US Politics: show us the money

[Apoapsis]

"Middle class" covers a big range of income, and here really is no clear cut-off points, unlike other metrics of evaluation, like top quintile, second quintile, etc.

The median household income in the U.S. is about 50K, so by numerical definition, a household with around 50K is middle class. But where does one graduate from "middle class" to "rich" is a lot harder to define.

Oh, household income? That makes more sense, I thought it was about individual income. It's still a shitload of money though.

[TerraPrime]

Forgot to mention, too, that imo, while the distinction between "poor" and "middle class" can be measured by income, the distinction between "rich" and "middle class" cannot be made based only on income. The structural financial instruments like retirement plans (501K and IRA) for instance, should also be factored in. Someone earning 60K/yr working as freelance contractor should not be considered in the same bracket as an accountant earning 60k/yr but who also has a 501K plus health care. The total compensation in some jobs exceeds the dollar amount of income received, and that's not taken into consideration when we look at comparisons of income.

To use an extreme example, some high-level executives have golden-parachutes clauses such that losing a job in certain situations does not hurt as much as if you're working in the shipping warehouse of Oscar-Meyer making 35k/yr, and so above and beyond the dollar value difference in compensation received, the executive is better protected, structurally, than the shipping warehouse worker. It does not matter how frugal or how fiscally responsible that warehouse worker is, s/he will never have the same cushion that the high-level executive will have, and that difference, imo, a marker for SEC differences.

[TerraPrime]

Oh, household income? That makes more sense, I thought it was about individual income. It's still a shitload of money though.

In the way that the data is polled, "household" can be a single person or a family of 6 or more. But median household income is historically and traditionally used as the benchmark for "average income" in the U.S.

[Cuellar]

Well I think Romney's big boon would be to the stock market itself. I'd assume there would be a huge rally as high wealth folks saw regulations decreasing, taxes going down, etc. That in turn would raise consumer confidence and spending at the top for wealthy folks. You'd have a large long term hit to the deficit, which has a minimal short term impact. Overall the impact from the stock market would raise consumer confidence, but in and of itself would do nothing to help the economy.

About the only other areas Romeny's policy would significantly differ from Obama would be an increase in drilling, which has a long term positive impact, thwarting Obamacare which in fact would be negative for the economy (probably short and especially long term), decrease in obstructionism in congress (since Republicans wouldn't stop their own stuff) which would be positive, an increase in military spending which is positive stimulas in the short term but negative in the long run, decrease in potentially several safety nets which would be pretty catestrophic for parts of the economy. Decrease in foreign trade barrier, probably positive to the economy long term but negative short term.

In a recession it is pretty obvious that the most effective short-term strategy is stimulus. Trickle down in theory works more in the mid to long term.

[Fez]

Moving away from the exciting field of tax policy, Harry Reid is really going after Romney now:

Mitt Romney “is not the face of Mormonism,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says, adding the former Massachusetts governor has “sullied” his faith.

“He’s coming to a state where there are a lot of members of the LDS Church,” Reid said in advance of Romney’s visit later this week to Nevada, according to the Salt Lake Tribune on Monday, based on a Friday conference call Reid did with reporters. “They understand that he is not the face of Mormonism.”

Reid is also a Mormon remember and he has been really going after Romney for a long time now. I'm really curious to know if there's some behind-the-scenes church stuff that led to all this

[Maithanet]

Forgot to mention, too, that imo, while the distinction between "poor" and "middle class" can be measured by income, the distinction between "rich" and "middle class" cannot be made based only on income.

Further complicating any discussion of where middle and upper class begin and end is geography. I made half what I do now when I was living in Delaware, but the difference in cost of living + federal/state taxes means I have only about 20% more than I did then once necessary expenditures are accounted for. Obviously, that 20% makes a huge difference, but it just shows that income alone doesn't really tell the story.

[IheartTesla]

Is someone with a yearly income over $100000 actually considered "middle class"? That's more than twice of what's considered an "average" salary over here, and we have 30% tax rates.

Yes....its right around the edge of what I earn, and I dont consider myself some sort of grand poobah rich person. Maybe trending towards upper middle class.

Don't get me wrong, food prices being cheap and all, and with subsidized health care its definitely a comfortable existance, but you still have to think before making extravagent purchases.

In fact, once you have a family and start thinking about tuition costs of college it doesnt even seem all that much. There are always cheap options, but at those salaries you are still making trade offs between quality and cost.

[Sci-2]

Everyone gets a gay husband.

[Inigima]

Well, actually there are jobs. Over 3 million unfilled ones that companies say that can't hire for because there aren't enough qualified candidates. Which is definitely a product of our failing education system, but that's another issue. For now, the important point is that if people feel a greater pinch and those jobs pay better, they have greater incentive to get the training necessary to get qualified for them.

I'd like to say that this might actually be bullshit for large segments of business. Not that Fez is lying -- the business world is what's full of shit.

I can only speak for the tech industry, but I suspect these problems are widespread. I see three problems, all of them employer-side:

1. Employers have a poor grasp of what's required to do a given job. You do not need three to five years of experience, for example, to be a tier 1 telephone helpdesk operator, and people who do have that experience don't want that job. Employers need to have a. intelligent job requirements and b. better ways to filter for them than they do currently.

2. Employers aren't willing to train employees anymore. If you have good people, to me it makes sense to get them trained for what you anticipate needing, but employers seem to want to hire from outside instead. It would shock me if this were cheaper than training, but I assume they've crunched the numbers. This doesn't work once you run out of outside people to hire, though, and it leaves the people who aren't being trained up shit creek, because training is prohibitively expensive for a lot of people and also requires time that they don't have because they have to work to afford, you know, food. Ever-increasing employer abdication of what used to be their responsibilities are a big problem with our economy

3. Employers are unwilling to pay people what jobs are worth, so those people are telling them to fuck off. I assure you there are plenty of unemployed programmers, they just aren't willing to be paid what a fry cook earns so that the CEO can buy another yacht. The Republican answer to this is that they should work for what the market will bear, but "the market" is a complete myth when employers hold all the cards. The problem isn't the market, it's employers redistributing wealth upwards.

[DanteGabriel]

I am sad I could only Like that once, Ini.

As I said: American productivity and work hours are at historic highs. Wages have been stagnant since... what, the 1970s? Executive compensation is higher than ever. Income disparity between the top and bottom of a company is growing. Social mobility is declining.

And one party's solution to this is to throw even more money at the top percentile. Because I guess if you give a rich person a million bucks, he may let a few thousand trickle down to the poor dumb schmucks who clean his stables.

Wake the fuck up! The class war has been underway for decades, waged from the top down.

[Guest Raidne]

I assure you there are plenty of unemployed programmers, they just aren't willing to be paid what a fry cook earns so that the CEO can buy another yacht. The Republican answer to this is that they should work for what the market will bear, but "the market" is a complete myth when employers hold all the cards. The problem isn't the market, it's employers redistributing wealth upwards.

Well, this will continue to a problem as long as they don't want to be paid what a programmer in India is paid. Best pick a tech sector job that requires your actual physical presence on site. Even better if it's specific to health care.

[DanteGabriel]

Well, this will continue to a problem as long as they don't want to be paid what a programmer in India is paid. Best pick a tech sector job that requires your actual physical presence on site. Even better if it's specific to health care.

Can we outsource the jobs of CEOs to India too, then?

[Paladin of Ice]

Well said Ini. In particular the disparity in what employers ask as job requirements and what a job actually requires has been really egregious for quite awhile now.

At the same time I have no doubt that there are tons of jobs going unfilled in manufacturing, and not all of that is due to an unwillingness to train. Some of it deals with machinery that you have to be licensed to operate and so on. A sane, responsible government that actually wanted to get people to work would be trumpeting this from the mountaintops, and subsidizing people to learn them. You'd have more products Made in USA, greater productivity for American companies, more jobs you could call middle class without laughing a little, and maybe people who are unemployed could start taking the place of the people leaving their old job and so on. Plus, it would have the upside of everyone who spouts the bullshit line "Government never created any jobs" having to shut up.

But because government in the enemy and helping people in general instead of just congratulating whoever happens to emerge from a Social Darwinist rat race is teh evulz in the mindset of all too many people, instead we just sit back and wait for it to magically get better on its own, through doing nothing. It's kind of like this:

Conservatives - or certainly the ones currently driving the Republican Party - don't think of budgeting as expenditures vs. revenues. To these people, programs worthy of funding are paid for, and those that are unworthy aren't. If funding the worthy programs costs more than tax revenue, oh well, because after all increasing revenues is among the most unworthy of policies a conservative can imagine. This method of budgeting is of course completely divorced from what the average person would expect, but there you are.

Except applied to people instead of budget expenditures.

[DanteGabriel]

Staffers for Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) reportedly participated in war-whoop sounds and “tomahawk chop” gestures at supporters of Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren, mocking Warren’s claimed Native American ancestry.

The incident occurred this past Saturday in Boston, at a rally for Brown featuring former Boston Mayor Ray Flynn, and at which a group of Warren supporters also showed up with signs. The video was posted Tuesday by the state liberal blog Blue Mass Group.

According to the local ABC affiliate in Boston, it has been confirmed that among the participants were Brown’s deputy Chief of Staff Greg Casey, Constituent Service Counsel Jack Richard, plus state GOP operative Brad Garrett.

http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/09/brown-staffers-tomahawk-chop.php?ref=fpblg

I'm sure we'll get the "a few bad apples" defense, but this was a deputy chief of staff and a fucking lawyer working for Brown, as well as a member of the state party organization.

[Fez]

I have no interest in playing devil's advocate for Mitt Romney, particularly since, like I said, his plan is nonsensical because of the tax cuts for the wealthy, but if your only goal is boosting the economy than raising taxes on the middle class in the manner described earlier is one to do that. The question was: does anyone believe Romney's plan would boost the economy? The answer is yes (although not as much as it could or should be). Not asked was what the price would be or who would enjoy this improved economy. Additionally, not asked was how long this economic recovery would last before collapsing under a new crash due to further deregulation of the banking sector.

I'm not saying its a good plan morally/ethically/whatever; I am saying what the impact would be. And now you know why most economists are conservatives.

Additionally, going after the jobs training thing is missing the forest for the trees. There are lots of economically valuable things people can do when the marginal utility of money starts rising. One nasty example which could hopefully be avoided is no longer save money for retirement in low-risk, low-yield investments because they need to spend more now.

And remember, what I'M advocating for would be to embrace this new tax structure as part of a shift entirely to the Nordic model (Interestingly, Norway is also the only country with more productive workers than the US).

ETA: I somewhat agree with you Ini, however at the same time there is definitely a STEM education deficit in the US and that takes more than on-the-job-training to correct.

[Inigima]

The key thing to understand, I think, is that all of this stuff does make sense for businesses to do -- in the very short term. It produces strong quarterly reports. The business saved money.

What it does long-term is create a systemic problem. After a while, your plan to outsource all your jobs doesn't look so hot, because you don't have customers for your $500 phone, because no one can afford it. After a while, your plan to hire the skills your business needs doesn't look so hot, because only a finite number of people already possessed those skills and they're working for other companies.

Unfortunately, investment metrics are geared around the short term. It's myopia-induced cancer.

[Winter's Knight]

New Romney/Ryan ad claiming Pelosi hit mute on Obama.

Do mute buttons on phones work differently there? Because I thought they silenced the listener rather than the speaker.

[DanteGabriel]

New Romney/Ryan ad claiming Pelosi hit mute on Obama.

Do mute buttons on phones work differently there? Because I thought they silenced the listener rather than the speaker.

Does Mitt Romney really want to open up the "if he can't lead his own party" line of attack? This is the guy who couldn't get people to say nice things about him at his own convention.

[Cuellar]

Mitt's desparate at this point, he is going to try everything from "Obama can't satisfy his wife" to "Obama's dog hates him because Barak beats him daily". Also, generally republican political ads don't really worry about facts, and the superpacs sure as shit don't care about the truth.

The problem with this desparation is that if it backfires, it'll hit the whole republican party, not just Mitt.

[Guest Raidne]

Can we outsource the jobs of CEOs to India too, then?

Sure, why not? Apparently they are India's leading export. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2084441,00.html

But usually they come serve at the company's headquarters, like at MasterCard's in New York. So, great, where is this argument now?

Well said Ini. In particular the disparity in what employers ask as job requirements and what a job actually requires has been really egregious for quite awhile now.

This is tough because there are people who are going to get lost if you change that. If a law firm has a job opening and wants someone with 3 years experience then my friends who have been looking for full-time work will still get an interview/job. If they want new hires, that whole "lost class" stays lost and they take the hit alone when it could be spread out down the chain.

People who are more qualified are more qualified until they're overqualified. You think it's frustrating competing against them? Try being one.