H. Ross Perot's $13/hr factory jobs going to Mexico in 1992 should pay $27/hr today adjusted for inflation but pay only $18

The giant sucking sound clip from 1992 is here.

Perot characterized factory wages in 1992 as typically paying between $12 and $14 per hour.

Adjusted for inflation the $13 job in 2017 would pay nearly $27 per hour. The reality is it pays a lot less than that. Factory work in Michigan today basically starts at $15, up only 25% not 107%. The average manufacturing job paying $21+ is composed of a lot of such lower paying positions.

The reality is in Michigan that the top eventual $18/hr advertised wage is the equivalent of less than $9/hr in 1992.

The jobs have gone out of the country, expanding middle classes abroad while impoverishing our own at home.

OK, let's be honest: Racism is so yesterday when unpatriotic Republicans and Democrats get rich and get votes off cheap foreign labor

Republicans specialize in spending money on putting Americans out of work, by importing cheap foreign labor and giving tax breaks to job-exporting corporations

Sure, sure, 1,147 hard-working Americans scared of losing their jobs sat patiently all the way through this Quinnipiac Poll until Question 47 on The Wall

December 18, 2018 - U.S. Voters Say No Wall And Don't Shut Down Government, Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds;Focus On Issues, Not Impeachment, Voters Tell Dems 7-1 

Don't piss down my back Brainard and tell me this is full employment, beyond full employment, or pearly shells

I love Pearly Shells.

Fed's Brainard: US economy at or beyond full employment

Twelve years ago 63.4% of the population had a job. In November 2018 it's just 60.6%. We could easily have 164 million employed. Instead we've got only 156.8 million, 7.2 million fewer adjusted for population.

At the rate we're going it'll be the year 2025 before we're back to 63%.

Brainard knows NOTHING!

"Ten years ago I made over $22 an hour"

"Now I make $11."

"Thanks a lot."

We don't need any more immigrants: Population increases have outpaced labor force increases for a decade

Before the Great Recession the growth rate of the labor force easily exceeded the growth rate of population for decade after decade, but since then the situation has reversed dramatically.

Population has been increasing at a rate 75% higher than the labor force over the last decade. The increased population is not assimilating to work.

THERE IS NO LABOR SHORTAGE.

Increasing the population of the non-working has been the number one drag on the economy, causing GDP to fall and debt to rise, negatively impacting every standard measure.

Money in politics: Democrats spent $14.2 million per seat on average in the ten costliest US House races

And your average US Senate win just recently cost only $10 million (every six years, not every two).

For jobs which pay only $174,000 a year.

There's something funny going on here, Lucy.

Non-stop ads and robocalls: welcome to America's costliest election:

Democrats and their allies in the 10 costliest House races spent $142 million to Republicans' $96 million, Reuters' analysis found.

Marijuana legalization is the spearhead of America's anti-conservative libertarian tide and ultimately of America's decline

Eventually there will be no place left to hide from marijuana users in America. And they are going to be the end of America as we once knew it. Marijuana legalization is coming to every state in the country, for the reason that a shared version of libertarianism is now America's dominant ideology, irrespective of political party. The consequences of extreme individualism are about to assert themselves like never before. Formerly, self-control and self-denial as practised by countless millions of America's original inhabitants and their descendants had been key to making America the great country which it became. Those values made possible the hard work and savings which were the necessary predicates of that greatness. But all that is in the rear view mirror now. As Baby Boomers squandered  the achievements of their parents, their children have learned from them only too well and have drunk deep from their well of narcissism. People like this will never make the country great like it was. A country full of laid back mellow folks  will never work hard and save, nor even acknowledge its need to do so. It is not a coincidence that the most hated men in America in 2012 and 2016 didn't even drink.

Marijuana Won The Midterm Elections :

Michigan voters approved a ballot measure making their state the first in the midwest to legalize cannabis. Missouri approved an initiative to allow medical marijuana, as did Utah. Voters in several Ohio cities approved local marijuana decriminalization measures, and a number of Wisconsin counties and cities strongly approved nonbinding ballot questions calling for cannabis reform. While North Dakota's long-shot marijuana legalization measure failed, cannabis also scored a number of big victories when it came to the results of candidate races. ... In Illinois, Democrat J.B. Pritzker won the governor's race after making marijuana legalization a centerpiece of his campaign. ... Minnesota Gov.-elect Tim Walz (D) wants to "replace the current failed policy with one that creates tax revenue, grows jobs, builds opportunities for Minnesotans, protects Minnesota kids, and trusts adults to make personal decisions based on their personal freedoms." ... In New Mexico, Michelle Lujan Grisham (D), who won the governor's race, said legalizing marijuana will bring “hundreds of millions of dollars to New Mexico’s economy." In New York, while easily reelected Gov Andrew Cuomo (D) had previously expressed opposition to legalization, he more recently empaneled a working group to draft legislation to end cannabis prohibition that the legislature can consider in 2019, a prospect whose chances just got a lot better in light of the fact that Democrats took control of the state's Senate. In Wisconsin, Democrat Tony Evers supports decriminalizing marijuana and allowing medical cannabis, and says he wants to put a full marijuana legalization question before voters to decide. He ousted incumbent Gov. Scott Walker (R) on Tuesday. ... Last month, a national Gallup survey found that 66 percent of Americans support legalizing marijuana, including a clear majority of Republicans.

 

What matters to Rush Limbaugh is that Trump get reelected in 2020, not that we get jobs, pay raises and The Wall

Politics, not people, is what matters to Rush Limbaugh.

We now face two years of gridlock, attacks, investigations and impeachment because feckless Republicans lost the US House.

Trump and the Republicans squandered their first year, and delivered nothing consequential for average Americans in their second, and now they've paid the political price. Losing 30+ seats and not even running in 30+ more is retreating, not fighting.

Meanwhile we get bupkis, as usual.

The only redeeming thing is that we might get some good judges because Republicans still control the US Senate, but that doesn't pay the mortgage.

Clintonite Mark Penn: Trump has ideas, Democrats have only attacks, investigations and impeachment

Here:

Trump has also deployed more specific issue ideas than anyone in a long time. ...

Other than investigations and impeachment, what are the Democrats running on? They have made an issue of health insurance coverage for pre-existing conditions. Trump has said he too would cover them. The Democratic idea is not a health-care plan, but an attack.

Nor do Democrats have an economic plan many people can remember. Nor a plan on immigration. Nor a plan to deal with jobs migrating to China and Mexico.

President Trump taunts the Democrats, calling them the “open borders” party. And yet the Democrats have absolutely no plan for dealing with illegal immigration. In response, they attack the president personally – exactly how Hillary Clinton handled Trump in the last presidential campaign.

Piers Morgan: Trump is kicking Democrats' ass

Piers Morgan, here:

According to the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, Trump is now at 47% approval, compared to Obama’s 45% two weeks before the midterm elections in 2010. ...

And I see a President who’s growing stronger by the day.

Trump’s become a political Godzilla, crushing everyone who dares challenge him and bulldozing his way through an agenda that is beginning to pay real dividends.

In less than two years, Trump’s got two nominees onto the Supreme Court, entrenching a Conservative majority.

He’s slashed taxes, and regulations – sparking a boom in the US economy that shows no sign of stopping, a surge in jobs and record low unemployment.

Trump’s forged a peaceful dialogue with North Korea, launched a trade war with China that many think is long overdue, withdrawn from the obviously flawed Iran nuclear deal and Trans-Pacific Partnership, forced Mexico and Canada to update NAFTA, bullied NATO countries into paying their bills, and bombed ISIS out of Iraq and Syria.

He’s also clamped down hard on illegal immigration.

As I write this, a ‘caravan’ of more than 7,000 Central American migrants – most of them from Honduras - is moving towards the Southern border.

They intend trying to enter the United States illegally.

It’s hard to think of a more powerful image to vindicate Trump’s much criticized demand for a new ‘Wall’, isn’t it?

The so-called tight labor market is a euphemism for age discrimination by employers

Employers can't find enough young, cheap labor because of declining birth rates, reducing the available pool (blue line year over year growth in decline on an average basis since the mid-1980s, lower than 1% for 20 years).

There's still plenty of older, more expensive labor out there, but employers keep getting rid of them and won't rehire them (red line year over year growth steady between 2-3% for 20 years).

Alan Greenspan's tight labor market is fake news: Unemployment is really 8.4%

In September 2018, the civilian labor force was just 62.7% of the civilian noninstitutional population (161.958 million X 100 / 258.290 million = 62.7).

Not seasonally adjusted, this yielded an unemployment rate of 3.6% (5.766 million unemployed X 100 / 161.958 million = 3.56, before rounding up).

Unfortunately that's only because the labor force shrank by 8.5 million since 2008. The labor force then averaged 66% of the civilian noninstitutional population, not today's 62.7%.

Taking 66% of September 2018's civilian noninstitutional population means a labor force of 170.5 million instead of the not quite 162 million we've actually got. Where'd all those 8.5 million go? New Zealand?

Add 'em back in on both sides of the equation, both to the size of the labor force and to the unemployed, because they are obviously not working, and unemployment soars to . . . 8.4% (14.266 million unemployed X 100 / 170.458 million = 8.36).

All this labor slack is the reason wages fail to go up at rates of 3-4% as in previous recoveries.

It's not a tight labor market.

If we had 66% of the population in the labor force like we still did in 2008, it would be 8.5 million larger in 2018 than it is

dailyvaluewatch.blogspot.com

It's a myth that we need more immigrants when the share of population increases joining the labor force is down 59%

W-2 payroll data for 2017 just out shows huge slowdown to monthly additions from 2016

Monthly additions dropped from 227,000 (revised up 4,000) in 2016 to 160,000 in 2017 (figures rounded to the nearest thousand).

There were a number of other revisions to the data in this series of more minor significance (incorporated).

Total nonfarm December 2017 on December 2016 was up 182,000 monthly. The civilian employment level was up 149,000 monthly.

Since the Great Recession, Hispanics took over 4 jobs for every job going to whites, Blacks took 2, and Asians nearly 2

The jobs recovery from the Great Recession has by-passed white people even two years after Trump election

Hispanics and Blacks got all the jobs since 2007, whites got bupkis

Hispanic jobs are up 6.5 million, or 31%.

Black jobs are up 3.1 million, or 19%.

White jobs are up 1.2 million, or 1%.

That means over 60% of all these jobs went to Hispanics, 29% to Blacks, and 11% to whites. And they say the whites are the racists.

WHITE

BLACK

HISPANIC