Pksimon2007
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- May 2, 2015
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Does that make the hypothesis wrong?
yes you said we don't need everyone to work yet somehow almost everyone does despite idiotic liberal policies that make it very very hard to work.
- Economics 101 includes supply and demand. As the supply of labor increases relative to the demand for it, wages fall, and underemployment increases (exactly as we have been seeing).
So we don't need everyone to work, but PEOPLE still need to work, because that's how income is distributed.
So the hypothesis stands, and your objection, in a way, supports it.Does that make the hypothesis wrong?
yes you said we don't need everyone to work yet somehow almost everyone does despite idiotic liberal policies that make it very very hard to work.
- Economics 101 includes supply and demand. As the supply of labor increases relative to the demand for it, wages fall, and underemployment increases (exactly as we have been seeing).
So we don't need everyone to work, but PEOPLE still need to work, because that's how income is distributed.
So the hypothesis stands, and your objection, in a way, supports it.
What is truly bizarre is that "reshoring" otherwise known as insourcing is really picking up steam as jobs leave China. However that is not resulting in more manufacturing jobs net in the US. The op-ed pieces pointing this out are all over the map. Marketwatch is the most accessible report I've seen on the subject.
- Manufacturing jobs are not what they once were. Part of that is probably the decline in labor bargaining power due to the decline in union influence, but a good deal of it is probably just a surplus of labor, which is probably partly demographic and partly based on increasing productivity.
Without a trade surplus or massive war spending, wages will probably continue to fall without some sort of intervention or very active federal fiscal policy.
Productivity is also not uniform in its effects, but seems to hit somewhere in the middle of the wage scale, at the very manufacturing jobs which were the backbone of our mid-century prosperity. The costs of replacing higher-end workers with machines are quite high, the yields from replacing counter clerks with machines are pretty low, but manufacturing jobs hit that sweet spot where the marginal efficiency of capital is right there with the opportunity cost. As interest rates fell, I think the yields on such productivity improvements fell as well, but employers were under the same pressures to increase productivity. Their response was largely to abuse salaried employees by demanding higher production, and to cut benefits in the absence of any real ability to cut wages - partly by making as many jobs as possible part-time.
Obviously, I think this supports the OP hypothesis.