US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1221

On August 16 2014 07:51 GreenHorizons wrote:

I think the graphs do a good job of showing the underlying theme regardless of the severity.

The majority of people are working harder/being more productive and getting compensated less for their efforts/production, while the top 'earners' are gathering a growing share of the wealth generated by the increased productivity.

On August 16 2014 09:04 aksfjh wrote:

Holy crap. There goes his chances at winning the GOP nomination.

Sec. 14. APPROVAL OR DISAPPROVAL OF BILLS; RETURN AND RECONSIDERATION; FAILURE TO RETURN; DISAPPROVAL OF ITEMS OF APPROPRIATION. Every bill which shall have passed both houses of the Legislature shall be presented to the Governor for his approval. If he approve he shall sign it; but if he disapprove it, he shall return it, with his objections, to the House in which it originated, which House shall enter the objections at large upon its journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such reconsideration, two-thirds of the members present agree to pass the bill, it shall be sent, with the objections, to the other House, by which likewise it shall be reconsidered; and, if approved by two-thirds of the members of that House, it shall become a law; but in such cases the votes of both Houses shall be determined by yeas and nays, and the names of the members voting for and against the bill shall be entered on the journal of each House respectively. If any bill shall not be returned by the Governor with his objections within ten days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the same shall be a law, in like manner as if he had signed it, unless the Legislature, by its adjournment, prevent its return, in which case it shall be a law, unless he shall file the same, with his objections, in the office of the Secretary of State and give notice thereof by public proclamation within twenty days after such adjournment. If any bill presented to the Governor contains several items of appropriation he may object to one or more of such items, and approve the other portion of the bill. In such case he shall append to the bill, at the time of signing it, a statement of the items to which he objects, and no item so objected to shall take effect. If the Legislature be in session, he shall transmit to the House in which the bill originated a copy of such statement and the items objected to shall be separately considered. If, on reconsideration, one or more of such items be approved by two-thirds of the members present of each House, the same shall be part of the law, notwithstanding the objections of the Governor. If any such bill, containing several items of appropriation, not having been presented to the Governor ten days (Sundays excepted) prior to adjournment, be in the hands of the Governor at the time of adjournment, he shall have twenty days from such adjournment within which to file objections to any items thereof and make proclamation of the same, and such item or items shall not take effect.

On August 16 2014 09:55 419 wrote:
"Public Integrity Unit"

that's one way to put it. What's even more worrying to me is not the drunk driving itself but the whole routine of threatening retaliation using her DA position against the cop that stopped her. And she only got a month or so in jail for this!?!??!??

re: Perry indictment - here is the relevant part of the Texas Constitution, which seeing as this is a state indictment should be pretty much the 'final word' on the matter. I've quoted the entire section because ~context~:


I'm no lawyer but to my knowledge this should grant a governor an absolute ability to line-item veto which is what happened in this case.

Also, wasn't this the same DA office who prosecuted Tom Delay and then had the conviction thrown out?

On August 16 2014 08:55 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

That's exactly the misinterpretation that I'm trying to prevent. The chart shows that the economy as a whole is more productive and that people are, again as a whole, being compensated more. It also shows that the compensation isn't 100% commensurate with the productivity gain (which may be OK, or not).

What the chart does not show is that any subset of the economy is being unfairly compensated in relation to their productivity. That does not mean all subgroups are fairly compensated in relation to their productivity, only that if that is happening, the graph doesn't show it.

Even this remaining 23 percent gap is exaggerated, for two reasons. The government productivity is mismeasured and overstated, because BLS is doing an incomplete job accounting for the prices of imported goods that have been used in production. Consider a widget factory that starts using cheaper inputs from China. The BLS does not capture the full cost-savings to employers. It appears to BLS that factories are producing more widgets at lower cost. This looks like increased productivity. However, the gains are coming from trade and the lower price foreign goods, not worker productivity. This may account for about half of the remaining 23 point gap you see in Figure 12.

Conclusion

Many pundits and politicians contend that employees’ pay has not kept up with their productivity and that this phenomenon pre-dates the recent deep recession and sluggish recovery. They argue that workers are more productive than ever before, but that employers systematically underpay them. Fortunately, these claims are false. They rest on mistaken comparisons of economic data. Looking at total compensation data—including benefits—from the same source as the productivity figures and using consistent measures of inflation eliminate over three-quarters of the apparent gap between pay and productivity. Factors artificially inflating productivity—like greater depreciation and measurement errors—account for most of the remaining difference. Workers’ compensation has closely tracked their productivity over the past generation. Policymakers should not worry about closing this nonexistent gap. Instead they should look for ways to improve the skills of less-productive workers.

Just as one example, Heritage assumes that the gap between compensation and productivity caused by difference in the price deflators used to calculate productivity of firms and used to calculate inflation-adjusted compensation should be seen simply as evidence that consumer price inflation is overstated. There’s an equally compelling interpretation (pdf) that this is instead evidence that we’re overstating the productivity of firms that can be translated into consumption growth, and hence that the last generation has been characterized not just by growing inequality, but by even worse overall economic performance than is commonly thought.

On August 16 2014 09:55 419 wrote:


Also, wasn't this the same DA office who prosecuted Tom Delay and then had the conviction thrown out?

On August 16 2014 16:45 Sub40APM wrote:

two republican judges said the republican majority leader was not guilt...

Three quarters of Americans do not feel confident that their children will have a better life than they do in a new NBC-Wall Street Journal poll, the lowest number ever measured in the survey and a stunning indication of the historic uncertainty and pessimism coursing through the public.

Fully 76 percent of respondents expressed a lack of confidence that the next generation will have it better than the last one, a major jump from the last time NBC-WSJ asked the question in May 2012 when 63 percent said they lacked confidence that their kids would have it better than they do. The trend line on the question over the past few decades is even more telling — and troubling.



What the data above suggests is an erosion of confidence that things will keep getting better for future generations that began in late 1990 and has continued — with a brief interruption in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and rallying effect it occasioned — all the way to the present.

That number goes hand in hand with the next question asked by the NBC-WSJ pollsters. People were asked which of these two statements came closer to their view: 1) "The United States is a country where anyone, regardless of their background, can work hard, succeed and be comfortable financially" or 2) "The widening gap between the incomes of the wealthy and everyone else is undermining the idea that every American has the opportunity to move up to a better standard of living." A majority — 54 percent — chose the second statement while 44 percent chose the first. That is, a majority of people believe that the chasm between rich and poor is making it harder and harder to achieve the American dream.

On August 16 2014 14:37 IgnE wrote:


Instead of quoting that lame Cleveland Fed website you should quote the real source of your massaged data, the Heritage Foundation, so that WhiteDog can respond properly.

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/07/productivity-and-compensation-growing-together

So the differences in the graph include things like benefits and "paid leave" that weren't figured into the more popularly used wages vs productivity graph. It's unclear what paid leave means and why it wouldn't be included in wages, since you still get wages, you just happen to not show up at work. My inclination is to say that the massaging Heritage does by including benefits ignores overall increased spending on healthcare that is canceled out by increased benefits, factoring in bonuses somehow, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of the workforce has no access to appreciable bonuses, and favorable inflation measures that diminish the apparent difference but ignore the differences in inflation's effects on those with less income and wealth. Like instead of including benefits as just a lump sum form of "compensation" why are they not indexed and compared to the cost of benefits in the 70s? It seems like benefits are just being included flatly as "compensation" without being adjusted for "benefit inflation." The Lawrence Mishel paper seems more correct (http://www.csls.ca/ipm/23/IPM-23-Mishel-Gee.pdf). It seems odd to argue, as Heritage does, that workers in healthcare are stuck in a "low productivity" sector and dragging down their own compensation because they lack skills to move into "higher productivity" fields, without taking into account what might be "benefits inflation" in that very field.

+ Show Spoiler +

On August 17 2014 01:40 WhiteDog wrote:

1 - You put aside the fact that my assumption that the gap is "huge" is based in historical data, and not on my subjectivity alone : it is the biggest gap since WWII.
2 - Your data on compensation are also imperfect. It's "on average", in a broad and statistically homogeneous population, with no distinction between top and bottom income, and "real" value like inflation is an homogeneous phenomena that touch every income group in the same way. Yet I'm not nitpicking since I consider imperfect data as a norm in social science.
3 - It is even meaningful economically, since wage are supposed to be set at marginal productivity in economical theory. This theorical stand is not only an hypothesis, it is and has been the ground justification for capitalism for most economists : it is a question of merit since your wage is relative to your productivity. A gap, small, big or whatever, is yet another clue to point that the theory of the pure and perfect market is false. It's an economical, theorical, moral and political problem, and you're putting it aside for your own conveniance.

On August 15 2014 07:27 Wolfstan wrote:
Forgive my ignorance, but are there still "black communities" and "white communities" in the states? I thought that segregation ended, or are communities just based on wealth? Anyone have a statistic saying if you're black you have and 90% chance to have black neighbors or something?

On August 17 2014 02:15 WhiteDog wrote:

1 - It's smaller than mine, but not "small".
2 - It is imperfect. The link that we were discussing about is between productivity and compensation for the bottom "99 %". You're talking about you for the second part of your comment, right ?
3 - No. Just because you read a conservative piece of econ doesn't make it true. The core problem is that the distribution of income is a political matter, and not an economic one. The simple fact that you go from wage to compensation prove that in itself - because "compensations" are the result of policies right ?


And why would average is correct and not median ? Because it suits you better ?