Author Topic: The Economy is ruined for many Americans (Read 1860 times)

RomanCatholic1953 · « **on:** April 02, 2017, 09:53:57 PM »

THIS ECONOMY IS RUINED FOR MANY AMERICANS
Published: April 2, 2017
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SOURCE: WOLF STREET

Here’s a mystery: Has this “wealth-effect” economy that the Fed so beautifully engineered since the Financial Crisis gotten a lot riskier, scarier, and uglier in some profound ways for lower-income Americans, those making $30,000 or less a year?
One of the questions that Gallup posed was this:

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Next, I’m going to read a list of problems facing the country. For each one, please tell me if you personally worry about this problem a great deal, a fair amount, only a little, or not at all? First, how much do you personally worry about –

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Then came 13 issues, including “hunger and homelessness.”
Turns out, among Americans making $30,000 or less a year, 67% worry “a great deal” about hunger and homelessness! Food and shelter, two of the most basic human needs. That’s the highest percentage ever in Gallup’s data series on this question going back to 2001.
It’s up from 52% in 2001/2004; up from 56% in 2007/2008; and up from 51% in 2010/2011.
Median annual household income in February was $58,714, according to Sentier Research. On an inflation-adjusted basis, this was about flat with February 2016 and below February 2000. Median income means 50% make more and 50% make less. Other studies have shown that incomes have risen sharply at the upper end of the spectrum, but have fallen at the lower end, with the gap widening. Thus the median might have stagnated, but for many of those below the median, things haven’t turned out so well. And there are a lot of them!
With the prices of stocks, homes, art, classic cars, commercial real estate, and the like inflated to dizzying heights after eight years of radical monetary polic

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blacklistednews.com

NEW STUDY FINDS THAT SIX JOBS ARE LOST FOR EVERY ROBOT ADDED TO THE WORKFORCE

Published: April 2, 2017
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Authored by June Javelosa via Futurism,

A new paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research presents sobering statistics that illustrate the impact automation is already having on the workforce, noting that each industrial robot introduced between 1990 and 2007 lead to the loss of 6.2 jobs.
The Real Impact of Automation
Few subjects are quite as divisive right now as the potential impact of automation on employment. Some, like U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, believe we needn’t be concerned, while others assert that we are already at the start of the biggest workforce upheaval since the Industrial Revolution.
Now, a new paper released by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) puts an actual number to the threat of automation: each industrial robot introduced in the workforce between 1990 and 2007 coincided with the elimination of 6.2 jobs within the commute area. Wages also saw a slight drop of between .25 and .50 percent per 1,000 employees when one or more robots was added to their workforce.

The report’s authors, economists Daron Acemoglu from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University, predict that we could see as much as a .94 to 1.76 percent decline in the employment-to-population ratio by 2025. By 2025, the Census Bureau estimates the United States’ population will reach 347.3 million. That means between 3.3 to 6.1 million jobs could be lost to automation.
Looking Ahead

In total, roughly 670,000 manufacturing jobs were lost to robots during the period of the study, a number that is expected to only go up given how more and more companies are looking toward automation as a way to improve operations in the coming years.
Consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCooper is already predicting the loss of 30 percent of jobs in the United Kingdom to automation. A separate study conducted by the International Labour Organization noted that 137 million workers across several Southeast Asian countries are in danger of being replaced by automated systems in the next 20 years.
The disruption isn’t confined to blue-collar jobs, either. Experts also believe that it will ultimately disrupt white-collar professions as well, a belief supported by the recent news that the biggest money-management firm is laying off 13% of its portfolio managers due to automation.
Add the Census Bureau’s predictions to the ever-growing list of studies that see robots disrupting the workforce, and the threat of automation becomes all-too-real. Even more modest scenarios see the number of industrial robots increasing by about threefold in the next 10 or so years.
That said, researchers and policy makers are already looking for ways to address the seemingly inevitable mass displacement that will be brought about by automation. Several are considering and testing universal basic income (UBI) programs, which would allow the government of a country to ensure that dramatic employee displacement wouldn’t lead to economic instability. Another suggested system involves taxing industrial robots, as suggested by Bill Gates.
The fact is, automation will have an impact on the current employment status quo. The gravity of its effects and what we can do to address them is an important conversation that we most definitely need to be having right now.
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http://monetarywatch.com/2017/04/new-study-finds-six-jobs-lost-every-robot-added-workforce/?doing_wp_cron=1491076488.2053430080413818359375

RomanCatholic1953 · « **Reply #1 on:** April 10, 2017, 08:43:54 PM »

Paul Craig Roberts
Institute for Political Economy

More Fake News From Washington
April 8, 2017 | Categories: Articles & Columns | Tags: |

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More Fake News From Washington
this time it is about employment
Paul Craig Roberts
The US government continues to lie about everything, not just Russia, Syria, Iran, and China. The US government is incapable of telling the truth about something as straightforward as employment. According to the government, March produced only 98,000 new payroll jobs, an insufficient amount to reduce unemployment, but the unemployment rate fell from 4.7 to 4.5 percent.
How did that happen? Not because the unemployed found jobs. The unemployment rate fell because the government did not count as unemployed large numbers of unemployed people who did not look for a job during the four week period prior to the survey. The US has a low unemployment rate, because the government does not count the unemployed.
The government knows the reported unemployment rate is wrong, because other data are inconsistent with the low rate. For example, the labor force participation rate consistent with a 4.5% unemployment rate is 67%, whereas the current participation rate is a low 63%, which implies a much higher rate of unemployment than 4.5%.
The 4.5% reported unemployment rate is also inconsistent with the Conference Board help wanted data, which has been in a downward trend since 2010 and shows a March 2017 year over year decline of 17%.
I don’t see the financial press investigating the inconsistencies among the data, asking the government questions, and providing the public with explanations. John Williams at shadowstats.com does, but the economics profession shows no observable interest.
Just as the government doesn’t measure unemployment, it doesn’t measure inflation. The government has created the myth of a growing real GDP since a recovery was declared in June 2009. However, when the implicit price deflator is adjusted for the government’s understatement of inflation, as John Williams does, real GDP growth has been flat since June 2009.
The government uses fake facts in order to create a fake picture of the economy so that the stock market’s rise is perceived to be real and not the result of Federal Reserve manipulation and corporations using their profits and borrowing money in order to buy back their own stocks. The buy-backs drive up the stock prices and executive “performance bonuses.” Stock prices are higher than can be explained by profits and real retail sales. Indeed, stock prices are so high that one would think there would be massive business investment, but there is very little.
One would think that someone in the financial press would be interested in the many inconsistencies in reported data, just as one would think that reporters would be more interested in the inconsistencies in the government’s stories about Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Iran, Russia, China, 9/11, Snowden, Julian Assange, and reformist Latin American heads of state, who Washington always finds reasons to overthrow. But reporters aren’t interested and neither are their editors.
The facts are inconsistent with the propaganda, so the facts are ignored. In the place of facts, we have fake facts that sustain the propaganda. By controlling explanations, the government maintains The Matrix that serves the One Percent and war and is driving the world to destruction.
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/04/08/fake-news-washington/

Author Topic: The Economy is ruined for many Americans (Read 1860 times)

RomanCatholic1953

The Economy is ruined for many Americans

RomanCatholic1953

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