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Why wages really are so low today

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LoveNotHate
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06 Jan 2014, 2:01 pm

zer0netgain wrote:
Those charts have two fatal flaws that any person whose taken a basic statistics class can spot.

1. Median "household" income. If you factor all sources of income for a household, it skews the resulting average. That chart is proposed to be representative of a single income earner, but much of the numbers could reflect multiple incomes under one roof...making the average per job much lower.


True.

zer0netgain wrote:
2. Likewise, the wages chart (along with household income) is an AVERAGE. Many publications like to state (for example) the "average" starting wage of an attorney in a given state. Well, if you toss in the $1,000,000+ earners with the ones barely getting by, you get a respectable average wage. To be honest to the typical law school graduate, you have to omit those making excessively high wages to get a number that's more in line with the REALITY of what they can expect to earn in that state.


True.

This is why I asked earlier, "Shouldn't the question of "wages too low" be qualified?". Perhaps, in your example, the attorney making 1 mill/year complains of being underpaid, so it would be proper to include people like that ?

Economists say that worker productivity is increasing yet real wages are stagnating i.e., staying relative to what they were thirty, forty years ago (not going down though).

This seems to be the underlying question for American workers. They are asked to work longer, harder, more productivity, given tools to do the job better/faster , and yet their real wages (wages factoring in inflation) are stagnating.



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06 Jan 2014, 6:54 pm

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gG05_C2ZwA[/youtube]



zer0netgain
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06 Jan 2014, 9:28 pm

LoveNotHate wrote:
This seems to be the underlying question for American workers. They are asked to work longer, harder, more productivity, given tools to do the job better/faster , and yet their real wages (wages factoring in inflation) are stagnating.


A big part of that is the law of supply and demand. The global economy BS and the removal of trade tariffs force US companies to compete with overseas companies that can do stuff cheaper because there are fewer rules and regulations and labor is way cheaper than it is here.

For Pete's sake, some companies want to ship chickens to CHINA to be processed and packaged and shipped back to the USA for sale. Talk about an environmental impact...the OIL it takes to ship across the Pacific TWICE compared to doing it here...and it's still CHEAPER than doing it here.

We have our population growing...both in domestic birth rates and the flood of illegals wanting to work here. If people are begging for work, they aren't in a position to demand more money...someone else will gladly take their job for less money.



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06 Jan 2014, 9:48 pm

zer0netgain wrote:

We have our population growing...both in domestic birth rates and the flood of illegals wanting to work here. If people are begging for work, they aren't in a position to demand more money...someone else will gladly take their job for less money.


If what you say is true then workers in the U.S. will have to work for less or workers over seas will have to force their wages up. You seem to say the problem is with the disparity in wage levels.

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07 Jan 2014, 2:43 am

zer0netgain wrote:
LoveNotHate wrote:
This seems to be the underlying question for American workers. They are asked to work longer, harder, more productivity, given tools to do the job better/faster , and yet their real wages (wages factoring in inflation) are stagnating.


A big part of that is the law of supply and demand. The global economy BS and the removal of trade tariffs force US companies to compete with overseas companies that can do stuff cheaper because there are fewer rules and regulations and labor is way cheaper than it is here.

For Pete's sake, some companies want to ship chickens to CHINA to be processed and packaged and shipped back to the USA for sale. Talk about an environmental impact...the OIL it takes to ship across the Pacific TWICE compared to doing it here...and it's still CHEAPER than doing it here.

We have our population growing...both in domestic birth rates and the flood of illegals wanting to work here. If people are begging for work, they aren't in a position to demand more money...someone else will gladly take their job for less money.


They also don't have pesky livestock handling laws, like making sure that the bird is dead before it's plucked and dismembered. Of course it's going to be cheaper.



zer0netgain
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07 Jan 2014, 9:24 am

ruveyn wrote:
zer0netgain wrote:

We have our population growing...both in domestic birth rates and the flood of illegals wanting to work here. If people are begging for work, they aren't in a position to demand more money...someone else will gladly take their job for less money.


If what you say is true then workers in the U.S. will have to work for less or workers over seas will have to force their wages up. You seem to say the problem is with the disparity in wage levels.


It's a big factor, but certainly not the only one.

The IDIOTS who argue for the global economy talk of how it'll all be good when global wages stabilize.

Well....

1. That means equalized POVERTY. For the whole world to have "wealth" (for lack of a better term), every nation has to create it (wealth can be created and it can be destroyed). It's not just enough to pay people more...their economy must start to CREATE things.

2. The process can take DECADES. Manufacturing keeps moving where wages are cheaper and cheaper. Think of where your goods came from over the last 20-30 years. As each nation starts improving and paying more wages, the manufacturer goes to an even more economically repressed nation for cheap labor/manufacturing costs. Meantime, here in the USA was are suffering because the equalization hasn't happened. Odds are it won't happen in our lifetime or the lifetime of our children. Maybe for our grandchildren, and we still have no idea what kind of world it will be when it happens.



LoveNotHate
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07 Jan 2014, 11:31 am

zer0netgain wrote:

1. That means equalized POVERTY. For the whole world to have "wealth" (for lack of a better term), every nation has to create it (wealth can be created and it can be destroyed). It's not just enough to pay people more...their economy must start to CREATE things.

2. The process can take DECADES. Manufacturing keeps moving where wages are cheaper and cheaper. Think of where your goods came from over the last 20-30 years. As each nation starts improving and paying more wages, the manufacturer goes to an even more economically repressed nation for cheap labor/manufacturing costs. Meantime, here in the USA was are suffering because the equalization hasn't happened. Odds are it won't happen in our lifetime or the lifetime of our children. Maybe for our grandchildren, and we still have no idea what kind of world it will be when it happens.


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07 Jan 2014, 2:36 pm

Eh. Marcin is hoping to have the Global Village Construction Set finished by 2015, but there's no need to wait until then to start living post-scarcity; plus, the more people (and most importantly, minds) we have attacking the problems, the quicker we will find the solutions.

Since posting videos seems to be popular, I'll post one from last year, for us this year. Because, I think we all need a pep talk.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-gQLqv9f4o[/youtube]



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07 Jan 2014, 3:02 pm

beneficii wrote:
A preview:

Quote:
The fact that many of today’s college graduates have the same standard of living as the lowest-skilled workers of the 1960s proves that attitude is wrong, wrong, wrong. If we want to restore what we’ve traditionally thought of as the middle class, we have to stop thinking of ourselves as middle class, no matter how much we earn, or what we do to earn it. “Working class” should be defined by your relationship to your employer, not whether you perform physical labor. Unless you own the business, you’re working class.


http://www.salon.com/2013/12/30/the_mid ... low_today/


Globalization is why wages are lower. The bulk of the profits made by cutting down the skilled workforce (of which the middle class was a big part of) in the states and having those jobs performed by almost equivalently skilled staff overseas who were paid less than US minimum wage was passed on to the 'upper class'.

What the US has right now is a huge services industry staffed by lower and ex-middle class (now technically lower class due to pay and living standards lowered) and a big 'investor' industry which is where the upper class keeps profiting from globalization.



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07 Jan 2014, 3:21 pm

zer0netgain wrote:
Those charts have two fatal flaws that any person whose taken a basic statistics class can spot.

1. Median "household" income. If you factor all sources of income for a household, it skews the resulting average. That chart is proposed to be representative of a single income earner, but much of the numbers could reflect multiple incomes under one roof...making the average per job much lower.

2. Likewise, the wages chart (along with household income) is an AVERAGE. Many publications like to state (for example) the "average" starting wage of an attorney in a given state. Well, if you toss in the $1,000,000+ earners with the ones barely getting by, you get a respectable average wage. To be honest to the typical law school graduate, you have to omit those making excessively high wages to get a number that's more in line with the REALITY of what they can expect to earn in that state.


this has always infuriated me me. here in New Zealand the average wage is something like $60.000 per annum however the percentage of people earning FAR less than this is much much higher than those who earn above that amount. we recently adopted the trickle down economic concept which has only widened the disparity between high and low wage earners. i just about left the country in disgust after New Zealand started mirroring failing American economic ideologies.


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07 Jan 2014, 5:43 pm

hanyo wrote:
LoveNotHate wrote:
[img][800:435]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Median_US_household_income.png[/img]


My household income is about half of the lowest point on that chart.


What credentials do you have that would justify a higher salary? Here in Norway, only 10% of everyone with Asperger's and 25% of everyone with ADHD are employed. The rest live on welfare (144,000 NOK or 23,300 USD per year) in a country where renting a basement apartment is 1,500 USD per month and a late model, mid-range VW Golf is almost 30,000 USD. There's a hidden unemployment rate here of 7% (compared to a nominal unemployment rate of 2%), because nobody who deviates from the norm get's a chance from most employers.

As someone with a degree in computer science, I'd live like a noble man, own a Corvette and be out of debt by the time I'm 35 in the US.



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07 Jan 2014, 6:01 pm

The least-educated hick on the planet should be able to make enough money to keep his stomach full and a roof over his head, if he puts in a day of hard work. A person shouldn't be starving or chronically cold and/or homeless even if he can't do more than dig a ditch.



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07 Jan 2014, 7:31 pm

Indeed. This is why we need a free market - an actual free market, not the faux market promoted by many on the right. People shouldn't be having to spend most of the money they earn on keeping a roof over their heads because of a housing bubble caused by the state, or not being able to afford food because of the regulations that the state has imposed at the request of big agribusinesses to shut down competition from the local farmers, and that's not even talking about the taxes they have to pay...

Kurgan, why no you emigrate?



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07 Jan 2014, 7:40 pm

Magneto wrote:
Kurgan, why no you emigrate?


Actually, the thought has crossed my mind many times--I just need to finish my degree. I can always get a job in Norway, but someone with a master's degree only make 50-60% more than an electrician or a plumber here. Regardless, how well Norway is doing is in the long run determined by how well Statoil (the world's largest offshore company) is doing; if the oil prices were to fall rapidly, Statoil and thus Norway will take a deep plunge.



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08 Jan 2014, 4:23 am

Kurgan wrote:

What credentials do you have that would justify a higher salary?


I don't have any credentials and don't work. I have no income of any kind. What little money we have to live on is from my mother's low paying job.



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09 Jan 2014, 10:21 pm

Magneto wrote:
Indeed. This is why we need a free market - an actual free market, not the faux market promoted by many on the right. People shouldn't be having to spend most of the money they earn on keeping a roof over their heads because of a housing bubble caused by the state, or not being able to afford food because of the regulations that the state has imposed at the request of big agribusinesses to shut down competition from the local farmers, and that's not even talking about the taxes they have to pay...

Kurgan, why no you emigrate?


Read the book 'Nickel and Dimed'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_and_Dimed

In it a very well educated woman with an excellent paying job takes a dive into the world of the poor for the sake of research (of her book). It is a real eye opener.