Thread: How the minimum wage works

e percentage of all employers offering health insurance in the past eight years peaked in 2000 at 69% and has fallen steadily since, hitting 60% this year,
yes my numbers were bad the trend is as well

Now those home equity numbers have to give builders pause right? it can't be good for long term business if peoplehave declining equity can it? You can't upgrade w/o it.

the real world calls... time to exercise so I can collect my pension till I am 90

Originally Posted by ba1025

Home equity falls below 50% for first time on record
from Mcpaper
Home equity falls below 50% for first time on record - USATODAY.com

Thank you for sourcing your numbers. We're talking two separate numbers, i.e., talking apples and oranges. The absolute level of equity is near record levels at just below $10 trillion. As a comparison, in 2003, the level of equity was barely above $8 trillion. The equity vs. debt ratio has fallen, as the figures you refer demonstrate.

However, the interpretation for this is not clean. One could be that we simply took on bigger mortgages solely to pay for bigger houses, in which case, the declining ration looks really scary. This would be wrong, as this absolute position is not the case. The number starts to look less scary when you take into account that home equity was transferred to purchase other real assets for consumption now. The ratio figure looks worse because it doesn't capture the value of these other assets. What about home equity that was used to fund further or higher quality college education? I think that it would be hard to argue that this is a bad news story. While it certainly isn't the majority story, it definitely demonstrates how this statistic may not be all that useful when trying to tell the story of how middle America is doing.

http://www.federalreserve.gov/releas...Current/z1.pdf (B.100, lines 49 and 50)

Originally Posted by ba1025

Output is clearly rising, and, normally, that would feed into both corporate profits and labor income. But while profits have shot up as a percentage of national income, reaching their highest level since the mid-1960's, labor's share is shrinking. Not since World War II has the distribution been so lopsided in the aftermath of a recession
ECONOMIC VIEW; A Recovery For Profits, But Not for Workers - New York Times

When do workers get their share?

otal labor compensation has also turned in a historic performance: growing only 2.8%, the slowest growth in any recovery since World War II and well under the historical average of 9.9%.

Most of this growth in total labor compensation has been accounted for by rising non-wage payments, like health care and pension benefits. Rapidly rising health care costs and pension funding requirements imply that these higher benefit payments are not translating into increased living standards for workers, but are rather just covering the higher costs of health care and pension funding. Growth in total wage and salary income, the primary source of take-home pay for workers, has actually been negative for private-sector workers: -0.6%, versus the 7.2% gain that is the average increase in private wage and salary income at this point in a recovery. Post 1970 the paradigm shifted so that's a bit decieving it goes back to ww2. It's a trend that is getting worse

just the facts Mam that is a partisan site but the only graphics i could find
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/bu...ey/15view.html

or workers, perhaps the most important question is, how long will the slide continue?

Workers in the United States appeared to get a break for a few years in the second half of the 1990’s, when robust growth bolstered employment and increased labor’s bargaining power. Workers’ share of the economy grew 2.3 percentage points from 1995 to 2000.

But that increase proved fleeting. While the uptick led some economists to expect a similar rebound in this decade, many are losing hope.


It's not a good trend for a healthy consumer economy is it? Why is it good for most Americans to have total compensation dropping and their share of the GDP dropping????? It's not is it? Can we agree on that? It's a good trend for Capitol but in the long run if a workers compensation doesnt allow him to consume at the same rate year to year at some point wont that trend drag capitol down???

These articles all share the same flaw in that the rely on the BEA's incomplete labor share calculation that excludes numerous sectors. If you rely on biased figures, you get biased conclusions. If you'd like to read more, you can read this Cleveland Fed policy research paper: http://www.clevelandfed.org/Research...s/No7Nov04.pdf

You see this across all three of your articles. If you tell me why the BEA calculation (Table 1.11) is the superior calculation and explain to me why it is the superior measure, then I'll be happy to change my mind.

Originally Posted by ba1025

e percentage of all employers offering health insurance in the past eight years peaked in 2000 at 69% and has fallen steadily since, hitting 60% this year,
yes my numbers were bad the trend is as well

Your numbers are still bad and still unsourced. The CPS shows a decrease in employment based insurance of 4% between 2000 and 2006.

The BLS shows that among private firms there was no change: Notice: Data not available (series EBUMEDINC00000AP)

Originally Posted by ba1025

Now those home equity numbers have to give builders pause right? it can't be good for long term business if peoplehave declining equity can it? You can't upgrade w/o it.

That's why were seeing a contraction in the construction sector, one severe enough that it has caused very sluggish growth in the short-term that may result in a recession. However, it's long-term implications is that people won't have the equity to fuel an extreme record housing boom for quite a while. Here's a graphical illustration of the magnitude of the boom (note, the graphic is in real terms, i.e., prices have already been deflated):



One thing that people forget is that it is real variables that matter in the end for long-term growth, and the US is still fundamentally solid, with a world-class higher education system, a great standard of living that attracts talent, blah, blah, blah. Between tapping out on home equity to draw upon for credit and a depreciating dollar, American savings rates will rebalance and the supply of loanable funds for firms to use as venture capital will still remain strong and fuel future growth. We just won't see the housing sector being such a large engine of growth for a while.

Originally Posted by ba1025

the real world calls... time to exercise so I can collect my pension till I am 90

Hope you have a good workout - I just saw on the Today show a piece about a 101 year man in Britain that's going to run his first marathon. His physiology must be a freak of nature, because he's a regular smoker that drinks 8 pints of beer a day

Originally Posted by Shek

Hope you have a good workout - I just saw on the Today show a piece about a 101 year man in Britain that's going to run his first marathon. His physiology must be a freak of nature, because he's a regular smoker that drinks 8 pints of beer a day

He's been in serious training. Last month he decided to leave his girlfriends alone and has been celibate ever since!

While the article can't speak to whether the equity/home price ratio is a record, it certainly puts a much different spin on the absolute amounts:

The Columbus Dispatch : Mortgage problems limited, OSU survey finds

Americans own about 70 percent of the value in their homes, a sharp counterpoint to reports that homeowners are swamped by debt, a new survey shows.

The national survey, conducted by the Center for Human Resource Research at Ohio State University, indicates recent problems with mortgages are isolated to a small share of consumers.

"When it comes right down to it, consumers are managing their affairs better than Bear Stearns," said economist Randall Olsen, director of the research center.

I don't know enough about how the Fed puts together its flow of funds numbers to be able to comment on the methodologies and which number may be closer to the truth, but the sheer difference between the two numbers is quite stark.

Originally Posted by ba1025

Your response is well reasoned and supported. i choose to believe the census statistics you choose to believe others.
i don't understand why the marines are fit to guard Embassy personnel/State dept personnel in other countries but not Iraq. You seem intimately familar with teh rules i am not. As to the numbers of forces. i wasn't responding to what the Mercs are paid i was responding to what blackwater recieved for each of their "Private Contracters" You can't convince me he isnt a war profiteer...HUGE PROFITS/NO TAXES ON WAGES

You are flat out wrong about where the majority of reconstruction monies are coming from. i wish you weren't. I was a bit over the top with the Country/company thing but, i will say Blackwater failing to follow the same engagement rules as the U.S. Military is over the top as well. have you ever seen this: see previous quote

Your points have changed some of my beliefs about what is going on for what it's worth. I would hope reading how Blackwater gassed US forces at least once along with the recent episode even our investigators asserted was a wrongful use of force makes you reconsider the value of employing private mercenary forces. What really irks me is a company that sucks so hard on the federal tit claiming it's employees are all independent contractors to avoid taxes.

For the most part I would agree that we have enough regulation in Industry to day and agree enforcement is an issue. have you read how we deal with corporate crime now? i don't mean regulatory violations I mean felonies. Check it out for yourself it's easy enough to research.

I am not anti profit i am anti screwing the people who produce the goods and service that create that profit.

BA,

The bottomline with Blackwater et al is that we need their services between Bush 41/Clinton took too much of a "peace dividend", and then Bush 43 failed to expand the ground forces when it was clear that a long-term strategy needing more than 10 divisions was staring us in the face. The problem was on the DOD side in not moving swiftly to make sure that there was legal recourse against violations of the law of land warfare. That being said, the number of incidents of by PSCs/PMCs is really not that great, it's just that they're that visible, and just like violations by our soldiers/Marines, they harm our cause.

In terms of numbers/stats, the study that you don't like comes directly from the Current Population Survey, which is the survey from which the poverty rates are calculated. In other words, if you wish to invalidate the study on grounds of the statistical base, then you invalidate your source for poverty numbers. Now, the 17% predicted poverty rate based on the demographical changes over the course of decades is just that - a prediction. Stated another way, if family structures hadn't changed, then the poverty rate would be up to 1/3 less today. There's room to quibble on the magnitude, but the direction is clear. Thus, the rising tide (the growing economy) has lifted all boats, and taking stats completely at face value without looking deeper can mislead conclusions at times.

Next, you speak about a child labor "arms race" in your response that talks about a slippery slope of hiring younger and younger kids. The fact is that Western economies have advanced to the point that it doesn't make sense economically to hire children. Sure, you can pay them less, but you also get less productivity out of them. The tradeoff is a losing proposition. However, in developing societies where you're losing low to no technology in low/non-skill tasks, the tradeoff in slightly less production is worth it because of the wage differential between adults/kids. It may sound brutish to our Western "sensibilities", but these "sensibilities" were grown only after we passed through this phase. If you think that it's up to us to protect those poor folks in developing economies, then I'd encourage you to read the following NYT Magazine piece to see what some of them have to say about the opportunity to send a younger child away to work long hours in a factory vs. the alternative.

Two Cheers for Sweatshops

Lastly, I'd ask you to read what I write more closely. I had stated that the Iraqis are spending more today on reconstruction than we are. This is true. I did was not speaking to the $21bn or so in appropriations for Iraqi reconstruction that passed back in the fall of 2003 and was almost 100% obligated by January 2007 (see the Brookings Institute Iraq Index for the exact status of execution of these funds). You also speak to 100,000 Iraqis working reconstruction, but these were not GEN Petraeus' or Ambassador Crocker's words, but Senator Levin's words. I suspect that he might be referring to the 90K + Sons of Iraq that are on the US payroll at the cost of $16 million a month. What a bargain! Less than $200 million annualized cost for bringing a huge reduction in the violence and killing in many areas of Iraq. However, back on point, that cost is not that much compared to what the Iraqis have committed to spending on reconstruction in 2008.

n 2002, Haim Saban pledged $13 million to start a research organization at the Brookings Institution called the Saban Center for Middle East Policy. To put this Policy Center into perspective one should note:

* the Brookings Institute is the principal Democratic Party think-tank and all issues, and it is a place where "politicians in-waiting" can bide their time until the next election.
* Haim Sabban is a large media mogul, with large interests in the US, and his company is the largest broadcaster in Germany (owns "ProSiebenSat.1 Media, putting him in control of a company that owns the rough equivalent of CBS, ABC, TBS and Nickelodeon")
* Saban says "I'm a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel".

It is difficult to imagine that the Brookings-Saban Center will be a think-tank that will represent or research the Middle East with the interests of the broad base of the Democratic party in mind. So basically it's a pro Israel think tank by it's funders own admission. More or less i can expect bias then can't I? I mean the funding source admits to it doesn't he. Secretary Gates believes your numbers on reconstruction are flawed.


(The Politico) Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, asked Secretary of Defense Robert Gates at a hearing today about a letter his committee had received from the Pentagon. It described, Levin said, a coming shift of $600 million to pay for Iraqi reconstruction.

Levin noted that U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker said on Tuesday that the United States was “no longer involved in the physical reconstruction business. ... The same day we’re asked to shift $600 million to reconstruction.” He added that “today the president says we’re almost down to zero” in terms of reconstruction spending. If you note this is shifted funds not budgeted funds. Your source used budgeted funds. Don't we know the cost of this war has been off budget for 5 years? Why would you think a source looking at budgeted funds would be accurate when the whole war is financed with supplementals?
Levin Gets An Apology From Gates Over Crocker Claim, By Ryan Grim - CBS News

Gates told Levin that there must be some confusion and that perhaps the money was intended to pay Iraqi police or other military forces, but that it was most likely not for reconstruction.

About 15 minutes later, Gates was passed a note by an aide. He stopped the proceedings to offer an apology to Levin, concluding that the $600 million was in fact intended for reconstruction. “[T]here are actually things that go on that I don’t know about,” said Gates by way of explanation. “I will take a very close look at it. ... I think this is an area where there is broad agreement the Iraqis should be spending their own money.” WOW, I guess when everything is off budget the numbers get fuzzy....but that was the point of the decision to go off budget.

"The United States government and the people of the United States have paid an awful price," Rohrabacher said. "It's time for the Iraqis to pay that price for their own protection."

Crocker said Iraq has allocated $13 billion for reconstruction projects in 2008 and plans to add another $5 billion this summer. The U.S. focus will shift to improving Iraq's economy at the local level and expanding its export capacity, he said.

"The era of U.S.-funded major infrastructure projects is over. We are seeking to ensure that our assistance, in partnership with the Iraqis, leverages Iraq's own resources," he said. Now lets take a look at how deceptive that statement is when you start investagating it. We already know we have shifted 600 million.that must be for small projects like the artsy statutes of peace we are paying for i referenced before. We also know they budget and don't spend the money so what will they be doing with that surplus when we leave? Is it just future corruption waiting to happen. Anyone paying attention knows they have shown a great propensity toward corruption.
Iraq's oil surplus fuels criticism in war hearings - CNN.com
When President Bush announced he was dispatching almost 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq in January 2007, he told Americans that Iraqis would spend $10 billion on reconstruction projects and pass a law allocating the country's oil wealth as steps toward a political settlement of the war.

The GAO, however, found Iraq had spent only 7 percent of that budget by November 2007, and the proposed oil law has stalled in the country's fractious parliament. You can quote what they say they are going to spend all day long. They don't ante up at the end of the day. They had spent by November 2007 only 700 million and we have a 600 million supplemental for this year. i would hardly a statement they have taken over reconstruction is accurate in anyway given the ACTUAL dollars spent on reconstruction

Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina -- a Republican opponent of the war -- pointed out the United States "is borrowing money from foreign governments to pay our bills" while oil and gas prices have more than doubled.

"The issue is that we in this Congress are going to be cutting programs to help our elderly with health care," he said Wednesday.

"The American people want to know that the Iraqi government understands that we do not have treasure and blood to go on and on and on.
Good point, we are cutting social programs and borrowing billions and spending billions in Iraq while they sit on a surplus??? I'm sorry they are playing us for fools when they bank oil revenue money while we borrow to pay for the war ans their reconstruction. Not for nothing but we could of rebuilt NO and the downtowns of half the city s in the USA with the monies we've used to reconstruct Iraq. how can so many people here be against government spending on public works, urban renewal here and yet fight to spend dollars on it in Iraq?

Analysis: Iraq a target for U.S. spending - UPI.com
John Warner, R-Va., wrote Friday to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. "We believe that it has been overwhelmingly U.S. taxpayer money that has funded Iraq reconstruction over the last five years, despite Iraq earning billions of dollars in oil revenue over that time period that have ended up in non-Iraqi banks."

A January 2008 report by the GAO said data from the U.S. State and Treasury departments and the Iraqi Ministry of Finance conflicted, and was unable to fully assess Iraq's progress in spending its capital budget. The GAO was asked to look at capital spending capacity after a dismal showing in 2006. Iraq only spent a portion of its $10 billion capital budget in 2007 WOW, so they aren't willing to be transparent with us on expenditures?

But in its report on Tuesday, the GAO said official Iraqi Finance Ministry records showed that Iraq had spent only 4.4 percent of the reconstruction budget by August 2007. It also said that the rate of spending had substantially slowed from the previous year.
[I]So the administration, with the help of the Finance Ministry in Baghdad, appears to have relied on a combination of indicators, including real expenditures, ministries' suggestions of projects they intended to carry out and contracts that were still under negotiation, Christoff said. But actual spending does not seem to have lived up to those estimates for spending on reconstruction, a budget item sometimes called capital or investment expenditures, he added. I am tired of being told it was just an honest mistake . Almost nothing in Iraq has turned out the way We the People were told it would. Almost every time POLITICAL progress was claimed it was BS Now, since we already know from a previous government source they wont open the books for us I guess the Administration just took them at their word when they made those untrue claims? Iraq reconstruction figures were wrong, GAO says - International Herald Tribune
tp://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89478286
This is the podcast you can hear the U.S. Military talk about the request for building statues in gardens

The Associated Press: Iraq Looking at Oil Surplus, Big Profits
Iraqi government is low balling us...why???

Having excess money is great, but not having the government mechanisms to effectively spend the surplus cash (partially so high because the U.S. is paying billions for everything in Iraq) makes the reserve almost meaningless. Which is to say, the surplus will only matter, and will only jump-start the economy, after sustainable political solutions are found, as we know the Iraqi government is far from accomplishing. democracyarsenal.org: Might as well Jump(start) Decidedly biased source like some of yours but that is a quote form an AP report. Isn't this becoming a circular situation? They can't govern because they can't agree to political solutions. Because they can't govern they fail to organize effective ministries. Because they don't have effective ministries they budget but don't spend while we don't budget then shift funds or seek supplementals. our Leadership then points to budgeted figures of both governments to show success.( How dishonest is that?) When do we stop propping up a government that won't govern? Perhaps if we stopped footing the bill they might be forced into some compromises? The whole political operation is looking like a word you like....a straw man. Again we can effectively control the situation militarily but to what end? where is the endgame here? How long do we wait for them to reach a political compromise?

So it would seem Senator Levin's remarks were backed up. Funds expended not proposed budgetary figures

Now on to another matter
{}In terms of numbers/stats, the study that you don't like comes directly from the Current Population Survey, which is the survey from which the poverty rates are calculated. In other words, if you wish to invalidate the study on grounds of the statistical base, then you invalidate your source for poverty numbers. Now, the 17% predicted poverty rate based on the demographical changes over the course of decades is just that - a prediction. Stated another way, if family structures hadn't changed, then the poverty rate would be up to 1/3 less today. There's room to quibble on the magnitude, but the direction is clear. Thus, the rising tide (the growing economy) has lifted all boats, and taking stats completely at face value without looking deeper can mislead conclusions at times. ({} the stats were collected and looked at 'family" unit earnings. it didn't differentiate between one and two headed households. your study IMPORTS one figure the divorce rate but fails to factor in the growth of two income families which had a countering effect. So yeah I do think your source is biased. I also think your logic is suspect. You point to average net wealth increase to counter the claim of the middle class slipping. If you add up the total wealth in the nation and divide it by the population then yeah the average looks good in a normalized distribution. It completely fails to account for wealth concentration at the upper levels. I agreed total wealth increased but my whole point was that it is more concentrated and the middle class has lagged behind.
So while the poverty rate has grown total compensation has fallen....and take home pay is fallen off a cliff as a percentage of the GNP. is their an argument for socialized medicine here??? MMM no other industrial country spends half as much as us per capita on medical care mmmmm

The people at the top of America's money pyramid have so prospered in recent years that they have pulled far ahead of the rest of the population. They have even left behind people making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. The average income for the top 0.1 percent was $3 million. The share of the nation's income earned by those in this uppermost category has more than doubled since 1980. The share earned by the bottom 90 percent fell. An Internal Revenue Service study found that the only taxpayers whose share of taxes declined in 2001 and 2002 were those in the top 0.1 percent. "
-- New York Times, 6/5/05
Total compensation was FLAT while the top tiers share doubled so yeah the average American has not shared equally in our wealth creation
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/bu...0A&oref=slogin
Only twice before over the last century has 5 percent of the national income gone to families in the upper one-one-hundredth of a percent of the income distribution — currently, the almost 15,000 families with incomes of $9.5 million or more a year, according to an analysis of tax returns by the economists Emmanuel Saez at the University of California, Berkeley and Thomas Piketty at the Paris School of Economics.

Such concentration at the very top occurred in 1915 and 1916, as the Gilded Age was ending, and again briefly in the late 1920s, before the stock market crash. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/bu...0A&oref=slogin

You sited a survey of home equity not a statistical source... I am sure you know the difference.
During the 2nd quarter of 2007 the central bank reported that homeowners' equity slipped to a downwardly revised 49.6 percent and slipped further to 47.9 percent in the fourth quarter. This was the third straight quarter that equity was under 50 percent. Like you I trust the Fed as a source. What's scary is it is 47% now...where does it settle?

now on to another matter.
Insurance rates:

For the sixth consecutive year, the number of Americans living without health insurance has risen, according to new U.S. Census Bureau data. Approximately 2.2 million people were added to the uninsurance rolls in 2006 — the largest one-year increase in the number of uninsured Americans since 2002.

Annual Census Bureau estimates released in August show 47 million people, or 15.8 percent of the U.S. population, were without health insurance during 2006 — a 4.9 percent increase. In 2005, census figures showed that 44.8 million people, or about 15.3 percent of the population, lacked health insurance coverageLog In Problems census bureau numbers

As to the state of the whole system:

In 2005, the U.S. spent $6,697 per capita for health care -- which is twice as much as five other industrialized nations. But its citizens were more likely to suffer from medical errors and be forced to go to the emergency room for care because of an inability to get a same-day appointment with a primary-care physician. Compared to five other nations with universal health care, the U.S. ranked fifth out of six on seeing a doctor promptly. The argument that universal health care produces more inaccessible service is a myth.


Your graphic was not available so i don't know your source.
Here is what the US census bureau says it supports my claim private insurance rates are DOWN. Here is the 5 year picture...too bad we can't see the last couple of years. I'd bet the trend hasnt reversed would you think it has?
2006..59.7
2005.... 60.2
2004 60.5
2003.... 61.0
2002.... 61.9
2001.... 63.2
2000 64.2
1999 63.9
Historical Health Insurance Tables
Now depending on your pov it's been good or bad that states have filled this gap somewhat. So the burden is shifting to taxpayers....slowly but surely we slide into socialized medicine in a profit based system....damn are we going to get screwed $

Again,the gist of my argument is wealth has become concentrated and the distribution of it has moved toward the wealthy away from the middle. Although average wealth is much higher when looking at totals. It isn't a normal distribution. using an average when you have a huge increase at one end of the scale just camouflages that new wealth has not been evenly distributed. my view is for the AVERAGE American it would be better if this were a normal distribution. Now, since the AVERAGE American has not shared equally in this wealth creation I am sure he'd agree he'd rather see his total compensation increase slowly rather than having wealth concentration increase slowly...that's a NO BRAINER.
Americans made up for the lag in income by living off their major asset... their home. Medical ate up much more of a paycheck. At the end of the day that didn't affect other costs and expenses. The amount of compensation available to pay for those other costs has plummeted and we as a country have driven ourself into debt to address it. So yeah real home equity has dropped. You state it didn't by showing an increase in equity from 8 to 10 trillion in 3 years as good??? But in the same time frame we had and increase in total homes and inflation which both significantly effect your number. The amount of equity in each home is dropping as evidenced by your numbers which only supports my supposition home equity has forestalled the adjustment we will be making by the drop in compensation available to pay for non medical costs. Values skyrocketed while equity levels were flat. Where did the wealth created by rising home values go if it wasn't drawn up for consumer spending$?

So yes i believe that:
The plummeting amount of a paycheck excluding employer benefits
The plummeting percentage and dollar amount per home of/in equity compared to the home value the average person has.
The out of control costs in our health care system
The non standard distribution of new wealth skewed to the wealthiest
The continuing drain of U.S. taxpayer funds to provide security, basic services and reconstruction for a govt that is the definition of gridlock in Iraq

The continuing explosion of federal debt caused by tax cuts to those who are benefiting the most from new wealth while we try to fund a war in Iraq


all are bad for the middle class.


How could anyone argue that having a smaller paycheck is better??????? Does having medical eat up more of it leaving you less of it make the medicine any less bitter? Anyway we could toss numbers back all day but can you argue with that?


As you know i am in a good situation myself....much better than most and grateful for it but, in the end i want the American dream to still be achievable
That requires we stop exporting massive amounts of wealth. it requires we get a handle on medical costs so it doesn't eat up more and more of the total compensation Americans receive thereby making the net pay smaller and smaller. I think addressing the extreme concentration of wealth through yes REDISTRIBUTION by taxing some of it and using it to improve our infrastructure, invest in renewable energy to reduce the massive exportation of our wealth to purchase energy, continue the modernization of our military would create middle class jobs and serve the AVERAGE American much better than having the Investor class use their concentrated wealth to finance new production capacity overseas. it's not a trade barrier or protectionism to try to tailor government policy so capitol is invested here rather than overseas. I also don't think it's inherently bad to expect those who benefited the most from our system to return the most to it.
I also believe having 5% of our workforce made up of illegals thereby creating a much bigger labor pool creates downward pressure on wages. That's supply and demand the basis of capitalism. I also believe many U.S.companies from multi-national meat packers to small construction firms hire illegals, know they are hiring illegals and exploit them because of their status.

I think at this point i will agree to disagree with you on any of these points. I believe we have proven in this thread statistics can be groomed to say what you believe to a large part.

BA,

If you wouldn't mind, please learn how to use the quote function. Here's the simple html command, just replace the {} with []. If you don't like using html, you can just highlight the quoted text and then click on the bubble quote icon.

{quote=name of poster who you are quoting} text of quote {/quote}

It's extremely difficult to try to wade through your posts and determine specific references, etc. Thanks.

Originally Posted by Shek

BA,

If you wouldn't mind, please learn how to use the quote function. Here's the simple html command, just replace the {} with []. If you don't like using html, you can just highlight the quoted text and then click on the bubble quote icon.

{quote=name of poster who you are quoting} text of quote {/quote}

It's extremely difficult to try to wade through your posts and determine specific references, etc. Thanks.

NP) I have been told I am difficult period. I was trying to italicize them. thanks for the HTML education! The real point of it all is i see your POV I am just feeling a different part of the Elephant and thinking it's a different animal than you. Time will tell which of us has his hand up the ass. I do hope it's me