This is likely the most important [paper on economics you will read this week (actually, perhaps decade)

[wiegie]

http://www.economicmobility.org/assets/pdf...20Report.pdf%20

 

(before you argue about bias, you should check out the project principals and advisors on the last page of the report--it seems like it is not approaching the question from an ideologically-biased position)

[Puddy]

That's a twelve page paper which means I have to wait until tomorrow since I'm 7 beers into a 6-pack.

[Azazello1313]

 

i am not clicking on it, if for no other reason simply out of protest for the last idiotic NPR link you directed me to.

[wiegie]

i am not clicking on it, if for no other reason simply out of protest for the last idiotic NPR link you directed me to.

 

You didn't find the humor in that other professor giving her dog a 27 syllable name based upon a minister in some 17th century Spanish monarch's court compared to me calling my wife's cat "momo"?

[wiegie]

i am not clicking on it, if for no other reason simply out of protest for the last idiotic NPR link you directed me to.

 

but, if you must have an NPR link, here one is: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.p...943&ft=1&f=1001

 

(I haven't listened to the clip, but it seems to focus on what I would consider the least interesting (and least suprising) portion of the report I originally linked to in this thread)

[Ursa Majoris]

This paper is excellent. It's good to see the cat's out of the bag at long last. Some of us have known this for ages - all you need to do is look at the numbers. They have been there for all to see.

[Azazello1313]

You didn't find the humor in that other professor giving her dog a 27 syllable name based upon a minister in some 17th century Spanish monarch's court compared to me calling my wife's cat "momo"?

 

 

 

 

 

no, not really

[Chief Dick]

I read that report out of respect to you wiegie, and my conclusion is this:

 

I like boobs.

[DMD]

The first chart shows the perspective of the american dream is much better in the US than in the average other country.

 

A collarary question here is this - is the new generation truly sliding behind the old because of some external factors or was the old generation in essence "overpaid" by virtue of the more favorable environment due to lesser international pressures than today?

 

What is the resolution here if in fact it is believed that the problem is that the rich people have too much money and the middle class is not earning as much relative to the same station in life 30 years ago? Tax the upper 1% so much that their bar drops? Adopt more socialistic practices with redistribution of wealth?

 

The "sound byte" from this article (and a column title in the Dallas Morning News today) is that 30 years olds make less now than their father's did back when they were 30. While dollars were adjusted for inflation, how accurately can we compare a 2007 world with all our international commerce/labor/technology/etc. with what existed perhaps in the 1960's or 1970's? How do you factor in all that change?

 

I'll read the article in it's entirety later but read the column about it.

 

It would not surprise me if overall the 30-30 comparison holds some truth, given the tremendous change in companies and corporations and the death of people working at one place all their lives. Throw in all the offshore migration of manufacturing and all the various types of labor, it would be expected that 30-ish age workers now on average make less than their fathers did at that age. Back in the golden age of manufacturing, you could work for a company for 40 years while they did the exact same thing all that time. Now with the advances in technology and such, things change way too fast and skillsets no longer last a lifetime - in some industries like information technology, they may not last five years. You could be a Cobol programmer from the 50-s through the 90's with no problem and be well paid. Now you would need to learn a new language sometimes every few years, knowing that cheaper workers will know the new technology if in fact it is not just shipped to India or Brazil.

 

Nothing in that really surprised me personally, I saw lots of change happen in my 18 years in corporate USA. While it shows that there is a problem that should be no shock (at least to me), not sure how to resolve that as a society in our particular ever changing environment.

[Puddy]

The first chart shows the perspective of the american dream is much better in the US than in the average other country.

 

A collarary question here is this - is the new generation truly sliding behind the old because of some external factors or was the old generation in essence "overpaid" by virtue of the more favorable environment due to lesser international pressures than today?

 

What is the resolution here if in fact it is believed that the problem is that the rich people have too much money and the middle class is not earning as much relative to the same station in life 30 years ago? Tax the upper 1% so much that their bar drops? Adopt more socialistic practices with redistribution of wealth?

 

The "sound byte" from this article (and a column title in the Dallas Morning News today) is that 30 years olds make less now than their father's did back when they were 30. While dollars were adjusted for inflation, how accurately can we compare a 2007 world with all our international commerce/labor/technology/etc. with what existed perhaps in the 1960's or 1970's? How do you factor in all that change?

 

I'll read the article in it's entirety later but read the column about it.

 

It would not surprise me if overall the 30-30 comparison holds some truth, given the tremendous change in companies and corporations and the death of people working at one place all their lives. Throw in all the offshore migration of manufacturing and all the various types of labor, it would be expected that 30-ish age workers now on average make less than their fathers did at that age. Back in the golden age of manufacturing, you could work for a company for 40 years while they did the exact same thing all that time. Now with the advances in technology and such, things change way too fast and skillsets no longer last a lifetime - in some industries like information technology, they may not last five years. You could be a Cobol programmer from the 50-s through the 90's with no problem and be well paid. Now you would need to learn a new language sometimes every few years, knowing that cheaper workers will know the new technology if in fact it is not just shipped to India or Brazil.

 

Nothing in that really surprised me personally, I saw lots of change happen in my 18 years in corporate USA. While it shows that there is a problem that should be no shock (at least to me), not sure how to resolve that as a society in our particular ever changing environment.

 

 

While I like your critical thinking, let's not confuse the issue more than need be. Based on your post, the bottom line is that 30 year-olds are worse off than the previous generation's 30 year-olds. Just because today's workforce jumps around more often than previous generations doesn't mean that their pay scale should be less, does it? In fact, many of today's workers believe that one of the quickest ways to increase earnings is to jump to different jobs in a relatively short amount of time. I'm not sure working for the same company for 30-40 years guarantees higher earnings.

 

I guess I'd have to summize that the shrinking middle class is due to a shrinking business world. Middle class families that depended on factory jobs in the past would probably be considered impoverished today (generally speaking) as a good chunk of those jobs no longer exist in the U.S. Maybe it's as simple as forcing the understanding that education is the key to being successful. The days of getting a line job and making 6 figures are coming to an end. The U.S. is experiencing pains related to an evolving landscape in the workplace. We are quickly becoming a service based society instead of one born of production.

[DMD]

While I like your critical thinking, let's not confuse the issue more than need be. Based on your post, the bottom line is that 30 year-olds are worse off than the previous generation's 30 year-olds. Just because today's workforce jumps around more often than previous generations doesn't mean that their pay scale should be less, does it? In fact, many of today's workers believe that one of the quickest ways to increase earnings is to jump to different jobs in a relatively short amount of time. I'm not sure working for the same company for 30-40 years guarantees higher earnings.

 

I guess I'd have to summize that the shrinking middle class is due to a shrinking business world. Middle class families that depended on factory jobs in the past would probably be considered impoverished today (generally speaking) as a good chunk of those jobs no longer exist in the U.S. Maybe it's as simple as forcing the understanding that education is the key to being successful. The days of getting a line job and making 6 figures are coming to an end. The U.S. is experiencing pains related to an evolving landscape in the workplace. We are quickly becoming a service based society instead of one born of production.

 

 

Jumping jobs to make more money probably happens in a lot of industries but not all of them. I do think overall that a big source of the drop of income between generations is related to all the jobs that no longer exist - particularly in manufacturing. I think it does depend on how transferable skillsets are from company to company.

 

Just as one illustration, I worked for Electronic Data Systems for 18 years. When I started in 1985, it was well known that EDS would bring people and then train them to do the jobs. I was a marketing major in college and a operations manager by trade but I was allowed to switch my job to being a systems engineer with some training (and a lot of personal work). I knew people that worked for EDS for 30 years or more. But starting in the late 90's, it all changed with the pressure from the marketplace to be competitive and slash costs. Now EDS does not train. They just go out and pay a new guy for the skillset he probably just learned in college because it is new and they axe the older guys because they make too much money and why train them when you can buy it cheaper on the street? Then they went to moving a ton of technology jobs to both India and Brazil for cheaper programmers, eliminating one of their highest costs (and highest paid employees). The slipper slope that company is heading down is that there is upper management and there is lower level analysts and the best paying tech jobs are farmed out offshore. IBM did mcuh the same thing which is what forced EDS to do it. IBM was another place that was "employment for life" until around the 1990's and now it is a much different company than it was.

 

When I left EDS to do the Huddle fulltime, I received a standing ovation. Partly because I was so beloved but also because that meant one less person was going to get laid off soon. It is just a reality in the corporate environment - it is night and day between 2007 and 30 years ago. The well paying jobs are ever shrinking.

[Ursa Majoris]

This looks like a repeat of the Gilded Age 80 years ago. There is nothing really wrong with the meritocratic capitalist system - fundamentally it hasn't changed at all since the 1950s when a rising tide really did raise all boats - see the graph showing median income trundling happily along in lockstep with productivity as virtually everyone benefited from new technology and new working methods. So what's changed?

 

Two things:

 

It is no longer sufficient to make the same profit year on year - you have to increase profits all the time or see your company value (as dictated by Wall Street) drop, thus the pressure to keep wages and other costs down is ferocious.

 

This doesn't apply to the very top, which is clearly raking in a bigger share of the overall pie every year, same as was done in the '20s. Even though people are more and more productive, the vast majority just isn't seeing any benefit.

 

So - massive pressure on Mr and Mrs Middle Class simply to tread water combined with the perceived creation of a plutocratic aristocracy retaining a larger portion of the pie causes them to become less optimistic about the future, both for them and their children.

Edited May 27, 2007 by Ursa Majoris

[H8tank]

So - massive pressure on Mr and Mrs Middle Class simply to tread water combined with the perceived creation of a plutocratic aristocracy retaining a larger portion of the pie causes them to become less optimistic about the future, both for them and their children.

 

So when does your flight leave for india? They already, in your words, have a more honest gov't and better healthcare, now they have better jobs? Go, be free!

[Ursa Majoris]

So when does your flight leave for india? They already, in your words, have a more honest gov't and better healthcare, now they have better jobs? Go, be free!

 

This is the last time I will ever respond to you on any subject, simply because you are an irredeemable cretinous liar.

 

1. I have never said India has a better government.

2. I have never said they have better health care.

3. I have never said they have better jobs.

 

And now we're done.

[Puddy]

When I left EDS to do the Huddle fulltime, I received a standing ovation. Partly because I was so beloved

 

[Grits and Shins]

I simply do not understand why I'd want to read any paper on econmics.

[Grits and Shins]

... and BTW ... are economics an intergral part of politics? If so why are we even allowed to discuss it here?