become available, and as hires are made.

So yes there may be X number of jobs available but there is always a percentage margin of jobs available that go unfilled on any given day. Some estimates are that there are 3 million jobs available (advertised) nationwide. That sounds impressive but with there being 141 million jobs in the current workforce you’ll see that 3M jobs really equals only 1.4% of all existing jobs being available. The math doesn’t work out to where the answer is “You need to get off your ass and get a job” … as if that were a good solution to people being out of work.

It all comes down to math. For example, North Dakota has jobs in energy that pay well. Sure we could encourage the unemployed to abandon their 30 year mortgage, sell their belongings and spend $6-10,000 relocating to North Dakota where they might find a job, if they were qualified.

Qualified? What? No on the job training? No schooling available? Certifications and higher degrees are needed?

Almost half of American employers say that they can’t find qualified hires … not even with 24,000,000 million underemployed and unemployed looking (well some still are).

The good news is that the lazy and those less well off don’t have much to say — because if they do then we’ll just hit ‘em with a pee test to see if they qualify for their unemployment benefits.

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2012/07/12

Bogus Claim – Bush wiped out the Clinton $5.6 trillion surplus in just two years

The graphic below is making many rounds on the internet, and its publication is specifically widespread on Facebook.

Problem: The primary claim is grossly incorrect — so incorrect that the claim qualifies as a BIG Lie.

Bush wiped out Clinton surplus - BOGUS

Grossly inaccurate/BIG Lie category: Clinton left a $5.6 trillion surplus? Really? Per the Clinton administration’s own numbers, the surplus never exceeded $400 billion, and was just $237 billion in its best year (2000).

Good things were done to manage debt during President Clinton’s last few years: there was significant progress in paying down national debt in 1999 and 2000. The National Debt Clock had stopped and was even reversing.

Also good was that new debt under President Clinton’s eight years was minorly incremental as compared to almost all other presidents since World War II. Yet national debt within President Clinton’s last year in office began to rise again — all the gains of debt paydown in 2000 were wiped out by 2001′s gains.

As for debt hitting $10 trillion on Bush’s watch: $10,628,881,485,510.23 was the debt on President Bush’s last day in office. It was $5.727 trillion on the day he took office.

Note: It is easy to check such numbers. The Department of the Treasury has a website that let’s you check the national debt (technically ‘Public Debt’) at any time. You can check the numbers yourself at Debt to the Penny.

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2012/07/08

Bogus Factoids – Veterans do have issues but …

WARNING: Bogus factoids ahead.
Veterans getting foodstamps - BOGUS
This image from the Occupy Wall Street FB page claims that “43% of veterans are receiving food stamps”.

Whatever the intent of the message designer, this is just not true, nor anywhere close to being true.

As of May 2012:

>> Unemployment among veterans of all generations is just 7.8% — BETTER than the general population.

>> Unemployment among young veterans (<26 years old) is now 9.5% although it had hit a high of almost 30% not so long ago. Yet even at its worst the impact on veterans was not even half of what this bogus chart depicts.

Tracking veterans and their issues:

>> The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) tracks veterans and issues monthly reports such as this: http://tinyurl.com/yb9ht2e

>> The Veterans Administration tracks a wide range of veteran homelessness, health and employment issues: http://tinyurl.com/7bdqxqe

>> Department of Labor tracks veterans issues too: http://www.dol.gov/vets/goldcard.html

Note/FYI: I added Bogus Claims to the image.

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2012/05/13

Some good news for young teen workers

Some good news for young teen workers

We all watch carefully the various employment numbers that come out each month.

We all know, or think that we know, that the economy is not growing as fast as we would like.

How fast it should grow is a question that we should all ask and seek answers for — as far back as 2009 a great many economists did not see it growing faster than it currently is; 2017 is and has long been the predicted year for earliest full jobs recovery at 2007 levels — which is not necessarily great news considering that we must create 150,000 new jobs per month just to keep up with population growth.

Politicians and their predictions for jobs recovery are a different lot with their predictions often much rosier and seldom reflective of factual reality. Their reality is that they wouldn’t get reelected so often if they focused on the general facts and models used by the academics (models are indeed a theory, but a model that is mostly right 70-80% of the time is fairly accurate for practical purposes).

As for good news, and not so good news:

– Employment for women ages 20+ has dropped 9/10th of 1% over the last year.

– Employment for men ages 20+ has dropped 2/10th of 1% over the last year.

The above is not good news for those that lost jobs, BUT their jobs were not lost in a purely bookkeeping sense of things. Those jobs migrated.

GOOD NEWS for younger teen workers: employment for those aged 16-19 has risen a full 2.8% over the last year … which fully offsets the jobs loss by older workers, regardless of gender.

Essentially companies have begun hiring the young, energetic and generally childless. And they are cheaper too.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Table A-2. Employment status of the civilian population by race, sex, and age, updated April 2012.

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2012/04/12

The Ugly Legacy of Election 2012 … Kid’s Stuff!

As for thinking that 2012 is so dysfunctional, try a bit of history.

The dysfunction was present even before George Washington finished his first term.

Neither Madison nor Jefferson could persuade their own home state to adopt the first 10 amendments to the Constitution — and Madison was their primary author and patron saint. No one cared.

Alexander Hamilton ‘the ultra federalist’ agreed to sell the amendments in exchange for some deals … Washington is what it always was. So while Madison was the Constitution’s primary author, and author of the first 10 Amendments, it is his philosophical rival in every way that got the deal done.

Folks that wistfully wish for the days of yore are seriously on drugs if they believe that things were better.

President Washington started his first term with $75 million in debt and it took succeeding presidents 45 years to pay it off.

There was a rebellion against taxes even then … and Ol’George didn’t hesitate to go shoot em up to prove that DC was DC and rules were to be followed. Unlike today when folks talk about ‘the next time we return our guns will be loaded’, George Washington faced an actual armed military force … and he sent a small army of 13,000 to go put the rebellion down … In the end, Washington got his national sales tax on certain items … and not a cheap tax either: 18 cents per gallon of whiskey.

The election of 1800 was total trash talk (and Jefferson became the semi-official first American anti-Christ) … while Jefferson’s vice president Aaron Burr killed the former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton in a duel just as Jefferson’s first term ended … Burr was running for governor of New York at the time since Jefferson planned to dump him as his VP.

1832 or 1834 is still considered to be the ugliest campaign year in history … although by the end of the century there were 5 Republican senators that openly declared in favor of the Democratic nominee for president. We now know those Republicans as the Mugwumps.

And let us not forget how former president Theodore Roosevelt bolted the Republican Party to run as a Moose candidate.

What we got in 2012 is pretty damn tame.

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2012/01/31

21 Major International Economic Systems (Humor … for some of you)

My son’s economics teachers posted this list defining the 21 economic models of the world. Enjoy.

The list starts out much like it has for the last 40 or 50 years … and then gets interesting.

SOCIALISM

You have 2 cows.
You give one to your neighbour.

COMMUNISM

You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and gives you some milk.

FASCISM

You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and sells you some milk.

NAZISM

You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and shoots you.

BUREAUCRATIC

You have 2 cows..
The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other, and then throws the milk away…

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows.
You sell them and retire on the income.

SURREALISM

You have two giraffes.
The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.
Later, you hire a consultant to analyze why the cow has dropped dead.

AN INVESTMENT BANK

You have two cows.

You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows.

The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more.

You sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States, leaving you with nine cows. No balance sheet provided with the release. The public then buys your bull.

A FRENCH CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You go on strike, organize a riot, and block the roads, because you want three cows.

A JAPANESE CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.
You then create a clever cow cartoon image called ‘Cowkimon’ and market it worldwide.

A GERMAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION

You have two cows, but you don’t know where they are. You decide to have lunch.

A RUSSIAN CORPORATION

You have two cows. You count them and learn you have five cows.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
You count them again and learn you have 2 cows.
You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.

A SWISS CORPORATION

You have 5000 cows. None of them belong to you.
You charge the owners for storing them.

A CHINESE CORPORATION

You have two cows. You have 300 people milking them.
You claim that you have full employment, and high bovine productivity.
You arrest the newsman who reported the real situation.

AN INDIAN CORPORATION

You have two cows. You worship them.

A BRITISH CORPORATION

You have two cows. Both are mad.

AN IRAQI CORPORATION

Everyone thinks you have lots of cows. You tell them that you have none..
No-one believes you, so they bomb the sh*t out of you and invade your country.
You still have no cows, but at least now you are part of a Democracy.

NEW ZEALAND CORPORATION

You have two cows.
The one on the left looks very attractive.

AN AUSTRALIAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.
Business seems pretty good.
You close the office and go to a bar to celebrate.

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2011/12/28

A BIG Lie found floating around the internet – National Debt from George Washington to Barack Obama

Disclaimer: Was not an Obama voter in 2008 and don’t expect to be an Obama voter in 2012. Stretching the truth is occasionally OK but I strongly dislike BIG lies. I’m on the side of the red, white and blue. BIG LIES only destroy us all as Americans.

The following graphic was busy floating around the internet during late December 2011.

National Debt over time from George Washington to President Obama

Alleged National Debt from George Washington to Barack Obama

I hate to be Mr. Grinch Fact Checker but this chart is VERY wrong.

This chart is not even close to being just misleading. This chart is so wrong that it wins my award of The BIG Lie.

The actual national debt in January 2009 when President Obama took office was $11,909,829,003,511.75 (Jan 30, 2009) per the U.S. Treasury … which is about $5.6 trillion more than the $6.3 trillion pre-Obama total debt claimed.

This chart is also wrong on several other levels.

For this chart to be accurate, actual national debt over time should be expressed as a cumulative. These numbers do not even begin to show total cumulative national debt.

For example, the total cumulative national debt racked up just under President George W. Bush (Jan 2001-Jan 2009) was $6.1 trillion dollars. Keeping that number in mind, according to this chart all presidents before George W. Bush created a total national debt of just $200 billion. This chart is obviously nowhere near reality.

Note: For comparison, after eight years of President Clinton debt increased $1.5 trillion vs $6.1 trillion under eight years of President Bush.

What this chart really portrays is that reality doesn’t matter … and as for fact checking: that’s for losers. It is all about winning. Politics is a contact sport don’t you know?!

Source for all numbers: U.S. Treasury http://tinyurl.com/3xjc7y — the Treasury provides a history of all national debt numbers so don’t trust me – go do a fact check yourself.

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2011/12/13

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs! Consumer spending now exceeds pre-recession levels but jobs aren’t coming back … not soon.

Edward Luce is the Washington bureau chief of the Financial Times, London.

The US labor market may never fully recover, recently wrote Edward Luce, who lives in the numbers and tracks them.

So what does ‘may never fully recover’ mean? It means simply that despite any actual economic growth in dollar value there is little reason for the number of jobs to actually grow in the foreseeable future.

Due in part to the duration of the Great Recession, our economy has adjusted to function without the need to rehire those that lost jobs. Please consider that consumer spending has returned to pre-recession levels since November 2010. Yet, here we are a year later with consumer spending now greater ($9.4T) than June 2007 ($9.2T) when the recession started and  more are unemployed today than at the depth of the recession — despite supposedly improving unemployment numbers.

In perspective, 64.4% of Americans had jobs in January 2011. Six months after the 2007 recession began, 62.9% of Americans had jobs. Employment dropped but still stayed about 60% until March 2009 with 59.9% unemployed at the very depth of massive job losses. Yet more than two and a half years later in November 2011 just 58.5% of Americans have jobs DESPITE 14 months of supposed jobs  growth and continuous growth in consumer spending.

A common mantra has been that the jobs would come back when people started spending again. Hello! They’ve been spending for a year and the actual number of Americans employed has continued to drop.

Bottomline: The marketplace has achieved efficiencies in labor usage and costs that represents a trend for our future. It is a trend that may be able to decrease the need for labor well above our population growth for the next decade or more.

Edward Luce goes on to note:

“If there is an explanation as to why middle-class incomes have stagnated in the past generation, this is it: whatever jobs the US is able to create are in the least efficient sectors – the types that neither computers nor China have yet found a way of eliminating. That trend is starting to lap at the feet of more highly educated American workers. And, as the shift continues, higher-paying jobs are also increasingly at risk … What, then, can be done to revitalise the increasingly sclerotic jobs market? If the answer were simple, it would have been on everyone’s lips a long time ago. Unfortunately, there is no precedent for the challenges America faces, and thus little consensus among economists or policymakers on the best remedies. However, almost everyone agrees on how to ensure the situation does not deteriorate.”

Bill4DogCatcher.com sez: it is time to think about how to create your own job in your own community with skills and services and products that your neighbors need. It is in someways time to return to a community-centric view of the world.

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2011/12/03

Ronald Reagan and dodgy quotes

Each day a variety of Quotes of the Day arrive in my emailbox.

Am not so sure that much thought is given to some of these quotes. Or perhaps what seemed like a great quote once upon a time has now become tarnished with written history.

Today’s Quote of the Day:

To those who say we can’t cut spending, lower taxes and, yes, rebuild the defenses we need in this dangerous world, I have a six-word answer: “Yes we can, and yes we must.”

– Ronald Reagan, June 25th, 1981

No, no he didn’t and no we didn’t.

Yes, we did rebuild our defenses. Yes, ‘lower taxes’ happened. However it is most unfortunate that the ‘cut spending’  part never came about.

Yes, we cut social spending. And it was the Reagan Administration that proposed declaring ketchup a vegetable in school lunches long before the Obama Administration tried to declare pizza a vegetable — personally I think pizza as a vegetable is my kind of vegetable.

Defense spending of the 1980s knew no limits. And we did nothing to pay for it. By 1984 and early 1985 so many Republicans were alarmed that they tried to box Reagan in on the 1985 and 1986 budgets. Instead they bought the promise of trust me, it will all work out. (Reagan later said that he regretted all the red ink in his authorized biography by Lou Cannon).

The theory was that if we cut taxes and the economy grew then magic would happen: so much money would come in via taxes on the new economic growth that balance would be achieved. George H. Bush called this voodoo economics back in 1980 when campaigning against Reagan.  Yet, Bush, when faced with his own balancing act, chose to raise taxes — and paid for it because in a moment of insanity had declared ‘Read my lips: no new taxes’ which he was punished for.

Anway, the grand Reagan/Laffer curve didn’t work out as predicted and Reagan gave us the basis for our national debt today, leaving office with $2.7 trillion in red ink — even though he blasted Carter for leaving us barely $300 billion in debt, which Reagan claimed he will pay off completely by 1983. Oh, well.

It was not my intent to get off on a tangent about Reagan. I like Reagan. I was a 1980 Reagan campaign staffer and he will always be Saint Ronnie to me. I love the Gipper. It is just that Reagan was human and whomever is editor of these Quotes of the Day should either read them before posting or … anyway, oh, well. Whatever.

BTW – Many conservatives hate Reagan’s biography. Seems that having warts and being human is not what we want to know about Reagan. Reagan himself, and his wife Nancy Reagan, however seem to have had no problem with the biography. One of Reagan’s strengths was pragmatism and being a realist about most things.

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2011/11/25

When is a cloud just a dream — rather than a savory Apple pie?

by Bill Golden
CEO, USAJobZoo.com
and IntelligenceCareers.com

When is a cloud just a dream — rather than a savory Apple pie?

Apple invested $300 million to build a cloud center at an internet and highway crossroads in North Carolina. The dream was that the cloud would bring jobs and growth to a community hard hit by foreign competition.

Certainly the cloud makes for a good enabler of telework and can help lower costs for businesses that are information-intensive.

There are costs, however. Local investments in such technology does not mean that there will be local jobs.

Apple got a $46 million state tax break in North Carolina to build one of its new cloud centers. The promise was that at least 250 jobs would be created.

So far the actual job count is perhaps 50 employed, or $920,000 in tax breaks per job. Combine state tax breaks with a local 50% reduction in Apple’s property taxes and it soon seems that Carolinians are paying their own wages via statewide taxes to work at the Apple cloud facility.

The future of jobs as one industry analyst frames such investments: “… in the newer digital economy, capital investments that a generation ago would have created thousands of new positions often equal only a handful today, with computers and software processing the heavy lifting while the key programming is often done by engineers back in Silicon Valley.”

The cloud also is a two-edged sword. So while the cloud enables telework and can help lower costs for businesses that are information-intensive, it can also be the vehicle for transferring work to whereever the work can be done at a lesser cost.

For communities such as the one in North Carolina that hosts the Apple cloud facility, the cloud may well cost them more jobs than it will create unless they find a way to harness the power of the cloud rather than just have it live in their backyard while paying for its existence through tax credits and lost state tax revenue which they will pay through other forms of taxation.

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