Goodbye, Production (and Maybe Innovation)

The New York Times ^ | December 24, 2006 | Louis Uchitelle

[Toddsterpatriot]

If there are 2 people in a room making 50k per year and all of a sudden a person walks in making 500k what does that do to the median or average

The median remains 50k, the average jumps to 200k.

I would like to see average net worth increases across the pay scales.

Me too, ping me when you find out.

[lucysmom]

All tax law changes must be "revenue neutral." The rate is simply an honest (visible) reflection of the true level of spending by government.

Seems you're confusing government spending with revenue collected.

[Paul Ross]

"Household wealth continues to surge..."

The Average is Not the Median. You clearly still don't get that. And your claims to "wealth" are rather thinly-veiled nonsense. As you know, I am a huge critic of the way that our government (from Xlinton forward to this Administration) collects and reports inflation numbers and I think the stock market is making a huge mistake in believing the ‘official inflation numbers’. For example, in the most recent GDP announcement it was reported that food costs are up 2.4% over the past year.

Hmmmm. Could they have forgotten to include the cost of orange juice which is up not 2.8%, not 3.9% not even a horrendous 9.2% but rather 66.0%(!!) over the past year?

In fact, this is not an isolated example. The following links to charts of all the major grain types reveals similar patterns. I wonder how food costs can be said to be up 2.4% when the actual price increases are up over 15 to 30 times that amount? A fair question, to be sure.

Corn (up 87% over the last year)
Wheat (up 58%)
Oats (up 44%)

Continuing into other basic materials I cannot find any that even remotely correspond to the government’s numbers

Oil (Temporarily Unchanged...but only after huge increases year on year, and after serious jaw-boning with the Saudis the past year)
Copper (up 60%)
Silver (up 75%)
Aluminum (up 39%)

These charts show, in frightening and graphic detail, that inflation is running at anything but the ~3.3% that the government recently reported.

So, you're disinformation operation to prevent a correction to more conservative policies is indeed "doomed."

And the Chinese are showing that they are not interested in free trade and free enterprise...centrally managing everything to continue to demolish the U.S. industrial position...and everyone else as well if they can:

China vetoes yuan float
Bangkok Post ^ | 12/26/06

China has decided to ignore calls from the United States and Thailand to float the yuan, and will continue to peg the value of its currency.

The value of the yuan, supported by the Bank of China and government policy, is the focal point of trade disputes with the United States and others.

China intends to keep the currency "at a stable level," and will also act to curb investment growth, the central bank said on Monday.

The statement by the People's Bank of China came just a day after Thai economic guru Pridiyathorn Devakula called for China to allow its currency to rise against the dollar.

M.R. Pridyathorn, who is deputy prime minister and also finance minister, said the weak Chinese currency hurts its export competitors - obviously starting with Thailand.

The Chinese stand also followed, by less than two weeks, a high-profile US visit to China which failed to win solid pledges of help from Beijing on floating the yuan and slowing a soaring trade gap.

The central bank of China's statement appeared on Monday on its official website, and followed a fourth-quarter meeting on monetary policy:

"The meeting believed that China should ... actively expand domestic demand, reasonably control the growth of the investment and improve the trade balance."

China has been under pressure to do something about the value of its currency.

In Thailand, businessmen and farmers both have complained that a Free Trade Agreement has allowed China to flood the country with cheap goods, particularly agricultural items which undercut Thai prices.

Many politicians in Washington and US business leaders say Beijing keeps the yuan undervalued, giving its exporters an unfair price advantage and hurting foreign companies.

The US trade deficit with China is on track to hit $229 billion (US) for 2006, far above last year's record of $202-billion.

Fresh figures released on Monday by the Foreign Trade Department showed Thailand had a deficit of nearly $1.7 billion in trade with China under the Asean-China FTA during the first nine months of this year.

FTD director-general Apiradi Tantraporn said Sino-Thai trade under the FTA rose by 24 per cent to $18.46 billion in the period. The value of Thai exports to China totalled $8.34 billion, while imports totalled $10.12 billion, resulting in a trade deficit of $1.78 billion.

Despite the complaints of farmers and agro-business operators, Thailand continued to enjoy a farm product trade deficit of $591 million in the period from January through September.

Key Thai export to China under FTA privileges include farm products such as tapioca (cassava), fresh fruit, dried lychees, frozen seafood, orchids and industrial products including polycarbonate, mixed rubber, rubber products, kerosene and bitumen petroleum.

Top Chinese exports to Thailand included apples and Chinese pears; industrial products such as machine parts, radio transmission equipment, telephones and televisions, and digital processing equipment.

The US visit earlier this month, headed by US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and including US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, ended with China saying it would pursue currency flexibility, but it gave no timetable or details.

Monday's four-paragraph central bank statement was similarly non-committal, saying "the meeting also believed that China should continue to implement prudent monetary policy, keep price stability, reasonably control credit growth, and keep the basic stability of the currency rate of the yuan."

In July 2005, China revalued the yuan by 2.1 per cent to 8.11 yuan per dollar. Since then, it has gained about 3.5 per cent against the dollar, but US officials say that is not enough.

Chinese leaders say they want to encourage domestic consumption in order to reduce the country's dependence on export-driven manufacturing industries and investment, but retail sales and other measures of consumer spending are growing much more slowly than exports.

China says its global trade surplus this year should be at least $168-billion. Beijing's overall surplus is smaller than its gap with the United States because China runs deficits with other countries.

Economists say such imbalances cannot continue and that they threaten the stability of the world economy.

[Toddsterpatriot]

The Average is Not the Median. You clearly still don't get that.

A banana is not an orange. So what? I provided some median numbers but no average numbers.

As you know, I am a huge critic of the way that our government (from Xlinton forward to this Administration) collects and reports inflation numbers

Now you'll explain how the supposedly underreported inflation numbers has inflated net worth?

I think the stock market is making a huge mistake in believing the ‘official inflation numbers’.

I hope you haven't put your feelings into play by shorting the market.

So, you're disinformation operation to prevent a correction to more conservative policies is indeed "doomed."

Huh?

And the Chinese are showing that they are not interested in free trade and free enterprise...centrally managing everything to continue to demolish the U.S. industrial position...and everyone else as well if they can:

Yup, they're kicking our butts.

[1rudeboy]

I think Mase is the one who is fond of pointing out that, for all the complaints about one inflation number not including such volatile figures as food and energy, there is another that includes them. It appears to be simple laziness that others can't be bothered to look it up.

[Toddsterpatriot]

Paul's point must be that food inflation is really 66%, if the only food you consume is orange juice. I don't remember the last time I bought any orange juice, so my food inflation must be 0%. Using the Paul Ross inflation index of course.

[1rudeboy]

I don't know about o.j., I can get two half-gallons at Jewel/Osco for $5.00 (on sale with preferred card), and it's been that way as long as I can remember

[1rudeboy]

I meant to add Tropicana Premium.

[Paul Ross]

Modern warfare will not revolve around who can out-produce who. It will happen with lightning speed, with the troops we have on duty at the time. There will not even be time to reconstitute boneyard equipment, and reactivate people like me that used to know how to run it.

Which actually cuts severely AGAINST your positions. Particularly as the Administration is racing to slash domestic military capacities, such as the Navy, Airforce and Marines. So deep has the rot gotten, they don't even know if they can really do a modest temporary surge in a puny theater like Iraq. And the vast numbers of disproved appeasement-promises regarding our current enemies [China, Russia, Iran, North Korea] go down the memory-hole without comment.

I'll let others speak to the charts, but sufice it to say that there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. They can be spun any direction one likes.

And so you should be more skeptical of the smug what-me-worry types.

For myself, I'll take my lifetime experience that doom mongers are never right.

First define "doom mongers". Interesting conjoining of terms typically applied with other terms as I note below. And measured by your lifetime? How long has that been? Fifteen or twenty years? Let me point out some "hawks", people who the Left and their tame MSM smeared as "Doom-Sayers" and "War Mongers"...who were proved RIGHT!

Anthony Eden

Winston Churchill

Ronald Reagan

Jeane Kirkpatrick

And then look at those self-defined "opposites" of the doom-sayers...and what happened to their policies of appeasement...and their place in history?

Neville Chamberlain

Stanley Baldwin

At the time of the Appeasement process with Hitler...Chamberlain was touted as the proponent of "effervescent optimism" and "hope." He was greeted with cheering throngs with his pieces of paper being waved around promising "Peace in Our Time."

Everything that is being done nowadays by the past two Administrations with the communists and their jihadist-ally regimes smells rather familiar... And every single policy pertaining to our industrial preparedness, and explicitly military strategic preparedness for major Great Power war... reeks of appeasement-type thinking.

And that is the kind of thinking you appear to be subscribing to. So are you, or are you not an Appeaser? If not, you have some 'splainin to do.

[Paul Ross]

Must not be remembering too long, LOL!

[Paul Ross]

I provided some median numbers but no average numbers.

No, you provided average, not median. More proof you don't know the difference.

[Paul Ross]

Yup, they're kicking our butts.

Indeed, they are. And your numbers don't support an opposite conclusion...especially since they are concealing inflated claims.

[Mase]

Paul may make the effort to look it up but he won't ever believe it. He, like many others of the doomer persuasion, would rather argue that they're smarter than the entire bond market and all the banks.

Unfortunately, the fact that these guys still have to work for a living tells us all we need to know about that possibility.

[1rudeboy]

I only need to remember its performance over the past year, which is the figure you provided. Let's review:

Paul Ross, "price is up 66%," and
1rudeboy, "price is up 0%."

[Toddsterpatriot]

No, you provided average, not median. More proof you don't know the difference.

Post #353 provided median, not average. Where did you see average? In your fevered imagination?

[Toddsterpatriot]

And your numbers don't support an opposite conclusion...especially since they are concealing inflated claims.

You trust the Chinese government numbers more than you trust U.S. government numbers. There is a name for people who feel that way, LIBERAL.

[1rudeboy]

In your fevered imagination?

Certainly the same place where he thinks I'm paying $8.30, and not $5.00, for my juice.

[Paul Ross]

Re #353. That wasn't posted to me, so I didn't happen to see you finally belatedly tried to defend your weak position. I would further note the chart is not defined in its assumptions. But one can't help observing from your own chart, the pronounced post-'99 stagnation evident therein.

Doesn't look good for your 'what-me-worry' disinfo operation.

[Paul Ross]

You trust the Chinese government numbers more than you trust U.S. government numbers.

B.S. I bet you believe their claims to only be spending $35 billion on defense.

There is a name for people who feel that way, LIBERAL.

Yes you are. No question. You haven't got a drop of conservative blood in you. You don't even know what conservatives believe in.

[Toddsterpatriot]

Great, where did I use averages?

But one can't help observing from your own chart, the pronounced post-'99 stagnation evident therein.

It doesn't include 2005 or 2006.

Doesn't look good for your 'what-me-worry' disinfo operation.

Still waiting for you to post some info that shows my info is wrong.