The non-existent Trump economic miracle.

POSTED BY: 1KIKI
UPDATED: Sunday, August 30, 2026 16:38
VIEWED: 7832
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1KIKI

Friday, October 23, 2020 9:09 PM

"One well known way to increase incomes for people making the least is increasing the minimum wage."

Prove it. Find (and reference) the percent of US workers making the minimum wage, adjust the national average to account for an increase to $10, and show it makes a difference larger than the one already found on the tables.

QUOTES AND LINKS showing an increased minimum wage will change the lowest rung of the national wage table more than $100/yr - or it didn't happen.

SECOND

Friday, October 23, 2020 9:34 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
"One well known way to increase incomes for people making the least is increasing the minimum wage."

Prove it. Find (and reference) the percent of US workers making the minimum wage, adjust the national average to account for an increase to $10, and show it makes a difference larger than the one already found on the tables.

QUOTES AND LINKS showing an increased minimum wage will change the lowest rung of the national wage table more than $100/yr - or it didn't happen.

That's a homework problem, and to the Russian troll who is defending Trump's refusal to raise the minimum to $15/hour I will say, "Fuck you, you goddamn idiot."

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

SECOND

Friday, October 23, 2020 9:36 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND: Or, Picketty could just have said this

Quote:
“The ruling class who manipulate the culture of that society—the beliefs, explanations, perceptions, values, and mores—so that their imposed, ruling-class worldview becomes the accepted cultural norm; the universally valid dominant ideology, which justifies the social, political, and economic status quo as natural and inevitable, perpetual and beneficial for everyone”

Or this

Quote:
“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.”

or this

Quote:
Take away a nation's heritage and they are more easily persuaded.

It is time for dueling quotes:

"The history of inequality cannot be reduced to an eternal clash between oppressors of the people and proud defenders. On both sides one finds sophisticated intellectual and institutional constructs. To be sure, on the side of the dominant groups, these constructs are not always devoid of hypocrisy and reflect a determination to remain in power, but they still need to be studied closely. Unlike the class struggle, the struggle of ideologies involves shared knowledge and experiences, respect for others, deliberation, and democracy. No one will ever possess the absolute truth about just ownership, just borders, just democracy, just taxes and education. The history of human societies can be seen as a quest for justice. Progress is possible only through detailed comparison of personal and historical experiences and the widest possible deliberation.

Nevertheless, the struggle of ideologies and the quest for justice also entails the expression of clearly defined positions and clearly designated antagonists. Based on the experiences analyzed in this book, I am convinced that capitalism and private property can be superseded and that a just society can be established . . ."

-- from the conclusion of Capital and Ideology (2020)
Get the free book here: http://library.lol/main/F373B4D589A0E25F564F05714B66683C

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

1KIKI

Friday, October 23, 2020 9:44 PM

Quote:
I refuse to support in the slightest the assertions I posted and prefer to personally attack instead.

fify

Quote:
all you need do is google http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=62934&p=28

SIGNYM

Friday, October 23, 2020 9:59 PM

The problem with raising the minimum wage is that it will encourage businesses to automate jobs out of existence.

Unless there is a government commitment to full and meaningful employment (has to be government, business always wants to reduce expenses and in the long run that means getting rid of employees) including a commitment to industrial production, you will just be rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

#WEARAMASK

1KIKI

Friday, October 23, 2020 10:07 PM

When SECOND claims that increasing the minimum wage will substantially impact the wages of the lowest tier of workers (the mode) this is what he didn't want to post in support:

Quote:
In 2019, 82.3 million workers age 16 and older in the United States were paid at hourly rates, representing 58.1 percent of all wage and salary workers. Among those paid by the hour, 392,000 workers earned exactly the prevailing federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. About 1.2 million had wages below the federal minimum. Together, these 1.6 million workers with wages at or below the federal minimum made up 1.9 percent of all hourly paid workers.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2019/home.htm

Because there are so few workers in that category, if every worker below or at minimum wage were to have their wages raised to $10/hr it would have only a very small percent effect on the US wage structure.

SECOND, to quote back to you some snark you posted to me:

Quote:
all you need do is google http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=62934&p=28

SECOND

Friday, October 23, 2020 10:18 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
When SECOND claims that increasing the minimum wage will substantially impact the wages of the lowest tier of workers (the mode) this is what he didn't want to post in support:
Quote:
In 2019, 82.3 million workers age 16 and older in the United States were paid at hourly rates, representing 58.1 percent of all wage and salary workers. Among those paid by the hour, 392,000 workers earned exactly the prevailing federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. About 1.2 million had wages below the federal minimum. Together, these 1.6 million workers with wages at or below the federal minimum made up 1.9 percent of all hourly paid workers.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2019/home.htm
Because there are so few workers in that category, if every worker below or at minimum wage were to have their wages raised to $10/hr it would have only a very small percent effect on the US wage structure.

SECOND, to quote back to you some snark you posted to me:
Quote:
all you need do is google http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=62934&p=28

So is the official GOP position to not raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $15/hour because there are only 1.6 million who are making exactly $7.25 or less?

Yes, the GOP is strongly opposed: Two state Republican leaders added their voices Monday in opposition to a proposed constitutional amendment that would gradually boost the minimum wage to $15 an hour in Florida. Republican Party of Florida Chairman Joe Gruters, a state senator from Sarasota, and incoming House Speaker Chris Sprowls, R-Palm Harbor, described the ballot initiative as “a Trojan horse,” “a trapdoor,” and “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” that will bring to Florida “failed policies” from liberal cities where streets are “covered in poverty, riots, crime.”
www.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/news/2020/09/29/florida-fight-minimum
-wage.html

I will fire you before I will raise your wage even one penny above $7.25/hour, says GOP Party platform.
www.gop.com/minimum-wage/

During last night's debate, Trump says the minimum wage should be set by the states. This implies that there shouldn’t even be a minimum wage.
www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/10/liveblogging-the-final-presiden
tial-debate/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Saturday, October 24, 2020 1:35 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
https://byjus.com/maths/mode/
The value occurring most frequently in a set of observations is its mode. In other words, the mode of data is the observation having the highest frequency in a set of data.

The value that appears MOST FREQUENTLY in the wage data set from 2007 - 2019 is the yearly wage value ~ $2000 - $2100. Which means those values are the MODE.

As I've mentioned many times before, there are 3 measure of central tendency: the mean, the median, and the mode. In a 'normal' distribution, all those values are the same. But in a highly skewed distribution, where there's a hump near one end and a long tail at the other end, both mean and median become less useful if you want to find out where the bulk of your data resides. In the case of wages (not income) the highest frequency of the data is at the very low end.

The government formally reports the mean and median, because they look better. It doesn't report the mode because it looks bad, but you can determine it from the data.

https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/netcomp.cgi?year=2007
https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/netcomp.cgi?year=2008
etc
You seem to be saying that the most important figure is those making $2,000 per year, or effectively the unemployed - while actually excluding the unemployed.
I am missing the concept of why this is a valid focus of data about wage earners or working folk at large.
Because that is what THE MOST wage earners make.

Here is a problem with the other measures of central tendency:

You have ten baseball players sitting on a bench. One of them makes a million dollars, four of them make $10,000, and five make $1,000.

What is the average? (Roughly $100,000)
What is the median? (About $10,000)
But what do MOST of the players earn? $1000.

In this case, the average is a completely irrelevant figure, the median only slightly more reflective, but the mode tells you how MOST of the players are faring.

That distribution BTW may sound unrealistic, but it's like the USA distribution: it is highly skewed.

Two of you seem to be responding as one. Do not be offended if I reply to one but the other thinks differently.

Your claims about Mode seem to exhibit logic failure.
For 2019, you are using the figure of 2,100.95, which is the average of the arbitrary range size of $5,000 applied to $0.01 - $4,999.

With a Federal Minimum Wage of $7.25 per hour, any wages below $15,080 are essentially unemployed or Part Time employ.

With an arbitrary range of 0-49,999 the average of $3,216 - and this would be your Mode with all income ranges at $50,000.

For an income range of 0-2,000 the percent would be about 6% or less. With the income range of 0-1,000 the percent would be surely less than 4%.

Both of those ranges, including the range you claim is the Mode are vastly monopolized by unemployed who earned a few minutes of hours of work. But you are not including all of the Wage Earners who were unemployed completely.
Shadow Stats reported in Dec 2019 that the Unemployed who were not included as Official Unemployed because they had been unemployed for more than a year (all of 2019) was more than 13% of the Labor Force, or about 22 million Americans.

This 13% is by far the largest percentage compared to your arbitrary range of $5,000, or a more reasonable range of $2,000 or $1,000 - and thus the actual Mode which you keep denying is the Income of $0.00 for the year, with more than 13%.

And that is the same figure for the Mode for every year since Obama's first year.
So what point does you claim make if every year the actual Mode is $0?

A more reasonable usage of data might be to use the cut-off of $15,080 as being unemployed.
This would have 114.7 million people earning a total of $19.618 Trillion, for an average of $171,000.

But weighting your claimed data with up to 6% unemp

1KIKI

Saturday, October 24, 2020 3:14 AM

Quote:
KIKI - ]In 2019, 82.3 million workers age 16 and older in the United States were paid at hourly rates, representing 58.1 percent of all wage and salary workers. Among those paid by the hour, 392,000 workers earned exactly the prevailing federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. About 1.2 million had wages below the federal minimum. Together, these 1.6 million workers with wages at or below the federal minimum made up 1.9 percent of all hourly paid workers.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2019/home.htm

Quote:
SECOND - So is the official GOP position to not raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $15/hour because there are only 1.6 million who are making exactly $7.25 or less?

So it's the official democratic position to focus exclusively on the minimum wage as their pretense of 'caring' about workers, even though it'll help only 1.1% of all wage workers (1.9% of all hourly workers, which are only 58.1% of all hourly plus wage workers)?

And if democrats don't do any different, how are they any better?

Quote:
all you need do is google http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=62934&p=28

1KIKI

Saturday, October 24, 2020 4:00 AM

JSF

First of all, the SS Wage Statistics deal with people who are earning a paycheck - not the unemployed. Unemployment benefits aren't wages. So your argument that low wage workers are "essentially" unemployed, and trying to pass them off in that category, is in error. They may be working very few hours, and their wages may be abysmally low, but they're working. Instead of trying to fudge away the data, realize that, indeed, the wage data posted in the SS Wage Statistics is as dire as the lives most working people are living.

When you're dealing with a continuous variable - like wages - it's a common and acceptable practice to divide the data into 'slices' and subject those slices to statistical evaluation. "With an arbitrary range of 0-49,999 the average of $3,216 - and this would be your Mode with all income ranges at $50,000." It's a well known problem that picking arbitrary ranges can affect statistical evaluation, so the practice is to create as many ranges as you can possibly work with, to more accurately reflect the distribution shape of the original data. Picking a very arbitrary and very large range is also misdirected.

"With a Federal Minimum Wage of $7.25 per hour, any wages below $15,080 are essentially unemployed or Part Time employ." Yes ... and that's another problem that goes unaddressed by the focus on the minimum wage - the many many people who work gig, ad hoc, part-time, or less than part-time work.

"But you are not including all of the Wage Earners who were unemployed completely." And that's still another problem with the government stats like mean and median wage - it misses all the people who aren't working at all. And that includes the formally unemployed as well as those who've dropped out of the labor marker entirely, and therefore not counted in any unemployment statistic.
Another way to look at unemployment is to look at the labor participation rate.
After a drastic slide post 2007
https://i.insider.com/529f21b6eab8ea780a58f40b?width=1085
it leveled off around 2015.

And it hasn't improved since then.

I'm not seeing an economic miracle for people who work for a living, and certainly not one under Trump.

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