Posted on 07/31/2003 11:53:32 AM PDT by Florida_Irish
Of course I can have it both ways. Both of the above items are true, after all.
Average national salaries have gone up. That's true.
Average purchasing power has gone down. That's also true.
Two different things. Both true. Let's not confuse them with each other. They are two different things.
I was actually surprised to see you last this long. Once I nailed you to wall by hammering you on your bogus "middle class is shrinking" claim, I knew that eventually you'd find a convenient excuse to justify fleeing from me in terror and shame.
Only in your dreams, Southack. Your key statistic has been proven counter to your position. Net purchasing power, the only statistic that really matters, went down last year. And that does not even reflect the millions of unemployed.
Can I cite hard statistics for something that is currently happening? Of course not - the Census Bureau only has data up to 2001. However, anyone but the most jaded, asinine political spinner can see that net purchasing power has dropped, in the private sector it dropped even further, in IT, once touted as the future of this economy, it dropped by nearly seven percent, and the unemployment rate is 6.2 percent, with many more people having just given up on finding work and not even factored into that. So let freepers decide - who is making more sense here? You or me?
So, you too agree that a 1.8 percent increase in salary, coupled to a 2.2 percent inflation rate, is a good thing, eh? But I expected as much from someone like you.
Only one matters. Net income. People had very nice raises, percentage-wise, during the Carter years. But their purchasing power dropped like a rock. Yet you would only look at their raises, using the "logic" you have displayed to this point. It's plain to anyone without an agenda that you're full of it.
quote from racebannon " In fact all these economies that we are off shoring our jobs to do not practice free trade at all, "
What we are seeing here amongst us, as folks rush forward to defend this process, is the greed that flows from them profitting from such practice. This is big business using loopholes in import, export and visa laws, to increase their bottom line, at the expense of lost jobs, decreased benefits and job security for american workers.
IOW... the folks here who support such practices want to make money on their investments. I understand that, but at what cost. The very premise of FREE trade, is that the competitors are SUPPOSED to be at parity... or some semblance of it. These Nations we are out sourcing to, are NOT even capitalist nations. Their economies are subsidized and manipulated to make it so that their "workers" can work all year, for 50 dollars.
IF they were required to take care of their workers, pay a minimum wage, meet basic health environmental and safety laws, that AMERICAN businesses MUST, then we could have a competitor to competitor relationship that I could support.
We don't.
and whenever we try to insist on it, we have to go begging, hat in hand and snivelling to the WTO... who does not have our best interests at heart. I am sorry for the income/employment obstacles that this increasingly worlwide socialist government has put in your way. I know literally hundreds of folks, who have similar stories, and very very few, who don't.
This outsourcing of jobs, to destroy jobs, just like "corporate downsizing", is an evil that only a self centered, money grubbing mizer could love.
We need to support the american worker and entrepreneur spirit by lowering our regulation and taxes on them, to pre world war one levels. SCREW the bloated pig of bureaucracy that eats up over 98 percent of each tax dollar. And insist that nations with whom we trade, are in the intense process of making our competition with them, and our open markets for them, are pursued in the true spirit of FREE and FAIR trade and competition.
It's easy to beat american workers, when your workforce is 100 of millions of men women and children, living in squalid government labor camps. They sell human organs for less than we do too, don't they? They kill christians as a matter of government religious policy, and force aborition on women under 'population control' laws.
The folks who support trade with such evil nations, would do well to go over and take a look at that link you posted. it puts a human freeper face, on the tragedy of "free trade" when it isn't so free, or fair.
the folks who support this abuse, are not free traders, in reality, they want cheap labor subsidized by foreign communist or socialist nations, so they can make more profit, off the slaves who live there. There was a crowd in america back a hundred and forty years ago, who thought the same way, but instead of wanting to keep slaves over seas, they actually wanted to keep them here, for their own benefit.
I am appalled at the level of support I have seen for this group of policies as practiced by corporations... and appalled at how many folks think this is a good thing.
Southack's post 600 is right on target. It is the substance of the debate.
Sorry, but you got beat far and square. Now, be a man, and accept defeat graciously... LOL!
Hardly. Even folks who initially disagreed with me reached agreement with me on the problems with H1-B and outsourcing. And many agreed that the problem is not with training, it is with the lack of jobs - and any honest evaluation of the current job market will bear that out.
But you can go ahead and agree with someone who claims that an increase in average salary and the inflation rate can be decoupled. That in turn defines YOUR mental horsepower.
What makes you say that? Certainly nothing that I've mentioned so far.
My point was that salary increases are one thing, and that inflation is another. That doesn't mean, as you erroneously extrapolate, that I'm ignoring either.
My point was that salary increases are one thing, and that inflation is another. That doesn't mean, as you erroneously extrapolate, that I'm ignoring either.
You claimed that a salary increase was a good thing, even if it was LESS than the rate of inflation. I showed the fallocy of that argument.
I don't know that. Neither do you. The question is, do you have a problem with government grants for higher education?
"Oh and BTW, I didn't say "lawyers", I said "patent lawyers" but like any other occupation where there is a glut, prices will go down."
A patent lawyer is a lawyer. So I'm not sure what the point of your 'clarification' is, particularly in relation to the content of my post.
But that little inconvenience won't stop you from making such wild-eyed claims, will it?!
You are a slippery one. First you claim that the middle class is shrinking, then you come up with justifications for why you can't find the data to support it.
I show you that salaries increased, and you reach for comparisons that might be more favorable to your earlier wild-eyed claim, such as inflation and net purchasing power (and at one point even claimed that salaries went down by factoring in inflation, a complete abuse of the term "down" along the lines of government employees claiming that their budget was "cut" when only their rate of increase was reduced).
The subject was the President's remarks. The President was not talking about the H1-B and outsourcing. Reading his answer to the question makes that clear.
The headline written by the IEEE claimed that the President Blames Unemployment On Lack of Tech Skills. He did not.
Now, if you want to debate the current job market and the outsourcing of many IT jobs... that's a different ball of wax, and I will be happy to do so.
That in turn defines YOUR mental horsepower...
And why is it that you are so quick to insult... can't you debate without it...
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