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Total Members Voted: 88

[mainiac]

Mean income isn't a worthless statistic.  I would say that his model is incomplete not wrong.

[Flying Dice]

Which is why I didn't say or imply that it was. However, it's still much better at masking income inequality than median income.

Also his numbers as far as I can tell exist only in his head. Or I suppose in some Reagan-worshipping alternate reality where wage stagnation and the widening class income gap don't exist.

[nenjin]

Mean income isn't a worthless statistic.  I would say that his model is incomplete not wrong.

I'd upgrade that to "woefully incomplete" when he's both arguing it's fine, and that it's Obama and Socialism's fault that wages "suddenly" (10 years ago) stopped going up.

[mainiac]

It's really not woefully incomplete, the mean data actually shows that.  Look at the slow growth during the 70s and 80s.  Look at the fast growth during the 90s.

The data is incomplete because there has been a new trend of growth in high incomes faster then median incomes.  However the overall picture portrayed by average incomes is also quite useful.  That tells us a lot about how much money is left over for wages after we pay off the money for capital.  This also gives us information that is not included in median wages.  After all even though bargaining power is part of a reason why high earner incomes are going up faster then the medium it is useful information to know that the revenues to support that income exists.  Inequalities might be why someone's slice of the pie is growing or not growing but knowing that the overall pie is growing is important information.

And the median income itself is incomplete.  Growth of low earner incomes has been even worse then the median.  It might even be regressing (although there's all sorts of reasons that make it difficult to judge).  So dont say that an incomplete statistic is a bad thing because all statistics are incomplete.

[nenjin]

An incomplete statistic, and erroneous conclusions based on them? Where's the real maniac? He'd be risking a ban trying to tell people how wrong they are for doing such a thing.

[mainiac]

Cyka Blyat

[majikero]

How is this even a topic worthy of discussing? In the current job market where people throw out applications at anyone hiring and grabbing the first job that hires you, do you really want to add another step to go "i can get a better paying job" on every low paying job I apply too.

The stupid is too strong in this one. It has reached a point where there's soo many things wrong with that statement you can't even give a proper retort to it.

[Antioch]

I have always found the "this creates/destroys jobs" argument rather peculiar.

Doesn't the economy drift to a equilibrium of job offers and demand over time?

so don't things that "create" or "destroy" jobs only have a temporary effect anyway?

I mean, mechanisation destroyed literally millions of jobs in agriculture and manufacturing, seems rather hard to claim that those people never found something else to do.

[SirQuiamus]

Funfact 1. Sweden, Finland and Norway don't have a minimal wage.

Damn straight we don't – we have glorious glorious tripartism instead! Or used to have, it's more like unipartism nowadays. Dunno what happened to the two parties that aren't the government.

Funfact 2. Sweden, Finland and Norway are hardcore welfare states where people can say "fuck it i won't work for this pay" and actually live in (relative) comfort so basically no one works for a slaves pay anyway.

This is fun, but not a fact. If you're receiving unemployment benefits in Finland, you're legally obligated to accept any kind of work offered by the job center, even if that "work" is a part-time unpaid internship with a two-hour commute and no job contract. If for any reason (accidentally or not) you fail to apply for one of these jobs at a couple of days' notice, you will lose your unemployment benefits for two months, and with repeat offences your basic welfare will be halved. And after that it's food banks or dumpster-diving for you, although the dumpsters are always locked nowadays.

So yeah, given that there are 300 000 unemployed Finns and somewhere between 10 000 and 30 000 vacancies at any one point, the actual situation is that we have a lot of people fighting tooth and nail over the "right" to work their arses off for no pay at all, for fear of losing their benefits and "falling through the cracks of the welfare society," as the euphemistically gifted politicians put it.

[Sonlirain]

Lucky you. It's dumpster diving AFTER your benefits get halved.
Where i live the unemployment benefit is around 120 euro so if you lose your job and have to live off that for any period of time it's off you go eating fresh bark off the local trees.

[mainiac]

They have bark on the trees still where you are?

[Sonlirain]

They have bark on the trees still where you are?

Yeah and you'd try telling that to the wealthy westerners of today and they won't believe you.

[Flying Dice]

Damned well better be if the people doing it have even the slightest awareness of ecological sustainability. Small strips, switch trees.

[Sheb]

I have always found the "this creates/destroys jobs" argument rather peculiar.

Doesn't the economy drift to a equilibrium of job offers and demand over time?

so don't things that "create" or "destroy" jobs only have a temporary effect anyway?

I mean, mechanisation destroyed literally millions of jobs in agriculture and manufacturing, seems rather hard to claim that those people never found something else to do.

Well, the basic idea would be that if you raise the price of labour, you'd shift the equilibrium to "less jobs", although of course it's bloody more complicated than that.

[mainiac]

Well, the basic idea would be that if you raise the price of labour, you'd shift the equilibrium to "less jobs", although of course it's bloody more complicated than that.

The light of Noah shines upon you, my child.