Impossible! The deficit is falling as well as unemployment Obama wrecking economy

[tokeprep]

I read your link, but NOWHERE does it say that 25% of women worked in 1913. Be careful how you read things, facts get left out by omission or cleverly worded sentences. Clearly you fell for it and really thought they said that 25% of women were working. I can state with CERTAIN fact that the BLS never ever said that 25% of women worked in 1913.


The most telling is that if you read the whole BLS article, they make the same argument as I do.

They said under 25%. They didn't say under 20%, under 15%, or under 10%. This leads me to believe that the number is above 20% and below 25%, which seems like it should be more than 6% of the workforce considering the stats they gave for children.

 

[tokeprep]

The actual unemployment rate IS GOING DOWN.

Unemployment only counts if you are receiving an unemployment check.

If you use up all your benefits and no longer get a check, but also can't get a job. well then they take you out of the pool of unemployed workers and call you a marginalized worker and no longer count you as unemployed.

When no one can find a job and no one can work, then we will be at 0% unemployment.

The "signs" of recovery are just the wool being pulled over your eyes.

Unemployment numbers are a government statistic we can agree is terrible. If you don't say you're looking for work, you aren't counted as unemployed.

 

[tokeprep]

When I own a bank and issue more receipts than I have deposits to cover those receipts, I am the prime beneficiary. It can be argued that the customer is the beneficiary because they got loans they would have never gotten if I had not engaged in counterfeiting receipts.........it can even be argued that printing receipts that don't have deposits isn't counterfeiting.....but it is.....it's called usury .......

You insist on forgetting that we have been through this many times in the last few hundred years.....colonial script anyone?

I don't think there is a "prime beneficiary" in your scenario. The bank's depositors make an investment for a return, presumably more than they otherwise could have gotten; the borrowers get loans they couldn't have gotten; the bank pockets the difference between the interest rates. Everyone benefits. Banks make their money by enabling economic development; the banking system is designed to enable as much economic activity as possible, so that more can be produced and more prosperity can be obtained by more people.

It's not some sinister plot. The last few hundred years of history have enabled us to learn from our mistakes, and that's why you didn't see a huge wave of bank failures in 2008 (obviously banks failed, but not many, relatively, and there was no systemic collapse). Despite all of the chaos, banks emerged intact.

People are starting to figure it out in droves......the more they retain silver and gold, the less they have to "absorb" when gamblers default.....as you so eloquently put it earlier describing what happens when loans don't get repaid.

tokeprep you are officially a dead horse, I even tried to be somewhat civil with you. But here I am still typing for nothing while you address my points with others. Be a Fed fanboy if you like, ponzi schemes need ppl like you to succeed. I truly wish you luck in your future stock gambles.

Then why aren't the prices of gold and silver going up?

 

[cannabineer]

Similarly, if you're holding a part-time position that isn't making ends meet, you're employed. In the last fifteen years I have watched the collapse of the expectation of having a career. Now the emphasis is on having a job. To me, that is the great untold story of the failure of prosperity in this nation (and in the developed world (since the heyday of the 60s to 80s. i grew up secure in the knowledge that if I got into a good university and did well in a science/engineering or business degree, there would be a rewarding lifetime career awaiting me. my children don't have that, and I am ashamed in a strange way. I enjoyed the apogee. cn

 

[ASMALLVOICE]

Similarly, if you're holding a part-time position that isn't making ends meet, you're employed. In the last fifteen years I have watched the collapse of the expectation of having a career. Now the emphasis is on having a job. To me, that is the great untold story of the failure of prosperity in this nation (and in the developed world (since the heyday of the 60s to 80s. i grew up secure in the knowledge that if I got into a good university and did well in a science/engineering or business degree, there would be a rewarding lifetime career awaiting me. my children don't have that, and I am ashamed in a strange way. I enjoyed the apogee. cn

Expectations are premeditated resentments - times have and will continue to change, as long as you did/do the best you can do, consider your job done. I raised 2 children and it was an all out mofo at times. I fear it is going to be even tougher for my grandkids. I honestly feel that most of the population has no clue as to the severity of poverty in this country. Okay, "end rant"

Peace

Asmallvoice

 

[cannabineer]

I'll amend your first statement by adding the leading adjective "unmet". Where expectations are reasonable and not intransigent, they can be prospective rewards, motivating the applicant to go for and through the tough training/education process for a difficult, technical career that can be high in impact and satisfaction. I feel truly privileged that for a while there, i held a job that made a real difference. cn

 

[tokeprep]

3,500 hours per year is the average household hours worked outside the home at a job.(2009)

= 13.5 hours worked per day.

in 1971 the average household hours worked per year was 2,800
=10.7 hours worked per day.

Median income of single parent family ( Not part of the statistics above) is $16,500

This substantiates my suspicion about part time earners. If we assume one earner in 1913 worked 50 hours a week, he worked 2,600 hours a year, which means the average household worked 900 hours more in 2009.

Assuming one full time earner and one part time earner, at median income the full timer earns about $30,000 and the part timer earns about $20,000. Your claim was that it only took one earner to support a household in 1913 whereas now it takes two to accomplish the same task. The 1913 worker's income would have been the equivalent of less than $18,000 today, meaning that either the part timer or full timer outpaces him (even though our part timer worked about half as many hours).

How much does it take to support a household? Where I live, you can get a 3 bedroom house for $1,000 a month, and let's add $200 for utilities, for $14,400 a year. I support 2 people on $75 a week at the grocery store, so let's say $150 for 4, which is $7,800. We probably lost about $2,500 to FICA but paid no income tax (with one earner at $30,000, a significant other, and 2 kids). $30,000 - $2,500 - $14,400 - $7,800 = $5,300 left for any other necessities.

Did I leave anything out? Just remember, this is 1913--necessities are pretty much what we've got. If it didn't exist in 1913, you cannot suggest that one person's buying power would have afforded it.

 

[tokeprep]

So you can't answer my question? Afraid?

Per your scenario, I would buy more silver, lots more.

In fact that is what I have done.

I suppose I should have purchased a long term CD per your advice and reap the rewards of .01% return.
Perhaps a Juicy bond I can hold for 10 years and make 1.2%??

Obviously I would have bought more stock, lots more, just as you would have bought more silver. That was my point, that we would have the same reaction--it's time to buy when things are cheap, not time to run. And if we had both bought at the lows in 2008, we would currently be up by almost the same amount.

I haven't advised people to buy anything. My point about CDs was a historical one every time it's come up (that they did beat inflation over specific periods of time); I've said several times now I wouldn't buy one. Likewise, I would never buy government or corporate debt yielding 1% a year.

 

[tokeprep]

page 145:
If you or your staffs have any questions about this report, please contact Orice Williams Brown at [email protected] or (202) 512-8678. Contact points for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page of this report. GAO staff who made major contributions to this report are listed in appendix XVI.
Orice Williams Brown Managing Director, Financial Markets and
Community Investment
Page 145 GAO-11-696 Federal Reserve System

Yup, that says it all, huh?

Allow me to repeat myself: "Page 145 of the PDF: http://www.sanders.senate.gov/imo/me...estigation.pdf." I gave you the PDF page so you wouldn't have to scroll through the document; you looked at page 145 of the report.

So why aren't we all rich? If wages increased more than twice what prices increased, why are we so far in debt and continue to increase the debt?

I think we are all "rich" in a lot of ways compared to 1913. We have things like TVs, computers, and phones with capabilities that no one ever would have imagined; the average household doesn't just have one but two cars; the average new home is a palatial 2000+ square feet of air conditioned paradise with three bathrooms; if you have a heart attack, they can take you to a hospital, crack you open, and keep you alive for another 20 years; and I could just keep going and going and going...

The fact that you were born into all of this prosperity and see it is a totally normal, given thing is irrelevant if none of it existed 100 years ago. That you don't appreciate how much you actually have over what people used to actually have does not mean that you aren't any richer.

 

[tokeprep]

By unregulated cartel, do you mean the Federal Reserve and the banksters?

They certainly wouldn't constitute an unregulated cartel. The FOMC is vote-controlled by the Board of Governors, which is a government-appointed group of non-bankers. Likewise, the entire Federal Reserve System is a creature of statute that be amended and destroyed.

 

[tokeprep]

I don't know how to access the absolute numbers, and I'm not sure anyone does. All i can get are highly-processed fictions like CPIs. Even corporate accounting isn't an exact art. There are eight or more ways to keep the books, some more stringent in discretionary policy decisions than others, and none of them is wrong.
i have the soul of an engineer. The soft, statistical disciplines are a nest of snakes to me. cn

CPI is certainly a fiction in the sense that you have things like cell phone service become part of the inflation calculation. But what else can you do, if the goal is to accurately measure a consumer's purchasing power?

If you're cynically suggesting that the BLS manipulates CPI just as a CFO might manipulate corporate accounting, to produce the best result, I doubt it. PhDs tend to be dedicated to their pets, and civil servants aren't easy to fire. I think the people who calculate CPI strive for accurate numbers, whatever they are.

 

[ginwilly]

CPI is certainly a fiction in the sense that you have things like cell phone service become part of the inflation calculation. But what else can you do, if the goal is to accurately measure a consumer's purchasing power?

If you're cynically suggesting that the BLS manipulates CPI just as a CFO might manipulate corporate accounting, to produce the best result, I doubt it. PhDs tend to be dedicated to their pets, and civil servants aren't easy to fire. I think the people who calculate CPI strive for accurate numbers, whatever they are.

I would cynically suggest that the BLS is told what parameters to use. There are almost as many models for inflation as there are for unemployment. They release as official what they are told is official.

This doesn't make their numbers any less accurate. Like the CBO says, they can only score what they are given to score.

 

[tokeprep]

Don't take my word for it let's get it from the horse's mouth.................

Indeed, from a horse's mouth. The first quote has no primary source and was first attributed to Rothschild in a book someone wrote about banking in the 1930s; the second quote comes from letters that were exposed as forgeries, since they cite an 1876 court case despite supposedly being written in 1863.

Don't take my word for it, investigate your own quotes.

 

[cannabineer]

CPI is certainly a fiction in the sense that you have things like cell phone service become part of the inflation calculation. But what else can you do, if the goal is to accurately measure a consumer's purchasing power?

If you're cynically suggesting that the BLS manipulates CPI just as a CFO might manipulate corporate accounting, to produce the best result, I doubt it. PhDs tend to be dedicated to their pets, and civil servants aren't easy to fire. I think the people who calculate CPI strive for accurate numbers, whatever they are.

I don't doubt it. The Gov't accountants are under pressure to understate the numbers because a tremendous leveraging effect, with compound interest, then reduces entitlement payouts.
I don't have a cell phone.
i don't have TV service.
I'm something of a Luddite.
And over the last 12 years on SSDI, my real purchasing power has been cut by maybe a third. cn

 

[tokeprep]

I would cynically suggest that the BLS is told what parameters to use. There are almost as many models for inflation as there are for unemployment. They release as official what they are told is official.

This doesn't make their numbers any less accurate. Like the CBO says, they can only score what they are given to score.

That's contradicted by the wealth of information BLS publishes. You can find very detailed explanations of how they make calculations. Indeed, when I look through it I'm pretty amazed at how thoroughly some of the questions have been considered. It really is just a matter of measuring the data, and the fact that they publish several different CPI numbers should bolster that conclusion.

 

[tokeprep]

I don't doubt it. The Gov't accountants are under pressure to understate the numbers because a tremendous leveraging effect, with compound interest, then reduces entitlement payouts.
I don't have a cell phone.
i don't have TV service.
I'm something of a Luddite.
And over the last 12 years on SSDI, my real purchasing power has been cut by maybe a third. cn

If you aren't purchasing the consumer basket, CPI isn't supposed to accurately reflect your purchasing power. That doesn't mean that CPI is flawed for everyone, just that it isn't representative for you personally (and you just acknowledged your Luddite-ness).

As I've said before, I don't think civil servants feel as much pressure as everyone here cynically suggests. They're relatively protected from politically-motivated attack, precisely because we don't want their jobs to be dependent on pleasing the politicians running the government. Having worked in one of those big federal government office buildings, I think people are less likely to respond to pressure than this forum believes.

Especially if when you get fired you've got a great job waiting for you on the outside, as the economists at BLS most certainly do...

 

[cannabineer]

If you aren't purchasing the consumer basket, CPI isn't supposed to accurately reflect your purchasing power. That doesn't mean that CPI is flawed for everyone, just that it isn't representative for you personally (and you just acknowledged your Luddite-ness).

As I've said before, I don't think civil servants feel as much pressure as everyone here cynically suggests. They're relatively protected from politically-motivated attack, precisely because we don't want their jobs to be dependent on pleasing the politicians running the government. Having worked in one of those big federal government office buildings, I think people are less likely to respond to pressure than this forum believes.

Especially if when you get fired you've got a great job waiting for you on the outside, as the economists at BLS most certainly do...

I underlined my Luddite tendency to show that I am a cheap old b***ard and haven't participated in the increased share of consumer spending going toward info tech. Bottom line, I should be saving relative to the mean. And still I can buy less of what i need. cn

 

[ginwilly]

That's contradicted by the wealth of information BLS publishes. You can find very detailed explanations of how they make calculations. Indeed, when I look through it I'm pretty amazed at how thoroughly some of the questions have been considered. It really is just a matter of measuring the data, and the fact that they publish several different CPI numbers should bolster that conclusion.

Well of course, I wasn't arguing that. I'm just saying you can find inflationary numbers that will match whatever argument you want to make just by picking which basket to count.

The only inflation number that really means anything is the individual inflation based on if my dollar buys more or less of what I buy. If you count items that I don't put in my basket, then your number is meaningless to me.

If you are basing policy off of inflation, then you can pick the inflation numbers to support this. Utilities, gas and food are welcome to be ignored.

 

[twostrokenut]

I don't think there is a "prime beneficiary" in your scenario. The bank's depositors make an investment for a return, presumably more than they otherwise could have gotten; the borrowers get loans they couldn't have gotten; the bank pockets the difference between the interest rates. Everyone benefits. Banks make their money by enabling economic development; the banking system is designed to enable as much economic activity as possible, so that more can be produced and more prosperity can be obtained by more people.

It's not some sinister plot. The last few hundred years of history have enabled us to learn from our mistakes, and that's why you didn't see a huge wave of bank failures in 2008 (obviously banks failed, but not many, relatively, and there was no systemic collapse). Despite all of the chaos, banks emerged intact.



Then why aren't the prices of gold and silver going up?

The bank pockets only the difference in the interest rates....omgooooooood.........

They pocket whatever they make while gambling your deposit while it is on deposit.

They pocket any and all loans weather they are paid off or not. If you pay it off they pocket the full principal plus the interest....if you don't pay it off they pocket the real property(repo) AND the taxpayer absorbs the loss on paper, which affects them when they spend their paper...double wham... Let's not forget that banks don't go get money from the vault when you get a loan....they fractionally lend, meaning they lend more than they have.....they create a "new deposit" that they "lend" you after you sign for it...fractional reserve lending also keeps people from being told "no" when they go to withdraw from deposits....

They pocket money cashing their own instruments.....cash a BOA check at BOA without an account and see if they don't charge you a couple bucks. That is the very definition of a "bad check", not being cashable for face value and all.

They pocket by being able to use newly created funds drawn on the good name of the good people of the US by their politician buddy's before the market knows they exist. If you get $100m at the source....hot off the press....they you spend it before it inflates....that is huge.

You are describing "banks" as they were when they were purely private entities without protection from the government.

The reason there wasn't a huge wave of bank failures in 2008 is because they were bailed out hello??

C'mon we have all read Modern Money Mechanics......You can't have it both ways, admitting you know what fractional reserve lending is, justifying it as "better for all" and raising the standard of living for all and then pretending you think banks operate like mom and pop operations by only making the difference of interest, as they did before fractional reserve lending existed.....

Gold and silver do not go up or down, only what they are measured against goes up and down. We know this is true because we know we can print as much money as we want, but we can't mine all the gold we want, this stability is what provides the stability that PEOPLE use to create wealth.

The POTUS could personally come over to your house, right now, quite literally, and fill your house with brand new Federal Reserve Notes. The whole world, (maybe not collectivist they mostly philosophize about how to get stuff done)can not possibly even fill your living room with new gold. That is soooooooo much easier to understand than your complicated socialist stuff.

Edit: than socialist stuff.....no "your"

 

[NoDrama]

Unemployment numbers are a government statistic we can agree is terrible. If you don't say you're looking for work, you aren't counted as unemployed.

It only matters if you are receiving a UI check. They do not ask every person without a job whether or not they are looking every month.