Jump to content

Revisiting the Shaggy Soothsayers


Bozo_Casanova

Recommended Posts

3 minutes ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

yeah, here's the thing: everything a republican has told us is true for the last ~40 years (my lifetime) is a straight up fucking lie. this is no different.

Yep. I was raised as a Republican but turned into a Democrat in my 30s. Everything I was fed as a kid was bullshit. Enough years in the real world and I figured it out.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Every Republican/Trumpkin on this board fancies themselves an economist. They are nothing but morons who spout talking points from trickle down losers who say nonsense on TV and conservative blogs because they can’t find actual jobs. 

Edited by Js1
  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think it's a good thing, but I also think there are complexities too: https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/7/13/20690266/seattle-minimum-wage-15-dollars

The economists observed the impact of the hike in 2017 and found it had dramatic effects on the low-wage workforce and employment.

Not all of them were good. They found that the policy “reduced hours worked in low-wage jobs by 6-7 percent, while hourly wages in such jobs increased by 3 percent ... consequently, total payroll for such jobs decreased.” That means the total amount that employers paid to workers was less with the new minimum wage in place than projected payroll if the policy hadn’t gone into effect.

The data, researcher Mark C. Long explained, suggested a “tipping point” between $11 and $13 “when it becomes less tenable to keep work in the city.” (Critics were quick to point out that this likely wasn’t solely due to the minimum wage policy — Seattle’s labor market continued to heat up during that period, reducing the number of low-wage jobs compared to high-wage jobs overall.)

But a year later, the team published another paper that complicated their findings. They looked at the same time period and same wage increase, but this time broke down the actual take-home pay of workers. They found that workers who were already employed at the low end of the wage scale in Seattle “enjoyed significantly more rapid hourly wage growth,” following wage increases in 2015 and 2016.

Those who were already working more hours before the wage increase saw “essentially all of the earnings increases,” while the workers who had fewer hours saw their hours go down, but wages go up enough so that their overall earnings didn’t really change. They theorized that a slowdown in new hiring for low-wage jobs could explain their earlier findings that overall payroll had gone down.

Ultimately, workers already employed either saw their take-home pay go up or stay roughly the same while working fewer hours.

Critics of the UW researchers have seized on Seattle’s uniqueness to discount the UW findings. Ben Zipperer of the liberal Economic Policy Institute wrote that the UW research is based on a “flawed comparison” between Seattle and the rest of the state. He argued that the decline in low wage jobs was due to a hot economy boosting low-wage jobs into high-wage jobs, not the new minimum wage. The data did show, Zipperer argued, that all of the workers they studied were “better off after the minimum wage increase” — higher-hour workers earned more with a higher wage while the low-hour workers got the same pay for less work.

There are still questions about the policy’s impact that are harder to observe, such as new employees who may or may not have been hired had the minimum wage been lower. And of course, the question of whether this would work in any other city remains. “I take this research as a cautionary tale for other cities like Seattle,” Long said, noting that Seattle’s booming labor market, especially at the high end and in technology, “is a very particular thing.”

Edited by Rougarou
  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

This should totally be a series.  Can we also get a reconciliation of the predictions of the impact of the tax cuts on the tax receipts / deficit by the various consituencies and the actual impacts?  I'd love for this sort of thing to be the basis for a series of "Don't believe a fucking thing the Rs are telling you, dumbfuck" ads.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not going to go back and read that thread but I would imagine my only input, if I had any, was that Seattle's move was a great thing for the USA because local experiments are the key to making the whole system function. The problem is that people have to be willing to look at the results of those experiments honestly and with as little bias as possible. Then you move on to implementing things nationwide based on the results.

Good luck with that, America.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 minutes ago, Rougarou said:

I think it's a good thing, but I also think there are complexities too: https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/7/13/20690266/seattle-minimum-wage-15-dollars

The economists observed the impact of the hike in 2017 and found it had dramatic effects on the low-wage workforce and employment.

Not all of them were good. They found that the policy “reduced hours worked in low-wage jobs by 6-7 percent, while hourly wages in such jobs increased by 3 percent ... consequently, total payroll for such jobs decreased.” That means the total amount that employers paid to workers was less with the new minimum wage in place than projected payroll if the policy hadn’t gone into effect.

The data, researcher Mark C. Long explained, suggested a “tipping point” between $11 and $13 “when it becomes less tenable to keep work in the city.” (Critics were quick to point out that this likely wasn’t solely due to the minimum wage policy — Seattle’s labor market continued to heat up during that period, reducing the number of low-wage jobs compared to high-wage jobs overall.)

But a year later, the team published another paper that complicated their findings. They looked at the same time period and same wage increase, but this time broke down the actual take-home pay of workers. They found that workers who were already employed at the low end of the wage scale in Seattle “enjoyed significantly more rapid hourly wage growth,” following wage increases in 2015 and 2016.

Those who were already working more hours before the wage increase saw “essentially all of the earnings increases,” while the workers who had fewer hours saw their hours go down, but wages go up enough so that their overall earnings didn’t really change. They theorized that a slowdown in new hiring for low-wage jobs could explain their earlier findings that overall payroll had gone down.

Ultimately, workers already employed either saw their take-home pay go up or stay roughly the same while working fewer hours.

Critics of the UW researchers have seized on Seattle’s uniqueness to discount the UW findings. Ben Zipperer of the liberal Economic Policy Institute wrote that the UW research is based on a “flawed comparison” between Seattle and the rest of the state. He argued that the decline in low wage jobs was due to a hot economy boosting low-wage jobs into high-wage jobs, not the new minimum wage. The data did show, Zipperer argued, that all of the workers they studied were “better off after the minimum wage increase” — higher-hour workers earned more with a higher wage while the low-hour workers got the same pay for less work.

There are still questions about the policy’s impact that are harder to observe, such as new employees who may or may not have been hired had the minimum wage been lower. And of course, the question of whether this would work in any other city remains. “I take this research as a cautionary tale for other cities like Seattle,” Long said, noting that Seattle’s booming labor market, especially at the high end and in technology, “is a very particular thing.”

Actually, Escriva and I had a pretty good discussion of this between about here and post #205, when TenneseeHorn shows up and takes things full potato. This section also features @Ag with kids announcing and doubling down on his reasons he doesn't tip if somebody makes the full federal minimum wage or above. 

  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

Actually, Escriva and I had a pretty good discussion of this between about here and post #205, when TenneseeHorn shows up and takes things full potato. This section also features @Ag with kids announcing and doubling down on his reasons he doesn't tip if somebody makes the full federal minimum wage or above. 

Joe to Mr. pink: “What do you mean you don’t tip?“

Mr. Orange: “He don’t believe in it.”

Joe: “Shut up.”

To Mr. pink. “What do you mean you don’t believe in it?”

  • Like 2
  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

30 minutes ago, Js1 said:

Every Republican/Trumpkin on this board fancies themselves an economist. They are nothing but morons who spout talking points from trickle down losers who say nonsense on TV and conservative blogs because they can’t find actual jobs. 

They also like to brag about their nonexistent math skills

Link to comment
Share on other sites

29 minutes ago, Gap03 said:

This should totally be a series.  Can we also get a reconciliation of the predictions of the impact of the tax cuts on the tax receipts / deficit by the various consituencies and the actual impacts?  I'd love for this sort of thing to be the basis for a series of "Don't believe a fucking thing the Rs are telling you, dumbfuck" ads.

Here's a fun thread on that very topic, from 2010 when 2001 cuts were set to expire. Pointed questions are asked and go unanswared, and @washparkhorn engages in some truly epic concern trolling in support of more tax cuts while framing them as something other than cuts, like this gem, before he gets hoist. 
 

Quote

The topic at hand is the expiration of cuts, which means taxes will be increased. The topic at hand is the transfer of $678,000,000,000 ($678 Billion) from taxpayers to the federal government over the next 10 years with that increase in taxation. The question is about the effect of that transfer on the economy.
Added to that is the myriad of other taxes that will take money away from Americans - the stealth taxes - proposed by this Administration (and enacted by previous situations).

 

Edited by Bozo_Casanova
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not going to go back and read that thread but I would imagine my only input, if I had any, was that Seattle's move was a great thing for the USA because local experiments are the key to making the whole system function. The problem is that people have to be willing to look at the results of those experiments honestly and with as little bias as possible. Then you move on to implementing things nationwide based on the results.
Good luck with that, America.


That is a rational logical well thought out response. Knock it off.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

Here's a fun thread on that very topic, from 2010 when 2001 cuts were set to expire. Pointed questions are asked and go unanswared, and @washparkhorn engages in some truly epic concern trolling in support of more tax cuts while framing them as something other than cuts, like this gem, before he gets hoist. 
 

 

Damn I was erudite back then. Thanks.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

Oh, no doubt. I read stuff I wrote from 2009-2012 and there's no doubt I've experienced marked cognitive decline. 

I believe the banter over policy made me sharper back then. New perspectives. I learned a lot from you all back then. I don't dismiss arguments as easily because of the collective wisdom shared then. 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Every Republican/Trumpkin on this board fancies themselves an economist. They are nothing but morons who spout talking points from trickle down losers who say nonsense on TV and conservative blogs because they can’t find actual jobs. 

I wonder how many of us have economics degrees. I doubt there's many practicing economists on this board but the economics program graduates plenty each year.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, elfenix said:

I wonder how many of us have economics degrees. I doubt there's many practicing economists on this board but the economics program graduates plenty each year.

 

 

How many of you practice in the discipline? A lot has changed in the past 10 years. 

Below is worth a read . . . 

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/demand-side-secular-stagnation-of-productivity-growth

Quote

 

A spectre is haunting the U.S. economy — the threat of stagnation. The anaemic recovery of the American economy after the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-09 looked uncomfortably similar to what Alvin E. Hansen (1939, p. 4) in the late stage of the Great Depression had called “sick recoveries which die in their infancy and depressions [….] feed on themselves and leave a hard and seemingly immovable core of unemployment.” 

Not surprisingly, therefore, interest is once again growing in Hansen’s ‘secular stagnation’ thesis which stated that an economy could experience persistent stagnation as a result of a structural shortage of aggregate demand. As is all too well known, Lawrence Summers (2013, 2015) played a big role in reviving Hansen’s original idea, but he did this with a distinctly pre-Keynesian twist. In Summers’ analysis, an ageing population, heightened income inequality and a large inflow of foreign finance, by raising savings, created a structural excess supply in the market for loanable funds; this ‘savings glut’, so the argument goes, pushed down the interest rate to its zero-lower bound. However, because, according to Summers, even a zero interest rate failed to remove the savings excess, the macro outcome has been a structural demand deficiency — and stagnation.

Summers’ ‘zero-lower-bound explanation’ of the demand shortage and stagnation splendidly failed to persuade the profession. Neither did it convince policy-makers. One reason is that modelling the financial system as a loanable funds market operating in a ‘corn economy’ is, as argued by Bofinger 2020, empirically misleading and practically dangerous: monetary economies and modern financial systems, as Keynes realized already in the 1930s, work differently — lending by money-creating commercial banks is not constrained by available savings (deposits) and business investment is overwhelmingly driven by (expected) demand (see Cynamon and Fazzari 2017; Kopp et al. 2019) rather than by changes in the interest rate; I have argued this before (Storm 2017 and Storm 2019), writing in the spirit of Samuel Beckett’s famous lines (from the 1983 story Worstward Ho): “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

But there is a second reason why Summers’ zero-lower-bound explanation of the demand shortage and stagnation failed to make the cut: evidence suggests that the U.S. is not suffering from a shortage of demand: the growth rate of actual output during most of the 2000s has been staying close to potential output growth and even has exceeded potential output growth since 2010.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've waited tables and bartended, so I always leave a decent (20%+/-) tip. Restaurant owners are notorious for fucking over waitstaff with the $2.13 exemption. Some even "pool" tips among the staff so the shitty waitresses get the same as the ones busting their ass. Unfortunately most customers are unaware of it and leave shitty tips if they tip at all. My BIL's 75 yo dad almost had a stroke when I left a $20 tip at lunch one day at our local mexican food joint. We had 6 people at our table and I kinda felt cheap leaving a $20. He thought I was out of my fucking mind.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 hours ago, Rougarou said:

I think it's a good thing, but I also think there are complexities too: https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/7/13/20690266/seattle-minimum-wage-15-dollars

The economists observed the impact of the hike in 2017 and found it had dramatic effects on the low-wage workforce and employment.

Not all of them were good. They found that the policy “reduced hours worked in low-wage jobs by 6-7 percent, while hourly wages in such jobs increased by 3 percent ... consequently, total payroll for such jobs decreased.” That means the total amount that employers paid to workers was less with the new minimum wage in place than projected payroll if the policy hadn’t gone into effect.

The data, researcher Mark C. Long explained, suggested a “tipping point” between $11 and $13 “when it becomes less tenable to keep work in the city.” (Critics were quick to point out that this likely wasn’t solely due to the minimum wage policy — Seattle’s labor market continued to heat up during that period, reducing the number of low-wage jobs compared to high-wage jobs overall.)

But a year later, the team published another paper that complicated their findings. They looked at the same time period and same wage increase, but this time broke down the actual take-home pay of workers. They found that workers who were already employed at the low end of the wage scale in Seattle “enjoyed significantly more rapid hourly wage growth,” following wage increases in 2015 and 2016.

Those who were already working more hours before the wage increase saw “essentially all of the earnings increases,” while the workers who had fewer hours saw their hours go down, but wages go up enough so that their overall earnings didn’t really change. They theorized that a slowdown in new hiring for low-wage jobs could explain their earlier findings that overall payroll had gone down.

Ultimately, workers already employed either saw their take-home pay go up or stay roughly the same while working fewer hours.

Critics of the UW researchers have seized on Seattle’s uniqueness to discount the UW findings. Ben Zipperer of the liberal Economic Policy Institute wrote that the UW research is based on a “flawed comparison” between Seattle and the rest of the state. He argued that the decline in low wage jobs was due to a hot economy boosting low-wage jobs into high-wage jobs, not the new minimum wage. The data did show, Zipperer argued, that all of the workers they studied were “better off after the minimum wage increase” — higher-hour workers earned more with a higher wage while the low-hour workers got the same pay for less work.

There are still questions about the policy’s impact that are harder to observe, such as new employees who may or may not have been hired had the minimum wage been lower. And of course, the question of whether this would work in any other city remains. “I take this research as a cautionary tale for other cities like Seattle,” Long said, noting that Seattle’s booming labor market, especially at the high end and in technology, “is a very particular thing.”

Anyone who says they KNEW how this was going to shake out, as opposed to HOPED, or PREDICTED, is, in fact, a liar.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 hours ago, elfenix said:

I wonder how many of us have economics degrees. I doubt there's many practicing economists on this board but the economics program graduates plenty each year.

 

 

Well, to be fair, a BA is a lousy credential to practice the dismal science.  Especially when that BA came about because you didn't have the 2.5 needed to get into upper division business (not "you" you, the royal you).

Edited by TwiceHorn
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've waited tables and bartended, so I always leave a decent (20%+/-) tip. Restaurant owners are notorious for fucking over waitstaff with the $2.13 exemption. Some even "pool" tips among the staff so the shitty waitresses get the same as the ones busting their ass. Unfortunately most customers are unaware of it and leave shitty tips if they tip at all. My BIL's 75 yo dad almost had a stroke when I left a $20 tip at lunch one day at our local mexican food joint. We had 6 people at our table and I kinda felt cheap leaving a $20. He thought I was out of my fucking mind.

No offense but your BILs dad sounds like a piece of shit.
  • Like 1
  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

Wouldn’t your BIL’s dad either be your FIL or sister’s FIL?  I’m just curious because I don’t believe I’ve ever heard it referenced this way.

If it's your wife's sister's husband's dad, then it is appropriate to say your BIL's dad.  Instead of your sister-in-law's father-in-law.  Aw fuck it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, WhatTheBuck said:

 That's really fucking deep. It's like it applies to...EVERYTHING. 

Well it points out the fact that you can't really call someone a liar about their prediction of a future outcome.

I'm not a real big fan of this recent trend of bandying about the term "liar," when it doesn't really apply.

It's a needless escalation of already fraught topics.  Bad business.

 

Edited by TwiceHorn
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

Well, to be fair, a BA is a lousy credential to practice the dismal science.  Especially when that BA came about because you didn't have the 2.5 needed to get into upper division business (not "you" you, the royal you).

economics isn't even in the B school at UT. 

i took a lot of way upper division economics classes, and i'd say the vast majority of people at graduation weren't in those.  how could they be?  there were 700 walking and monetary economics had about 20 people in it. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How does the unemployement rate in the Seattle Tacoma Bellvue MSA verify the stunning success of a minimum wage policy in a small portion of it?

I am for a higher minimum wage, but frankly think it should be done federally.  Any real economic damage is local and micro due to significant cost differences across imaginary lines in the sand(one side of road vs other)  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, elfenix said:

economics isn't even in the B school at UT. 

i took a lot of way upper division economics classes, and i'd say the vast majority of people at graduation weren't in those.  how could they be?  there were 700 walking and monetary economics had about 20 people in it. 

I am aware.

I knew a guy that changed his major to economics after taking it in lower-division business (we had had a pretty rigorous course in high school, too).  He took some hardcore, math-based stuff.

But the majority of economics majors that I knew or knew of were there because of an inability to get into upper division business.  Ironically, in many cases, because economics and calculus kicked their ass, not to mention accounting. Next best thing, they thought.

Link to comment
Share on other sites



×
×
  • Create New...