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income inequality debate

ChrisL68 said:
A married worker with 3 children could make $53,000 and qualify for a small amount of eitc which that report labels as public assistance.
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Link?
 
PhDeac said:
Link?
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He's an accountant. I'll take what he says as likely to be accurate. And he's right that most people are going to look at a job paying 50k with employer sponsored HC and profit sharing as above the thresh hold for what should be receiving public assistance.
 
PhDeac said:
Link?
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https://www.irs.gov/Credits-&-Deduc...dit/EITC-Income-Limits-Maximum-Credit-Amounts

When you are providing benefits on a household level depending on circumstances, it can cause a disconnect with what could be a pretty well paying job for a lone breadwinner that could still fall into the EITC range.

Also, I know quite a few households that get EITC. I would say just about all of them earn income under the table in one form or another.

Also, the amount of benefit you earn when you get to those levels is pretty minimal.
 
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Don't quite know where to put this, so I'll post it here - essentially none of the jobs created since the recession were available to people with just a high school diploma. Almost all of them went to people with at least an associate's degree or certificate, and a huge majority (75% or so) went to people with a bachelor's degree or higher. http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/30/news/economy/college-grads-jobs/index.html

There are a lot of possible takeaways from this. One of them is that the narrative of "immigrants are taking all the low skilled jobs" may be somewhat misguided, in that there simply are no low skilled jobs being created. The American economy has almost completely transitioned away from low skilled jobs, they just don't exist - and yet 35% of our workforce does not have the qualifications necessary to get the jobs that are being created. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States

This is not going to end well.
 
Jobs that don't require advanced degrees have gone from full-time to part-time, no benefits to now contract work with workers shouldering more and more liability.

Universal basic income!
 
Deacon923 said:
Don't quite know where to put this, so I'll post it here - essentially none of the jobs created since the recession were available to people with just a high school diploma. Almost all of them went to people with at least an associate's degree or certificate, and a huge majority (75% or so) went to people with a bachelor's degree or higher. http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/30/news/economy/college-grads-jobs/index.html

There are a lot of possible takeaways from this. One of them is that the narrative of "immigrants are taking all the low skilled jobs" may be somewhat misguided, in that there simply are no low skilled jobs being created. The American economy has almost completely transitioned away from low skilled jobs, they just don't exist - and yet 35% of our workforce does not have the qualifications necessary to get the jobs that are being created. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States

This is not going to end well.
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A few takeaways from that:

1. You posit that there no low skilled jobs being created, but I would wager that there are plenty of low skill jobs created but simply not reported to Georgetown University for their study. The general cry isn't that legal immigrants are taking jobs, it is that illegal immigrants are taking jobs. If you are hiring illegal immigrants then chances are you probably aren't reporting that job when Georgetown comes knocking. Which is part of the point of the cry, if the feds don't crack down on immigration, then it opens up an entire market of under the table labor that doesn't go to citizens. Whether those citizens would actually take those jobs if they were legit is a completely separate issue, but simply because Georgetown doesn't know about them doesn't mean they aren't there.

2. I think the candidates drive the qualifications, not the other way around. Plenty of jobs that "require" a college degree don't actually require one to do the job; the employer just knows that there are plenty of college degree people looking, so you might as well specify that one is needed to weed out the bottom rung. That is more a result of the participation trophy college degrees than it is the actual necessary job requirements/skills changing.

3. A quarter of those jobs went to people with associates/trade degrees only ... isn't that what we want? In light of #2 above, it appears that millennials are getting the hint that a 4-year college experience with a resulting eversovaluable French Lit or History degree isn't for everyone and may not be the smartest choice, so focus on an education that will actually get you a job without all of the extra debt and wasted years.
 
1. That may explain a small sliver of it.

2. Agreed although employers using educational attainment to "weed out the bottom rung" aren't doing it right.

3. Yes. That's what we want. That wasn't the point. The point is the lack of jobs for those with only a high school diploma. Some of those are learning the same skills in career and technical education programs in high school.

Here's a link to the report. They used data from the Current Population Survey.
https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/americas-divided-recovery/
 
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Deacon923 said:
Don't quite know where to put this, so I'll post it here - essentially none of the jobs created since the recession were available to people with just a high school diploma. Almost all of them went to people with at least an associate's degree or certificate, and a huge majority (75% or so) went to people with a bachelor's degree or higher. http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/30/news/economy/college-grads-jobs/index.html

There are a lot of possible takeaways from this. One of them is that the narrative of "immigrants are taking all the low skilled jobs" may be somewhat misguided, in that there simply are no low skilled jobs being created. The American economy has almost completely transitioned away from low skilled jobs, they just don't exist - and yet 35% of our workforce does not have the qualifications necessary to get the jobs that are being created. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States

This is not going to end well.
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OMG.

You may want to read or re-read Book 1 of the General Theory. All you're seeing here is that the least productive worker is the last to be hired back. Chapter 2 goes into detail about how this kind of classical analysis only holds at full employment and is found here: https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/general-theory/ch02.htm

The problem is that aggregate demand is low. The workers in question would be fine (by which I mean they would be exploited by their employers instead of unemployed) with better policy.
 
I don't claim to be an economist, and I have never read Keynes. If we are waiting around for some invisible hand to cause the unskilled/uneducated to get employed, I think we're going to be waiting a long time. Looks like to me that the uneducated and unskilled are screwed, and they know it. Only question is who they decide to blame it on.
 
Deacon923 said:
I don't claim to be an economist, and I have never read Keynes. If we are waiting around for some invisible hand to cause the unskilled/uneducated to get employed, I think we're going to be waiting a long time. Looks like to me that the uneducated and unskilled are screwed, and they know it. Only question is who they decide to blame it on.
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Keynes' central point is that no invisible hand exists and an indefinite slump is a live possibility. Hence active stabilization policy is needed.
 
TuffaloDeac10 said:
Keynes' central point is that no invisible hand exists and an indefinite slump is a live possibility. Hence active stabilization policy is needed.
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Well I'd say we're in an indefinite slump, and technology is making it worse (on top of globalization), and I question whether the American market will ever again create meaningful numbers of jobs for low education people.

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Deacon923 said:
Well I'd say we're in an indefinite slump, and technology is making it worse (on top of globalization), and I question whether the American market will ever again create meaningful numbers of jobs for low education people.

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Nope. Which is why government should step in to pick up the slack because there's plenty of work that needs to be done.
 
Deacon923 said:
Well I'd say we're in an indefinite slump, and technology is making it worse (on top of globalization), and I question whether the American market will ever again create meaningful numbers of jobs for low education people.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk
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The 10 year Treasury note is yielding 1.48%

We have crumbling roads and bridges.

This isn't difficult (except we have one party that prefers this situation).
 
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Exactly. The particulars would be difficult but it's not hard to come up with how to fund it.
 
this is a really good article about the decline of the middle class. Recommended reading. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/06/a-middle-class-strongholds-uncertain-future/489356/

The more I read about these issues, the more convinced I become that something structural has to change in our economy. "Retraining" workers for non-existent jobs is not going to get the job done. I'm not sure what the answer is, but we've got to do something or we're not going to have a middle class anymore.
 
Deacon923 said:
this is a really good article about the decline of the middle class. Recommended reading. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/06/a-middle-class-strongholds-uncertain-future/489356/

The more I read about these issues, the more convinced I become that something structural has to change in our economy. "Retraining" workers for non-existent jobs is not going to get the job done. I'm not sure what the answer is, but we've got to do something or we're not going to have a middle class anymore.
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