95 Percent Of The Jobs Lost During The Recession Were Middle Class Jobs

[Paul Or Nothing II]

Another post of mine on the same topic

Is this supposed to be some kind of joke or something? I don't know how can you not know the implications after spending so much time on this forum!

Anyways, when people prefer imported products, it's because they are more cost-efficient, & it's the nature of the markets to continuously move towards the most cost-efficient products
So, imports only means that the labor used on producing those products domestically would be used to produce something else & hence there would be MORE goods & services (REAL WEALTH) within the country, lower prices & higher living-standards so jobs don't necessarily have to be "lost", they merely shift to producing other products.
The problem isnt' necessarily the imports, they merely INCREASE real wealth in the country; the problems are the often the regulatory hindrances that prevent businesses from taking utilizing that labor as soon as possible & other stupid laws like minimum wage laws, which keep people unemployed

Ah! The money! That's the Keynesian issue because they think "money" is wealth & that's why they THINK just printing more of it will create more wealth But for those who understand real economics, GOODS & SERVICES are REAL WEALTH; if "money" was wealth then Zimbabwe would have become the richest nation in the world when they'd hyperinflation.

Let's look at a simple example :
Let's say there are a $100 in the economy & there are 100 people capable of producing 100 goods in a closed economy
Now, that's the baseline at an averate rate of 1 person = 1 good = $1
Let's say 11 goods are imported from China at $10, what effect does that have on 100 Americans' labor capacity? NONE. They can STILL produce 100 goods & since the supply of money has reduced in relation to labor, it puts downward pressure on its NOMINAL price (wage/salary) so now it's $0.90 = 1 person = 1 good
But guess what happened to the WHOLE ECONOMY, now there are 111 goods (100 + 11 imports) & $90, meaning every $1 is worth 1.23 goods instead of $1 = 1 good, the average NOMINAL wage has dropped from $1 to $0.90 BUT previously they could each buy 1 good on average, now they can buy 1.11 goods each on average (1.23 x 0.90)
Oooh, those $10 are gone BUT there are 11 MORE goods that otherwise wouldn't have been there

So again, "money" is NOT wealth at the macro-level, it's the goods & services that determine the living-standards within a country, the more goods & services there are, the cheaper they'll be & higher the living-standards

Again, you should seriously consider leaning about "opportunity cost"
You keep posting this Keynesian fallacies that have been debunked ages ago, you should read this book & may be you'll gather the market-perspective - http://www.hacer.org/pdf/Hazlitt00.pdf
It's a very short book, written in plain English & it's absolutely free so please go ahead & have a look!

[Paul Or Nothing II]

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[Paul Or Nothing II]

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[showpan]

You're explanation doesn't hold water and is based upon "0" facts

Calling me Liberal IS a bullshit tactic.

Min wage only takes a a few pennies from Walmart and McDonalds and has absolutely no effect on their profits or companies that employ the middle class who has been hiding their money in offshore accounts.

The middle class jobs are lost because manufacturing has been lost. The reason the numbers are false would be because the new middle class...our troops...have been added. Fire 100,000 manufacturing workers and hire 100,000 troops.

You're whole take on this Paul Or Nothing II ignores every fact out there.

You're so called free market myths have and never will be a reality.

The real Liberals are the neocons.

I am a constitutionalist.

You are a globalist

get it right please.

[The Gold Standard]

You're explanation doesn't hold water and is based upon "0" facts

Calling me Liberal IS a bullshit tactic.

Min wage only takes a a few pennies from Walmart and McDonalds and has absolutely no effect on their profits or companies that employ the middle class who has been hiding their money in offshore accounts.

The middle class jobs are lost because manufacturing has been lost. The reason the numbers are false would be because the new middle class...our troops...have been added. Fire 100,000 manufacturing workers and hire 100,000 troops.

You're whole take on this Paul Or Nothing II ignores every fact out there.

You're so called free market myths have and never will be a reality.

The real Liberals are the neocons.

I am a constitutionalist.

You are a globalist

get it right please.

Minimum wage doesn't take anything from Walmart or McDonald's. They just hire fewer workers.

Manufacturing jobs are gone because it costs too much money to manufacture products here. Oil, gas, steel, copper, labor, etc. are all rising in price and have been for 100 years. At some point it got too expensive. You can thank your heroes at the Fed for that.

The middle class jobs that we do have pay less and less every year, because the prices of most things people buy increase every year. You can thank your heroes at the Fed for that too.

Every time the "free market myths" have been tried it has led to decreased poverty and increased prosperity.

I assume your solutions are protective tariffs and printing the money to pay higher nominal wages and empowering unions to drive the wages up. How has that "reality" worked throughout history? Oh, we had a 15 year depression.

[Paul Or Nothing II]

You're explanation doesn't hold water and is based upon "0" facts

And your "facts" are based on - conspiracy theories

Seriously, anyone who proclaims that tariffs are panacea for prosperity simply doesn't understand what causes prosperity; prosperity is caused by more & more goods & services, NOT by redistribution, whether that redistribution is done through income taxes, tariffs or whatever, theft doesn't create sustainable prosperity, that's why socialism/communism always fails

Calling me Liberal IS a bullshit tactic.

You are a liberal - you want more & more government-intervention, you like regulations & environmentalism, you have no faith in the markets, you don't understand simple economics & you talk of "decent wage" instead of market-wage & who knows how much more government intervention you want

Min wage only takes a a few pennies from Walmart and McDonalds and has absolutely no effect on their profits or companies that employ the middle class who has been hiding their money in offshore accounts.

The profits they make aren't an arbitrary phenomenon, they're determined by the market-forces of supply-demand for the services they provide; read the book I've linked & go to chapter "The Function of Profits"

The middle class jobs are lost because manufacturing has been lost. The reason the numbers are false would be because the new middle class...our troops...have been added. Fire 100,000 manufacturing workers and hire 100,000 troops.

Manufacturing has been lost because the competition on the labor market has increased & as it works with anything else, increased supply lowers prices; sure, you can put up tariffs all you want, all it's going to do is raise prices WITHIN the US while the rest of the world benefits from cheaper products; many third world countries tried to do exactly the same thing, they tried to block cheaper foreign products & relegated themselves to lower living-standards with their misguided economic notions

Again, if tariffs were the panacea then everybody would just put up tariffs & become prosperous but that's not how it works

You're whole take on this Paul Or Nothing II ignores every fact out there.

You're so called free market myths have and never will be a reality.

What I'm saying has nothing to do with free markets, prices/wages & profits are ALWAYS dictated by the market-forces of supply & demand; you might understand that if you read the book I've posted & read the chapter "How the Price System Works"

And there are only two choices, markets & government

Those who seek freedom & understand economics always choose markets but you like a typical liberal/progressive choose the government force & redistribution

The real Liberals are the neocons.

I am a constitutionalist.

You are a globalist

get it right please.

I'm a capitalist, who understands that prosperity is propelled by higher availability of goods & services, NOT by raising prices or blocking cheap goods or redistribution through government force
Again, imports will have no impact on local employment or local productivity, they can still produce to their fullest, imports just form NET ADDITION to total goods & services in the country; the problem though is that there are two many socialists who believe in government-intervention, be it minimum wage, welfare-subsidies, high taxes, high regulations, etc which mayn't allow the markets to re-allocate economic resources like labor & capital

Again, I'm a capitalist & so is Ron Paul & he understands the net-negative effect of tariffs & trade-wars

http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul21.html

We've all heard about how these tariffs are needed to protect the jobs of American steelworkers, but we never hear about the jobs that will be lost or never created when the cost of steel rises 30 percent. We forget that tariffs are taxes, and that imposing tariffs means raising taxes. Why is the administration raising taxes on American steel consumers? Apparently no one in the administration has read Henry Hazlitt's classic book, Economics in one Lesson. Professor Hazlitt's fundamental lesson was simple: We must examine economic policy by considering the long-term effects of any proposal on all groups. The administration instead chose to focus only on the immediate effects of steel tariffs on one group, the domestic steel industry. In doing so, it chose to ignore basic economics for the sake of political expediency. Now I grant you that this is hardly anything new in this town, but it's important that we see these tariffs as the political favors that they are. This has nothing to do with fairness. The free market is fair; it alone justly rewards the worthiest competitors. Tariffs reward the strongest Washington lobbies.

For the third time, read the book that Ron Paul is advocating, Economics in One Lesson, here it is completely FREE - http://www.hacer.org/pdf/Hazlitt00.pdf
Important topics - "How the Price System Works", "The Function of Profits", "Minimum Wage Laws" & of course, your favorites, "Who's Protected by Tariffs?" & "Saving X Industry"

The whole book is simple yet powerful exposition on how the markets work & how government-intervention of the noblest kind always ends up with bad consequences

[Paul Or Nothing II]

Minimum wage doesn't take anything from Walmart or McDonald's. They just hire fewer workers.

Manufacturing jobs are gone because it costs too much money to manufacture products here. Oil, gas, steel, copper, labor, etc. are all rising in price and have been for 100 years. At some point it got too expensive. You can thank your heroes at the Fed for that.

The middle class jobs that we do have pay less and less every year, because the prices of most things people buy increase every year. You can thank your heroes at the Fed for that too.

Every time the "free market myths" have been tried it has led to decreased poverty and increased prosperity.

I assume your solutions are protective tariffs and printing the money to pay higher nominal wages and empowering unions to drive the wages up. How has that "reality" worked throughout history? Oh, we had a 15 year depression.

+1

Yes, "free market myths", statements like that can only come from liberal socialists, who believe government, government & more government & force, force & more force is the answer to problems; things like liberty, voluntary action, market-economics, etc etc don't matter

[showpan]

Fact

The Waltons have a combined worth of $100 BILLION. They are the richest and nobody even comes close to them. Minimum wage has not hurt their bottom line at all. As a matter of fact, why don't you check their financials and see how well they have done since min wage was increased. But then facts are pretty much ignored as only opinions keep getting repeated here. It also has not effected the amount of stores they have opened or are planning to open as they are constantly hiring because some shit for brains college grad gets hired as a corporate manager and has no clue on how to responsibly manage given resources and has absolutely no clue about human resources. But never the less, they still make a lot of money selling those cheap crappy Chinese goods that barely last a year or just until the warrenty runs out.

Just because you read a book does not give you the intelligence to make rational assumptions concerning reality. How long has Paul II actually worked in a factory...lol...I'm betting never. Throwing the "LIBERAL" around like you actually know what one is exposes your immaturity.

It's no secret that lowering tariffs increases unemployment. It's been proven for over 200 years and 25 MILLION Americans are now out of work. You claim that it was the cost of doing business.....this is just some more political bullshit that you read in one of your biased unrealistic books based on "0" facts.

The truth is that the cost of doing business was greatly reduced before NAFTA was enacted.

The Federal Register is where all of America's proposed and adopted regulations are found, and in 1980 it ran 87,012 pages. By 1986, this was cut almost in half: to 47,418 pages The current one can be found here.

Billions of dollars in political contributions freed corporate giants from numerous regulations since the 1970s.

Jimmy Carter, in fact, spearheaded deregulation Nixon and Ford began by hiring Alfred Kahn to head the Civil Aeronautics Board.

The 1978 Airline Deregulation Act followed. It dissolved the CAB, removed industry restraints, eased consolidation, and subsequent bills deregulated trucking and railroads - the 1980 Motor Carrier Act and 1980 Staggers Rail Act, following the 1976 Railroad Revitalization and Regulatory Reform Act.

Carter also phased out interest rate deposit ceilings, and gave the Fed more power through the 1980 Depository Institutions and Monetary Control Act, removing New Deal restraints and enabling subsequent administrations to go further.

Under Reagan, energy deregulation followed, notably oil and gas, then electric utilities under GHW Bush and Clinton, the result being high prices, brownouts, and Enron-like scandals.

In the 1980s, the 1982 Alternative Mortgage Transactions Parity Act led to exotic feature mortgages with adjustable rates or interest-only. They carry low "teaser" rates for several years, after which they're adjusted much higher, often making loans unaffordable, especially for low-income, high-risk borrowers using subprime and Alt-A loans.

The 1982 Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act deregulated thrifts and fueled fraud, so much that the Savings and Loan crisis followed. As a result, hundreds of banks failed, sticking taxpayers with most of the $160 billion cost. In 1987, the Government Accountability Office (GOA) declared the S & L deposit insurance fund insolvent because of mounting bank failures.

1980's OSHA was seriously cut by Reagan, then Bush. Clinton tried to raise standards but was forced to eliminate them in his deal with the GOP a year later.

In 1988, global regulators imposed minimum bank capital requirements, known as the Basel Accord or Basel I, enforced in G-10 countries.

In 1989, the Financial Institutions Reform and Recovery Act abolished the Federal Home Loan Bank Board and FSLIC, transferring them to the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) and FDIC. It also created the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) to liquidate troubled assets, assume Federal Home Loan Bank Board insurance functions, and clean up a troubled system.

Clinton era telecommunications deregulation let media and telecommunication giants consolidate, gave new digital television broadcast spectrum space to current TV station owners, and let cable companies increase their local monopoly positions.

His 1994 Reigle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act let bank holding companies operate in more than one state.

In 1996, the Fed reinterpreted Glass-Steagall to let bank holding companies earn up to 25% of their revenue from investment banking.

The 1998 Citicorp-Travelers merger followed, combining a commercial/investment bank with an insurance company ahead of the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act, also called the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) authorizing it.

In 2000, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA) passed, legitimizing swap agreements and other hybrid instruments, at the heart of today's problems by ending regulatory oversight of derivatives and leveraging that turned Wall Street more than ever into a casino.

EPA Deregulation of Pesticide Tests on Humans 2004

This is just a partial list and I won't list all of the Deregulation that Bush did because I have already proven my point.

Deregulation has been the topic of almost every administration since Carter and corporations had successfully lowered their burden prior to NAFTA. If regulations have been cut since the 1970's, than why would corporations wait until after NAFTA to leave in mass amounts?

[showpan]

Reagan lowered taxes for corporations and the top income brackets and then raised sales taxes and personal taxes to make the working class pay for those cuts.

Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981
Included in the act was an across-the-board decrease in the marginal income tax rates in the U.S. by 23% over three years, with the top rate falling from 70% to 50% and the bottom rate dropping from 14% to 11%. This act slashed estate taxes and trimmed taxes paid by business corporations by $150 billion over a five year period. Additionally the tax rates were indexed for inflation

Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982
Improvements in compliance and collection. Imposed withholding on interest and dividends; further accelerated corporate estimated tax payments; expanded information reporting; and increased penalties on non-compliance.
Reduction in unintended benefits and obsolete incentives. Strengthened individual minimum tax; repealed future acceleration of depreciation allowances; repealed safe-harbor leasing; and tightened completed contract method of accounting rules.
Increased excise taxes. Increased airport and airway trust fund taxes, cigarette excise taxes, and telephone excise tax.
Increased employment taxes. Increased FUTA tax rate and wage base, and extended hospital insurance taxes to Federal employees.

Federal Unemployment Tax Act wage base and tax rate were increased. Excise taxes on cigarettes were temporarily doubled, and excise taxes on telephone service tripled, in TEFRA

Highway Revenue Act of 1982
Increased the United States gasoline excise tax from 4 cents to 9 cents to pay for:

Surface Transportation Assistance Act
four cents dedicated to restore interstate highways and bridges, and one cent for public transit.

Social Security Amendments of 1983
Accelerated scheduled increases in OASDI payroll tax rate.
Taxed Social Security benefits. At most 50 percent of Social Security benefits subject to tax if income exceeds $25,000 for a single taxpayer or $32,000 for a joint return

Railroad Retirement Revenue Act of 1983
Increased railroad retirement payroll taxes and railroad unemployment insurance taxes.
Taxed railroad retirement pension plan benefits.

Deficit Reduction Act of 1984
Increased excise taxes. Increased distilled spirits excise tax and extended telephone excise tax.
Restrictions on leasing. Reduced benefits from tax-exempt leasing and postponed effective data of liberalized finance leasing rules.
Increased depreciable life of structures from 15 to 18 years.
Placed state volume limitation on private purpose tax exempt bonds.
Placed time value of money restrictions on accounting rules.
Repealed net interest exclusion (ERTA provision) before its effective date.
Reduced long-term capital gains holding period from one year to six months.
Increased earned income credit rate and phaseout range.
Set maximum estate tax rate at 55 percent.

Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 (COBRA)
Permanently extended 16 cents per pack cigarette excise tax.
Enacted new excise tax on smokeless tobacco.
Increased excise tax on coal production.
Extended hospital insurance coverage to new state and local government employees.
Repealed income averaging for former students.

Tax Reform Act of 1986
Individual income tax provisions. Lowered top marginal tax rate to 28 percent; increased standard deduction to $5,000 for married couples; increased personal exemption to $2,000; and increased earned income tax credit.
Repealed two-earner deduction, long-term capital gains exclusion, state and local sales tax deduction, income averaging, and exclusion of unemployment benefits. Limited IRA eligibility, consumer interest deduction, deductibility of passive losses, medical expenses deductions, deduction for business meals and entertainment, pension contributions, and miscellaneous expense deduction.
Reduced top corporate marginal tax rate to 34 percent, and tightened corporate minimum tax.
Repealed the investment tax credit and lengthened capital cost recovery periods.
Further tightened state volume limitations for private purpose tax-exempt bonds.
Extended research and experimentation credit: initiated new low-income housing tax credit and phased in deductibility of health insurance costs of self-employed individuals.

Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1986
Accelerated state and local government deposits of Social Security payroll taxes.
Accelerated collections of alcohol and tobacco excise taxes.
Increased substantial underpayment penalty and penalty for failure to comply with deposit requirements.
Increased customs user fee on value of imported merchandise.

Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986
Enacted excise tax of 8.2 cents per barrel on domestic crude oil and 11.7 cents per barrel on imported petroleum products.
Lowered the tax on all corporations equal to 0.12 percent of alternative minimum taxable income in excess of $2 million.
Enacted a 0.1 cent per gallon excise tax on gasoline, diesel fuels and other special motor fuels to finance cleanup of wastes from leaking underground petroleum storage tanks. (he taxed us to clean up their mess)

Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1987
Accelerated corporate estimated tax payments.
Limited employer deductible contributions to defined benefit pension plans.
Limited mortgage interest deduction to less than $1 million and home equity loans of less than $100,000.
Extended telephone excise tax, FUTA tax, 55 percent estate tax rate, and employer Social Security to cover cash tips.
Increased IRS and BATF fees.

The Family Security Act of 1988
Tightened eligibility for the dependent care credit.
Required taxpayer identification number for younger children.

Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988
Passed new supplemental premium tax on all persons eligible for Medicare. Premium rate was 15 percent of individual income tax liability in excess of $150, increased to 28 percent in 1993. Premium limited to $800 in 1989, raised to $1,050 in 1993, with future premium cap dependent on medical care costs after 1993.

Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1989
Limited tax deductions and exclusions for employee stock ownership plans.
Increased fees and excise taxes on air travel, ozone-depleting chemicals, and oil spill liability.
Modified the corporate alternative minimum tax.

Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990
Excise tax increases.
Individual income tax rate increases
Payroll tax rate increases

Tax Extension Act of 1991
Tax provision extensions. Provided a six-month extension for a number of tax provisions and credits facing expiration. Categories included research tax credits; exclusions for employer-provided educational assistance; targeted jobs credits; alternative energy credits; itemized deduction for health insurance costs; drug clinical testing credits; issuance authority for mortgage revenue bonds, certificates, and manufacturing/farm facility construction; credit for charitable contributions of appreciated tangible property.

The Decline of Corporate Income Tax Revenues
Revised October 24, 2003

EFFECT OF REAGAN, KENNEDY, AND BUSH TAX CUTS ON REVENUES

The current corporate tax rate for the United States is claimed to be 35% but this does not compute since many companies do not pay ANY federal tax and yet continue to move:
GM, Please Pay Your Taxes
Hey, Look At That -- We Pay More Taxes Than GE
Why are America’s largest corporations paying no tax?
Boeing, Citgiroup, and Bank Of America didnt' pay any federal taxes.

Taxes in other nations.
Mexico 28%
China 25% with a 17% VAT tax
India 33.2175%
Germany 29.8%
I am adding Brazil which is booming with tariffs and a 34% tax rate.

[showpan]

I should also post this again.

As former president H.W. Bush was writing NAFTA back In 1991, another despicable lie was being written by the North American Industry Classification System in order to justify this obvious sell out of American jobs. Not only did NAICS reclassify fast foods (hamburgers, salads, fires, soft drinks) as part of manufacturing changing their classification from food service and processing, they also reclassified pasteurization of milk and fish wrapping among others. What is even more shocking, in order to embellish their lie, they also made it retroactive to unemployment statistics beginning in...1995, the year that NAFTA was enacted.
They not only reclassified manufacturing, they did this to the service sector too. This shifting of employment to service sectors under NAICS resulted in declines in other sectors like Agriculture and Retail Trade with the reclassification of restaurants into the service sector. Changes in the definition of Wholesale Trade establishments result in only a small decline 4.8% down to 4.1% so nobody would really notice but the increase in service sector was huge because they also reclassified other industries where nobody really ever pays attention. Corporate headquarters of companies are now classified as service activities under NAICS. Formerly, under SIC these business establishments were classified according to the business activity of the enterprise they served. Also Professional, Technical, Healthcare, Social Assistance and Educational were all reclassifies into the service sector.
The restructuring of industry groups under NAICS when it was implemented in 1997 resulted in a decline in the average weekly wage for manufacturing by $90, but an increase of $74 in service sector. Any statistics in manufacturing and service after 1995 should be considered bunk since the way in which these statistics are collected have been greatly altered. This also effects government handouts (corporate welfare) since reclassifies industries are now able to exploit subsidies and loopholes that were once meant for those industries they were actually created for.
Almost all of the above info can be found through the link provided, other info is freely available on the web.

http://www.census.gov/eos/www/naics/