On Sun, 14 Dec 2008 17:55:18 -0500, Tom Francis - SWSports wrote:

On Sun, 14 Dec 2008 16:12:10 -0600, wrote:

On Sun, 14 Dec 2008 14:03:17 -0500, Tom Francis - SWSports wrote:


http://www.bls.gov/lpc/prodybar.htm

Well, that's kind of the point. What data do you trust?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Fine - but what caused the increase? Something has to change - what was
it?

2.5% annual increase in productivity isn't unusual coming out of a
recession. What is unusual, is that wages didn't increase, and this
isn't Bush bashing. The productivity/wage gap could also be seen under
Clinton.

While the top 1% still got there's, it doesn't account for all of the
difference. I would suggest we are now seeing the effects of the past 25
years of Globalization exerting it's downward pressure on wages.

Production is only one side of the marketplace paradigm. The reason this
country has been the world's marketplace, was because we had a robust
middle-class. No more.

Personally, I feel it's too late to seal our borders to imports, but, I
hope Obama has the sense to use whatever leverage we have left, to open
foreign markets. Japan, India, and China, need to know that if they want
to sell here, we have to be able to sell there. We've been giving it
away, and it's time to stop.


Who should benefit from the obvious productivity increase - the
company or the workers?

Historically, when productivity increases, there may be a lag, but wages
also increase. What's changed?

The answer to that, is far more devastating to this country's long term
economic health, than the middle-class not getting their share.

You raise some important questions and frankly, I don't have an answer
for you - I'll admit it.

Obviously, its far to simplistic to blame the fat cats and corporate
executives. Perhaps there has been a fundamental shift in how money is
distributed, the money supply being managed - there's a whole host of
factors that could explain it, but I'm not an economist although I do
play one on TV. :)

I watch CNBC a lot - in particular the early show Squawk Box or if I'm
out and about, I listen on Sirius. When you watch two opposing sides
take the same sets of data and make them fit their own agendas and
viewpoints, you begin to wonder if anybody really and truly knows what's
going on.

Now for the really oddball opinon. I've often suspected that "real
wages" are being sucked up by government in various ways. I had an
experience Friday that floored me. I was kind of messing around in the
kitchen and I gathered up the bills for the paper pusher to handle. I
just started looking through them - there are more fees, taxes and
"adjustments' on my cable, telephone and wireless bills that I could
shake a stick at - easily adding 3-4% to the cost of the bill and that's
before sales/service taxes which add another - what, 6%?

What are all these fees/taxes/access charges doing to real wages?

What's the measure of productivity he's quoting? Per unit, per hour,
per what? I would think that if a company over 8 years increased it's
productivity by 20% (which is 2.5%/yr by the way) that's not a whole
lot considering inflation, raw material costs, etc. And if your
company has a high labor quotient to the cost of production, that's
almost negligible.

If you want to consider inflation, real wages have decreased.

Well, I think the last time I could buy a decent cigar for .75¢ was
about twenty years ago. :)