theatlantic:


Europe’s Record Youth Unemployment: The Scariest Graph in the World Just Got Scarier
[Image: James Plunket]


This is how revolutions start. Sadly, this is also how radicalism starts. Hoping we can avoid the latter but I don’t think we will. 

theatlantic:

This is how revolutions start. Sadly, this is also how radicalism starts. Hoping we can avoid the latter but I don’t think we will. 

(via theamericanbear)

Minimum wage laws ostensibly devised to raise wages of the lowest wage earners do not. The number of employees an employer can profitably hire is reduced. Some lose jobs and must work at lower paying jobs exempt from the law, or if none is exempt, work as self-employed, for which there is no minimum wage law, or simply leave the workforce, or substitute poorer working conditions for the higher wages. Even those who retain jobs are not better off in the long run. Some who would be displaced will offer to work (at the higher wages) with less nonmonetary pay – stricter discipline on the job, poorer circumstances such as less time off, fewer coffee breaks, vacations, or fringe benefits. Employees will offer to forsake some of those things for the higher required wage rate to retain existing jobs, rather than take the inferior alternative of working in jobs not covered by the law, or becoming self-employed or departing from the labor force into “leisure.” Economic law is not suppressed by legislated law.

Armen A. Alchian - The Collected Works of Armen A. Alchian(2006), 1977 essay “Economic Laws and Political Legislation

Rest in Peace, Armen Alchian (1914-2013)

[x]

60 Second Adventures in Economics (All 6 Clips)


anarchei:

The Truth About The Minimum Wage

FEE:

People don’t like to think that anyone’s labor is worth less than the minimum wage. Someone might end up flipping burgers for $5.00 an hour. You might think the minimum wage is a way of paying some sort of dignity premium—hence language like “living wage.” People with such good intentions look at the direct beneficiaries of these policies, say, burger flippers now making $7.50 an hour. They pat themselves on the back. But they rarely count the invisible costs: willing human beings who never get hired in the first place.

“But $5.00 an hour is not enough to live on!,” they’ll say. For whom? A teenager living at home with his parents? An elderly person who wants simply to stay active? A single mom with three kids? A single woman sharing an apartment with 2 roommates? Of course, not all of these people could live off of $5.00 an hour. But some of them could given the opportunity. Concerns about those who couldn’t don’t justify minimum wages even if we ignored the invisible costs of the policy, which include reduced margins to businesses that might otherwise grow (and hire more people).

In other words, if you take off the bottom two rungs of the income ladder, many will never climb it. That’s the effect of the minimum wage. The more cynical side of me says that’s how many politicians and the overpaid teamsters want it.

See Also

What people forget is that there are plenty of people who work that don’t need to support anyone, not even themselves. Many of these people work because sitting at home is boring or because they would like some extra spending money or because they want to help make a difference in someone’s life and don’t necessarily need the money. 

A lot of these people live in a household that has other income earners that completely support and help sustain their lifestyles regardless if they work and contribute or not. 

The minimum wage already requires us to pay them a minimum wage determined by the price floor, increasing the minimum wage for others would also require us to pay these people more. 

The minimum wage isn’t for someone who is trying to support a family, it’s this grand illusion that politicians and union reps have constructed so that they can claim that they are doing something to help the people. 

I’ll save my stark commentary about unskilled low wage workers and starting a family for another time. 

(via anarcho-alowisney)

tradethecycles:

………..A Stealth Great Depression

tradethecycles:

………..A Stealth Great Depression

(via antigovernmentextremist)

37 Facts about the economy under our current government

thevocalibertarian:

1. One recent survey discovered that 40 percent of all Americans have $500 or less in savings.

2. A different recent survey found that 28 percent of all Americans do not have a single penny saved for emergencies.

3. In the United States today, there are close to 10 million households that do not have a single bank account.  That number has increased by about a million since 2009.

4. Family homelessness in the Washington D.C. region (one of the wealthiest regions in the entire country) has risen 23 percent since the last recession began.

5. The number of Americans living in poverty has increased by about 6 million over the past four years.

6. Median household income has fallen for four years in a row.  Overall, it has declined by more than $4000 over the past four years.

7. 62 percent of middle class Americans say that they have had to reduce household spending over the past year.

8. According to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, 85 percent of middle class Americans say that it is more difficult to maintain a middle class standard of living today than it was 10 years ago.

9. In the United States today, 77 percent of all Americans are living to paycheck to paycheck at least some of the time.

10. In the United States today, more than 41 percent of all working age Americans are not working.

11. Since January 2009, the “labor force” in the United States has increased by 827,000, but “those not in the labor force” has increased by 8,208,000.  This is how they have gotten the unemployment numbers to “come down”.

12. Sadly, 60 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession were mid-wage jobs, but 58 percent of the jobs created since then have been low wage jobs.

13. Today, about one out of every four workers in the United States brings home wages that are at or below the federal poverty level.

14. Right now, the United States actually has a higher percentage of workers doing low wage work than any other major industrialized nation does.

15. At this point, less than 25 percent of all jobs in the United States are “good jobs”, and that number continues to shrink.

16. There are now 20.2 million Americans that spend more than half of their incomes on housing.  That represents a 46 percent increase from 2001.

17. According to USA Today, many Americans have actually seen their water bills triple over the past 12 years.

18. Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.

19. In 1999, 64.1 percent of all Americans were covered by employment-based health insurance.  Today, only 55.1 percent are covered by employment-based health insurance.

20. Health insurance premiums rose faster than the overall rate of inflation in 2011 and that is happening once againin 2012.  In fact, it has been happening for a very long time.

21. According to one recent survey, approximately 10 percent of all employers in the United States plan to drop health coverage when key provisions of the new health care law kick in less than two years from now.

22. Back in 1983, the bottom 95 percent of all income earners had 62 cents of debt for every dollar that they earned.  By 2007, that figure had soared to $1.48.

23. Total home mortgage debt in the United States is now about 5 times larger than it was just 20 years ago.

24. Total consumer debt in the United States has risen by 1700 percent since 1971.

25. Recently it was announced that total student loan debt in the United States has passed the one trillion dollar mark.

26. According to one recent survey, approximately one-third of all Americans are not paying their bills on time at this point.

27. Right now, approximately 25 million American adults are living at home with their parents.

28. The percentage of Americans that find that they are able to retire when they reach retirement age continues to decline.  According to one new survey, 70 percent of middle class Americans plan to work during retirement and 30 percent plan to work until they are at least 80 years old.

29. The U.S. economy lost more than 220,000 small businesses during the recent recession.

30. In 2010, the number of jobs created at new businesses in the United States was less than half of what it was back in the year 2000.

31. Back in 2007, 19.2 percent of all American families had a net worth of zero or less than zero.  By 2010, that figure had soared to 32.5 percent.

32. Approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are living in homes that are either considered to be either “low income” or impoverished.

33. In the United States today, somewhere around 100 million Americans are considered to be either “poor” or “near poor”.

34. In October 2008, 30.8 million Americans were on food stamps.  Today, 46.7 millionAmericans are on food stamps.

35. Approximately one-fourth of all children in the United States are enrolled in the food stamp program.

36. Right now, more than 100 million Americans are enrolled in at least one welfare program run by the federal government.  And that does not even count Social Security or Medicare.

37. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, an all-time record 49 percent of all Americans live in a home where at least one person receives financial assistance from the federal government.  Back in 1983, that number was less than 30 percent.

________

But no, really, it’s okay; vote for Bush/Obama/Romney.  Maybe this time it will work out for you.  

If Obama had managed to retain the workforce he inherited from George Bush, the official U-3 unemployment rate would be 10.6 percent for October, so real unemployment remains right where it has been throughout this disastrous presidency: stuck in double digits. Only the complete departure of millions of Americans from the workforce allows Obama to callously pretend he has high single-digit unemployment. He promised 5.2 percent unemployment by 2012 if he got his trillion-dollar “stimulus” bill, and openly advised Americans to vote him out of office if he failed to deliver on this promise. Remarkably, Obama manages to criticize other people’s numbers for “not adding up” without getting laughed out of the room. John Hayward (via thevocalibertarian)

(via antigovernmentextremist)

The Other 19 (The 20%)

thinksquad:

114,000 jobs in 30 days equals 3,800 jobs per day. 3,800 jobs divided by 50 states equals an average of 76 new jobs per state, per day. Approximate average number of new college grads per year: 1,750,000, or 4,794 per day, or 95 per state, per day. That doesn’t include all the unemployed dropping off the rolls, who are also competing for these 76 new jobs per day…

This doesn’t even account for people who skip college or immigrate to the United States legally (or illegally). 

thecheekylibertarian:

asuperfluousman:

One of the many questions of economics.
However, the graphic misleads.
“What’s the missing piece?” implies we know.
It’s a coordination problem. Without prices to accurately and quickly disperse knowledge that’s fractured, contradictory, and scattered, that piece cannot be found, though our ability to “find” such a piece remains questionable.

…also, some jobs require qualifications.

The missing piece is most likely a mix of location and out-reach. 
Not everyone is qualified for a job that is within an acceptable distance to them. Not everyone is willing to travel. Most employers don’t search outside their own area (or search at all) for candidates. 
Example: If I’m a specific type of engineer and I can’t find a job in Los Angeles and there’s a company in Cleveland that needs a specific type of engineer just like me, the chance that I’ll find that job or that company will find me is slim. Even slimmer is the chance that I’m willing to pack up and move across the country for a job, and and nearly impossible if I have a family. 
This is why unemployment is assumed to never be zero and we just accept a 3% or 4% unemployment rate as normal. 
@Suga_Shane

thecheekylibertarian:

asuperfluousman:

One of the many questions of economics.

However, the graphic misleads.

“What’s the missing piece?” implies we know.

It’s a coordination problem. Without prices to accurately and quickly disperse knowledge that’s fractured, contradictory, and scattered, that piece cannot be found, though our ability to “find” such a piece remains questionable.

…also, some jobs require qualifications.

The missing piece is most likely a mix of location and out-reach. 

Not everyone is qualified for a job that is within an acceptable distance to them. Not everyone is willing to travel. Most employers don’t search outside their own area (or search at all) for candidates. 

Example: If I’m a specific type of engineer and I can’t find a job in Los Angeles and there’s a company in Cleveland that needs a specific type of engineer just like me, the chance that I’ll find that job or that company will find me is slim. Even slimmer is the chance that I’m willing to pack up and move across the country for a job, and and nearly impossible if I have a family. 

This is why unemployment is assumed to never be zero and we just accept a 3% or 4% unemployment rate as normal. 

@Suga_Shane