Let's have that political discussion.

[jwhitehorn]

What the ***** are you talking about? I gave 2 sources saying Divorce is down.

Here's the Census definition page. Why don't you look up household.

http://www.census.gov/cps/about/cpsdef.html

Divorce is DOWN or "Divorce is WAY down"? Your story is already changing. Either way divorce has somewhat cumulative properties as you would have to take all the generations of decades prior to have divorced and created single income households into consideration. Obviously in the 80's there was an entire generation of marriages from 40-60's who have strong cultural issues with divorce. In todays world almost all generations of married couples have been married in a world where it is acceptable.

Not that you will be able to read it but here is a graph that completely disproves your ***** that divorce is down therefore single income households is down as well.



Chief PeePooKaKa
MM Tribe

[Ikpeip]

As an incentive to the reading-adverse, somewhere in this post is a link to a picture of Reagan riding a raptor.

Claeyt included this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_re ... -_2011.PNG as proof. There are three immediate objections one can raise:
-The first, as usual, the graph (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_real_median_household_income_1967_-_2011.PNG) doesn't show what Claeyt says it says. The end point for "all races" is 2011 at $50,054. At no time in the period of "pre-Reagan" is a greater number shown. A normal person would feel humbled by his inability to read a graph, but Claeyt will no doubt consider the point moot, change topic, and spam 5 more links that also don't say what he claims.
-Two, President Reagan left office in 1988. Your faulty analysis (as demonstrated above by your inability to read a graph) of the US economy between 1980 and present, even if true, does not logically link to "Reaganomics." You do understand that there were other things going on in the US and global economy while Reagan was president, let alone what occurred in the next 25 years, when someone else was president, right?
-The third objection is that "household income" is a dishonest metric. Between 1967 and 2011, the average size of a "household" shrank. There are far more single parent households today than there were in 1967. In 1967, a husband and wife each making $25,000 a year would have a household income of $50,000. Today, a divorced couple each making $25,000 a year would each separately have a household income of $25,000. So why not use "median income?" Because Claeyt's side argue like lawyers, not scientists. A scientist looks at the best available data, forms a hypothesis, and then meticulously tries to disprove himself. When he finds himself unable to disprove his hypothesis, it becomes a "theory." Demagogues such as Claeyt start with a theory, and then go looking to twist data to support their a priori beliefs. Once they find a few slivers of evidence, they declare it "proven."

It's like you guys haven't even read the CBO report, so here it is a third time.

http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/10-25-HouseholdIncome.pdf

No, WormCSA is quite right on this one - you're the only one who seems unable to read what you're linking. Given your previous struggles interpreting charts and data, I'm to chalk this up to incompetence rather than intentional dishonesty

As you can see from the CBO report quote, Middle class income shares of overall income fell 7% since 1979. The lowest 80% of workers saw their overall income share reduced by half, this is known as 'The Great Divergence'.

You're still failing to understand what the income share metric actually means. It is possible for real median income to rise even as income share falls. Here are some theoretical data-sets to illustrate this. You won't be able to understand them, but everyone else will.

Scenario 1 - "Claeytopia"
In this case, we start out with a relatively large income disparity for the bottom and top quintiles of Claeytopia's population. As a result of the delusion dictator's economic policies, incomes fall across three and a half decades:



By 2013, the bottom quintile's real median income has fallen to 61% of its starting level. However, the real median income for the top quintile has fallen even more rapidly. As a result, income disparity between the two population groups has decreased significantly (following graph is from same data set as above):



The results are celebrated among Claeytopia's corrupt politicians - the income share of the bottom quintile has increased - even as the citizens sink into destitution.

Scenario 2 - "ReaganLand"
In the second scenario, we start out with a miniscule amount of income disparity between the top and bottom percentile. Enter the hero, who cuts bureaucratic regulation and tax burdens across the board. Now, over three and a half decades, incomes rise:



By 2013, the bottom quintile's real median income has almost doubled, and the top quintile's real median income has more than tripled. Even the country's poorest have multiple TVs, air conditioning, and personal computers. While the citizens are affluent, Claeyt is fuming, because income disparity has skyrockets, and the bottom quintile's income share has fallen (following graph is from same data set as above):



Clearly, scenario 2 is far more desirable than scenario 1. To deny that, you'd probably have to be a unscrupulous demagogue, who resorts to trying to score points in a debate by concocting lies about data-sets, accusing his opponents of racism, and trying to shut down the debate rather than respond to the evidence in front of him.

The Resulting Shift in Income Shares

As a result of that uneven income growth, the share of total after-tax income received by the 1 percent of the
population in households with the highest income more has doubled between 1979 and 2007, whereas the share received by low- and middle-income households declined (see Figure 3 on page 6). The share of income received by the top 1 percent grew from about 8 percent in 1979 to
over 17 percent in 2007. The share received by other households in the highest income quintile was fairly flat over the same period, edging up from 35 percent to 36 percent. In contrast, the share of after-tax income received by the 60 percent of the population in the three middle-income quintiles fell by 7 percentage points between 1979 and 2007, from 50 percent to 43 percent of total after-tax household income, and the share of after-tax income accruing to the lowest-income quintile decreased from 7 percent to 5 percent. By 2005, the share of total after-tax household income received by the 20 percent of the population with the highest income had exceeded the share received by the remaining 80 percent. In 2007, those shares were 53 percent and 47 percent, respectively. In 1979, the top 1 percent received about the same share of income as the lowest income quintile; by 2007, the top percentile received more than the lowest two income quintiles combined.

See above explanation of the metric you're trying to use.

-Divorce is actually way down over the last 20 years. Unmarried couples living together count as 1 household by the CBO and the US Census.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/jan/28/divorce-rates-marriage-ons

Surely even you should be able to grasp that link isn't about the divorce rate in the United States. You need to find yourself someone to proofread your posts for you.

Faithfully,

-Paul the Paymaster

[Claeyt]

All this shows is that single person households are up 5% as a part of total households since Reagan took office and during the CBO study of income from 1979-2006.

Divorce is down, way down.

so much work for so few readers but with so many lies

Middle Class, and Working Class income and wages are down. Specifically, they're down a lot from when Bush implemented his Reganesque tax cuts for the rich. They're also down as a share of wealth from when Reagan took office. When the income of the richest 1% is is factored out of total median income then that is down to pre-Reagan levels. The CBO states that part of the reason middle class income is down is because of the failure of the idea that giving tax cuts to the rich will grow the economy. That's my argument and it's true no matter which right wing think tank made-up study you want to throw on your post.

-Divorce is actually way down over the last 20 years. Unmarried couples living together count as 1 household by the CBO and the US Census.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/jan/28/divorce-rates-marriage-ons

Surely even you should be able to grasp that link isn't about the divorce rate in the United States. You need to find yourself someone to proofread your posts for you.

Yes I knew it was the guardian when I quoted it. They mentioned that divorce was down in Europe and also in the States. I gave several other supporting articles and American Divorce rates are similar to England's. Remember American's aren't the only readers here.

[MagicManICT]

You might speak of how much Reagan cut the bureaucracy, but fact is that nearly 100% had returned within only a few years of its lowest level in 1982.

@wormcsa: Probably watched that in 1980.... Or at least, it would have been on the TV when I wasn't quite 10. I'll have to remember to check it out again. (To note, I'm pretty familiar with much of the conservative studies, which is another reason I choose not to follow them too closely in anything other than investments in business.)

Not that you will be able to read it but here is a graph that completely disproves your ***** that divorce is down therefore single income households is down as well.

I'm no math expert (read I don't have a PhD in Mathematics), but looks like that chart you linked has only a little to do with divorce rates. That's single person households, which accounts for a lot more than divorcees. L2argue fakedit: ninja'd by claeyt!!!

[Ikpeip]

Good evening MagicMan,

It's late and haven't read through everything posted but wanted to say a couple of things.

1. Thanks for the extra reading material. I prefer non-fiction as it's something I can wrap my head around easier. I'm a bit dense when it comes to reading between the lines. The only question would be how much prior knowledge is needed. I can read most scientific papers because I've had a wide variety of background. I might not be able to work out all the math or know all the techniques described, but I can easily find them. Business, on the other hand, I've not had as much experience with and economics is really weird. It's a cocktail of sociology, statistical analysis, and voodoo.

While I agree with WormCSA that F.A. Hayek's books are a heavy read, and that Free to Choose is worth the read, for you I'd recommend starting with Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson. If you truly have a good-faith desire to read these works, but have trouble getting your hand on a copy, I'd be willing to provide them free of charge.

2. Labor: I completely agree, however, that's the point of "we all lay down" or at least enough people capable of doing the job that it doesn't matter. Companies have products to sell. Without those things, they go bankrupt. If a boss is so willing to say "to hell with it", they're not going to stay in business long. If they reached a point where they need to hire extra help, and enough of it that a labor strike will hurt, they can't do anything but negotiate. It's how labor unions gained the power they have. It's why we have a large middle and working class instead of upper class and the poor. (FYI, many of the upper class would love to see us go back to the upper/ruling class and the rest of us basically be slaves of one sort or another.)

I think you and I associate labor strikes with different behaviors. When I think labor strikes and unions, thuggish behavior trying to prevent others from taking the jobs that have been vacated through force or intimidation comes to mind. I'm assuming you're thinking of something a bit more peaceful.

I agree that quitting, or threatening to quit, is a valid tactic if you're not getting compensated what you deserve. However, I don't believe in trying to coerce employers by preventing them from filling the positions of striking employees.

3. I find most of the left talking heads about as intellectually honest as the right's. Comedy is more polarized than religion without the fervor and fanaticism (for the most part). Mix in comedy and politics, and you're asking to piss off 80% while entertaining only about 5% of the remaining people. Only a few comedians have been able to do it successfully (ie entertain enough people to not get a bunch of outright haters), but then they just aren't as funny as the guys (and gals) willing to go to the extreme.

I'm certainly not going to argue in favor of the intellectual honesty of the "talking heads" on either side of the spectrum - which is why you shouldn't listen to them. If you're aware Bill Maher is intellectually dishonest, you should ask yourself why he doesn't want you to read certain works.

Reading the news still comes with risk of bias and deception, but it's easier to sort out and handle than watching it televised - it's much easier to manipulate and deceive people through speech than it is through text.

4. We are all slaves. Obligation makes it so. While we may not be defined as a slave workforce tied to land or master, how many people in the US are stuck at a job because leaving would mean a cut in pay, loss of benefits, or other hardship that isn't affordable? What about other "rich" countries? (I won't mention the rest of the world as it only gets worse outside the major industrial powers.) When one no longer can make choices such as where to work or where to live, then it's starting to sound a lot like true slavery. (If you have to live in the same slummy hood, be it one location or another, they're all just the same, whether it's east LA, southside Chicago, etc.)

There's a difference between voluntary obligations and involuntary obligations. I'm "stuck at a job" because I want to live a certain lifestyle - my job is an obligation. This does not make me a slave though - I'm still free to quit my job if I want. I could take a cut in pay, or go on welfare. There are negative consequences for doing so, but I wouldn't be jailed for it. Likewise, I have obligations to friends and family. When a friend's daughter needs math tutoring, or a coworker needs help analyzing a dataset, I have an obligation to assist. But this is a voluntary obligation.

Giving up 40% of my annual performance bonus to the IRS so that corrupt politicians can use it to buy votes is an involuntary obligation, and morally indefensible.

Faithfully,

-Paul the Paymaster

[Claeyt]

You might speak of how much Reagan cut the bureaucracy, but fact is that nearly 100% had returned within only a few years of its lowest level in 1982.

Government spending actually grew astronomically during Reagan's terms. Mostly due to massive defense spending but also due to massive tax cuts for the rich while maintaining the current Government programs with deficit spending. This was termed 'voodoo economics' by his vice-president, George Bush SR.

Not that you will be able to read it but here is a graph that completely disproves your ***** that divorce is down therefore single income households is down as well.

fakedit: ninja'd by claeyt!!!

I type fast.

[jwhitehorn]

. That's single person households, which accounts for a lot more than divorcees. L2argue fakedit: ninja'd by claeyt!!!

Claeyt made the argument that because divorce rates were down Single Person households were also down. I merely posted a graph which allowed him to realize how ***** stupid he is. As always he missed the point and began to cling to some other *****. I dont' think there is a single person on these forums that would argue he is not a ***** retard so at this point I just question if this entire thread is little more than a troll thread to watch the intellectuals spin claeyt around in circles as many times as they can. If that is indeed the case then I wish a link to the secret scoreboard that is being kept as its difficult to tell who is making Claeyt look like the bigger fool at the moment.

Chief PeePooKaKa
MM Tribe

[MagicManICT]

The local library has gone to a "pay as you can" policy of inter-library loans. If there's not copies available in the metro library system, one of the libraries in the region probably does. If it's a popular checkout at universities, it might be summer before I can get ahold of it. I appreciate your offer and if a copy doesn't come up, I may take you up on it. (I'm sure I can cover shipping if it's a personal copy.) I've been trying to study up on server design and implementation, though, as well as operating system fundamentals. Designing a client-server communication system from ground up is... nightmarish.

Economics has always interested me, but it's never been a priority to take over other things in my life (psychology, music, and chemistry were my three first choices for electives, with philosophy and poli sci coming next. I have one more humanity and one more social science elective to take for my Bach of Sci degree if I ever get that far in my life.) It's not the math of economics that has bothered me, but more the weird social parts. I enjoyed psychology, but when it got into the statistics and such, it started bothering me. It almost leads one to truly believe that there's no such thing as free will.

I think you and I associate labor strikes with different behaviors. When I think labor strikes and unions, thuggish behavior trying to prevent others from taking the jobs that have been vacated through force or intimidation comes to mind. I'm assuming you're thinking of something a bit more peaceful.

Labor strikes take on a variety of forms. Sometimes they have been as peaceful as they can be, other times they have turned ugly and into rioting. I live in the Air Capital, so we see them every year or two as one manufacturer or another has at least one contract up for negotiation. Some years they go smoothely and are done in a week or two, other times they turn ugly, last more than a few weeks, and you hear of "scabs" getting assaulted. On the other hand, Gandhi lead India to their freedom through labor strikes. There was certainly violence, but usually instigated by the Imperial British forces. (I've not read enough on it to know of all the issues, though, and I'm sure there were a few groups that assaulted the troops with no immediate provocation. India isn't without its own violent past.) I know from our own (US history) that labor strikes have involved serious rioting that resulted in the loss of life of both strikers as well as law enforcement requiring the National Guard to be called in.

There's a difference between voluntary obligations and involuntary obligations. I'm "stuck at a job" because I want to live a certain lifestyle - my job is an obligation.

Let's say your poor. You can barely make rent and utilities, but can't feed your family without some sort of assistance. You've been at your job for 10 years and have made enough raises and promotions that leaves you just barely scraping by with some help. Your wife would go to work (assuming your still married), but the daycare for the youngest kid, even after school only, would eat up nearly every dime of her wages, not to mention the other extra expenses of her being out of the house. Your boss is a complete ******* and abusive to everyone. You start looking for work, but to change jobs would require a 20% pay cut at a minimum, but you have no education or management experience (company won't give you management training because you have no education!!) to get a job with a similar salary. Have I started making this "slave to the system" clear to you? This isn't a theoretical thing, but an anecdotal example of millions of people's lives in the US alone.

I will most certainly describe my young life to you, and it doesn't deviate too much from the above. My mother was educated well enough that she eventually rose up out of the working poor situation, finally graduated from college (after we--my brothers and I--finished high school, and in under 3 years despite not being in school in 20 years and changing from Education to Business; think she had 20 credits transfer) and got a nice public position as an accountant. Money wasn't big, but it was an altruistic job helping run a school system. However, growing up (before I was about 16 or so), if it wasn't for my grandparents helping out with groceries, serious couponing (almost what you see from the fanatics on TV), and frequent hunting and fishing, we wouldn't have had much of anything other than food. And now you know my story and why I'm so left socially.

Government spending actually grew astronomically during Reagan's terms. Mostly due to massive defense spending but also due to massive tax cuts for the rich while maintaining the current Government programs with deficit spending. This was termed 'voodoo economics' by his vice-president, George Bush SR.

I get what your saying, but your not saying what your thinking, I think. Don't forget that this all came off the huge recession of the 70s that saw gas prices climbing daily, gold prices spiking to the highest value on record (until the latest "recession"), and double digit inflation at times. FDR increased spending while he was in office greatly, too, but didn't have the deep tax cuts accompanying the expenses.

Claeyt made the argument that because divorce rates were down Single Person households were also down.

I probably read right over that... damn

[Claeyt]

2. Labor: I completely agree, however, that's the point of "we all lay down" or at least enough people capable of doing the job that it doesn't matter. Companies have products to sell. Without those things, they go bankrupt. If a boss is so willing to say "to hell with it", they're not going to stay in business long. If they reached a point where they need to hire extra help, and enough of it that a labor strike will hurt, they can't do anything but negotiate. It's how labor unions gained the power they have. It's why we have a large middle and working class instead of upper class and the poor. (FYI, many of the upper class would love to see us go back to the upper/ruling class and the rest of us basically be slaves of one sort or another.)

I think you and I associate labor strikes with different behaviors. When I think labor strikes and unions, thuggish behavior trying to prevent others from taking the jobs that have been vacated through force or intimidation comes to mind. I'm assuming you're thinking of something a bit more peaceful.

I agree that quitting, or threatening to quit, is a valid tactic if you're not getting compensated what you deserve. However, I don't believe in trying to coerce employers by preventing them from filling the positions of striking employees.

People make this mistake all the time. Most Union workers are actually highly skilled workers. They're teachers, electricians, steel workers, heavy equipment operators, specially trained government employees, etc.... It's in most cases impossible to replace those workers in case of a strike without years of rehiring. Even moderately skilled workers like production line workers or other manufacturing workers require a week or two of orientation and then further training on whatever machines they work on. This retraining costs big bucks and slowdowns hurt the company, so worker action is always a way to gain power in negotiated labor agreements.

The benefits to using Union labor are more than just being worried about a strike. They become pretty apparent when you study it and most companies and states don't mind it. The biggest example of this prison guards. Unionized prison guards are much better trained generally and have a 30% less chance of creating an incident that the government can be sued over. This leads to lower insurance rates and savings for the state. Yes those union prison guards cost a little bit more, but they also save the state money and provide for better, safer, and more reliable prisons. This is one of the reasons anti-union states and governments sometimes make exemptions for police, firefighters, and prison guards.

Giving up 40% of my annual performance bonus to the IRS so that corrupt politicians can use it to buy votes is an involuntary obligation, and morally indefensible.

One of the great things about Tom Coburn and one of the main reasons he has my respect even though I disagree with him on almost everything is that he's non-partisan in his contempt for wasteful spending. Almost half of those pet projects he gives as examples were proposed by Republicans. The shooting range was one of them. I remember how pissed he was at 'The bridge to nowhere' another republican idea. He was one of the harshest critics of Bush's massive deficit spending as well and actually opposed Bush's tax cuts for the rich because they didn't cut spending alongside it. His intellectual honesty is very refreshing and his personal attacks on Ted Cruz this week have been hilarious.

That being said some of those examples of government excess are overblown. The Grateful Dead museum was actually part of a very large grant to the 'University of California System' for their 'Library Studies'. Santa Cruz chose to use their chunk to house 'The Dead' music catalog after the Dead gave it to them for free. Now the dead gave it to them so they wouldn't have to pay for it's climate controlled storage anymore and Santa Cruz took it because they knew that they could make money off it in various ways. Santa Cruz termed it 'audio and recorded history studies' as their grant use, which I suppose is technically true. Should the federal government have paid for it, probably not, but technically they provided the matching funds (State of Cali gave the other half) to build a climate controlled addition to a library. 'The Dead' music is just a part of it and the building can be used for a lot of other things.

Some of the other examples from Coburn are along those lines and some others are much more egregious.

[Claeyt]

Claeyt made the argument that because divorce rates were down Single Person households were also down. I merely posted a graph which allowed him to realize how ***** stupid he is. As always he missed the point and began to cling to some other *****. I dont' think there is a single person on these forums that would argue he is not a ***** retard so at this point I just question if this entire thread is little more than a troll thread to watch the intellectuals spin claeyt around in circles as many times as they can. If that is indeed the case then I wish a link to the secret scoreboard that is being kept as its difficult to tell who is making Claeyt look like the bigger fool at the moment.

I said the exact opposite about single person households actually.

-Yes there are more single parents and unmarried couples but I doubt their significance to the real household income as they would have just been included as single person households before. They may have a slight influence on household income if not factored in but they don't have much influence on any of the average income amounts.

I admitted that they probably had a slight influence, and you showed that they increased 5% as a total of households since 1980 which I will stand by as a slight increase. What you and Wormsca are forgetting is the increase in two worker households since 1980. This should have increased the household income share but didn't.