General Politics Discussion [ARCHIVED] • Page 235

It seems that both of you are neglecting to factor in current age demographics, with the boomers entering retirement, which inevitably affects both worker participation and average household income, especially the former.

 

One of the best tweets of all time for sure.

 

It's lame because I liked the Dems when I was a teen because they were opposed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (that's how they sold themselves at least). So I don't like that they're parading these military folks out here saying "look at how good we are / will be at be fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."

 

I think I read somewhere around less than half was due to aging population, and the rest of the shrinking rate seems to be due to people going back to school or people simply stopped looking for work or went on disability. Either way the demographics can't explain it because the rate fell faster than predicted:
Three reasons the U.S. labor force keeps shrinking
And job growth wasn't there.
Anyway its starting to feel like some are suggesting that household income, while far from a perfect indicator, is as unreliable as unemployment. Household income takes retirement income into account so I don't see your point there. I think any reputable economist will tell you household income is a more reliable indicator of the well being of a countries' citizens than unemployment rate. I didn't mean to suggest household income should be the standard, I'm now sorry I even went with it, but to imply their imperfections are on equal footing seems like a false equivalency.

But we digress, back to wealth inequality and poverty:
During Obama’s Presidency Wealth Inequality has Increased and Poverty Levels are Higher

 

Should've sold out sooner.

 

I did not say that household income was less reliable than unemployment: just that it was also flawed in that displacement of productive incomes by a larger proportion of retirement incomes and reliance on entitlements may present false statistics on a per capita basis when there are disparities in age demographics. It's the flip side of the spuriousness you pointed out with regard to unemployment analyses.

 

Attack Clinton earlier; polling data showed it to be incredibly effective. When you're a relative unknown going against a superstar, completely neglecting going negative is a huge fuck up. I don't even remembering him mentioning mass incarceration.

Really, there were a ton of fuck ups when he campaign was still young, but he ran a pretty good operation for the last six months, I would say.

 

The consequences aren't equivalent though. Are you saying the median household income numbers are inaccurate or that households are better off than they seem? Because the unemployment numbers being misleading literally meant by me that it does not mean more and more people are getting jobs and making more money, which is what I took the poster to imply by using the unemployment rate. I used household income to point out that it doesn't appear that households had this huge growth in employment and income.

 

Hi Katy.

 

Mostly that I believe a discussion on "the economy" shouldn't be about specific points in time, or specific numbers, but instead trends, macro and micro discussions, and historical context. The problem becomes one of nuance vs clarity. I think to break it down more broadly, David Colander does a good job:

Currently, the principles of economics are often presented in a way that does not embed the nuance in the principle so that when the students learn the principle, they also learn the nuance. It doesn’t have to be that way. In this section I list 10 standard principles of economics and then suggest a nuanced way to present them. I also provide a brief discussion of how the nuanced principle differs from the standard principle and why the nuanced presentation is preferable. In the table at the end of the discussion, I contrast my nuanced principles with the principles as they are often presented in the principles’ texts.

I think, in general, we discuss economics in a poor way. "Unemployment is down therefore economy is good" or whatever I think is flawed. Income inequality is great therefore economy is bad, I think is also flawed. I think painting a picture of what the economy is doing at any given time is one of measured nuance and where one decides to put priorities. For example, right now most polled think the economy is doing poorly. Inflation is low, unemployment is mediocre and labor participation is a big reason why, real GDP grown is average, wage growth is actually above the average of the past few decades, household debt is at the lowest its been since 1980. I just don't see many serious economists speak in so many of the absolutes that politicians and debaters do. A discussion of a slowing economy, for example, can also be part of acknowledgment of where we came from.

 

Frustrating that muslims were used as props by both parties.

 

He honestly never stood a chance considering. Even if he managed to get to a contested convention by fine tweaking a few strategies, super delegates were over overwhelmingly against him since he was an independent.

Hindsight bias? Fight fire with fire, be corrupt and bride super delegates. But even still, Clinton has her husband and Obama on her side, good luck defeating someone with those allies and also the chosen democratic candidate long before primary season.

 

The Philadelphia Fed released a (edit-broken link) a couple ofyears ago putting the blame on retirement from the years of 2000-2013 at about 65%, and from 2012 on at about 80%.

As for wealth inequality increasing...I'd say that has far more to do with the Fed's policies inflating the value of the stock market than anything Obama has been able to do.

 

I couldn't open the study but it doesn't appear to be accurate:
"In 2014, 87.4 million people 16 years and older neither worked nor looked for work at any time during the year. (See table 1.) Of this group, 38.5 million people reported retirement as the main reason for not working. About 16.3 million people were ill or had a disability, and 16.0 million were attending school. Another 13.5 million people cited home responsibilities as the main reason for not working in 2014, and 3.1 million individuals gave “other reasons.”
Edit:
People who are not in the labor force&#58 why aren't they working? : Beyond the Numbers: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics


As for wealth inequality, it has to do with a capitalist system that creates structural advantages for the rich and disadvantages for those at the bottom. Its not about what Obama has been able to do. Its about what he and the democratic elite haven't been interested in doing to address this oppressive system.

 

I'm sorry I misspoke in my post...meant to say they put the blame on the increases (or, decreases rather) in those time periods at those %'s on retirement of workers, not the total amount of people out of the labor force.
http://philadelphiafed.org/research...nes-in-the-labor-force-participation-rate.pdf


Hopefully that works.

Well, I was talking about the reason for growth in wealth inequality since Obama's presidency started, not hte reason why inequality exists. The growth in wealth inequality over the last 7 years is directly related to the monetary policy that inflated the types of assets that the rich tend to own (stock), while not doing much to improve the wealth of anyone else and in some cases hurting it through the inflation of certain goods that hurt the real purchasing power of everyday peoples. There's not much Obama or the "Democratic elite" can do about that (assuming they want to)other than try to spend government money to power the economy. The Fed officials said multiple times that one big reason they kept interest rates low is because the typical way we keep the economy chugging along when it's slow, stimulus spending, was shut down due to government inaction.

 

I think we're confusing the point on both of these. First, massively increasing the amount of workers out of the labor force is inevitably going to skew unemployment numbers, regardless of the reason. I'm not sure why this has been a point of contention.

Second, yeah I was kind of being flippant in that the systematic wealth inequality is always going to make this economy bad imo, and I was just taking a swipe at the democratic elite (Obama and Hillary included) because its clear that they have no real interest in doing anything about it. Saying they can't do anything about it is dishonest. Redistribution.

 

For any sports fans, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar just wrote a piece for Jacobin on the exploitation of college athletes and how it represents the international class hierarchy that has been epitomized in sports memorabilia. So fucking cool.

College Athletes of the World, Unite | Jacobin

 

That's a couple years old actually, but still it's awesome, yeah!

 

"And I believe in science!" hahaha

 

And he got a cool signed letter from Trump~

 

Need a working government to redistribute, tho. I don't think the President has the power of the pen to just force through tax raises/stimulus spending like that.

 

"Trump spoke for 75 odd minutes....and I do mean odd."

Flash over to Bill who totally looks like he's saying "Yeah I told her to add that in there!"

 

"A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons."

 

Didn't see it but apparently earlier today at a rally he was talking about how he wanted to punch a bunch of the speakers and "one small man in particular" that he wanted to "hit so hard that his head would spin."