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The Christian Taliban (pg. 3)
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| MisterOpus1 |
| quote: | Originally posted by WhoaNellie1487
Well, Over 70% of America approves of Bush,and his decision to go to war. |
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politi...3-29-poll_x.htm
| quote: | Although a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll finds that 53% believe the Bush administration is "covering up something" about its handling of intelligence before 9/11, 67% say it could not have prevented the attacks. But 54% say Bush still could have done more beforehand (Complete poll results).
For the first time since mid-February, Bush leads Democrat John Kerry, 51%-47%. With independent Ralph Nader in the race, Bush leads 49%-45%, and Nader receives 4%.
The poll suggests that Bush's recent campaign ads, which say Kerry has a record of flip-flopping while serving in the Senate, are taking a toll.
Before the ads began running, 60% rated Kerry favorably and 26% unfavorably. Now, 53% view him favorably and 36% unfavorably. In "battleground" states where the ads have run — states where polls and historic trends indicate the race will be close — Kerry has gone from a 28-point lead to a six-point deficit. |
and,
| quote: | | Overall, 56% of those polled say it was worth going to war in Iraq, little change from the 55% who said that in early March. And 50% see Iraq as part of the war on terrorism, down from 57% last August. |
It seems your Pat Robertson/Faux News/Focus on the Family/Church Minister sources are a wee bit off. Try finding a more reliable source for polls next time. |
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| Shakka |
| quote: | Originally posted by MisterOpus1
Help me out, oh wise one:D. How come 3.5% is unrealistic? Why is it unrealistic to have an incredibly low unemployment rate? Ideally (and I mean really ideally), wouldn't it be the goal of every government to have as many people to have a job as possible? Ya know, like that movie, "Dave" with Kevin Cline? |
First of all, movies sensationalize. I hardly believe that Gary Ross is that politically and economically savy. 3.5% unemployment is incredibly low. Just look at the unemployment rates over in some European countries like France and Germany. It's possible to have spans of time where things are booming (like the Internet boom in the late 90's, duh). But look at the results--massive overcapacity and overbuilt infrastructure, not to mention the threat of inflation. 3.5% may be acheivable, but is far from sustainable for any longer duration of time.
Honestly, unemployment in this country could be 0.0%, but only if the unemployed are willing to work for wages that are below their "pain threshold". I.e. some people just won't take a job b/c they don't view it as economically viable for them or they think they're too good to work for minimum wage. By the way--one of the tradeoffs of a higher minimum-wage is also a higer level of unemployment, because at the margin many employers don't see the economic efficiencies of hiring an additional worker at an unprofitable wage. They lose money at the margin so they don't make the hire, while the result is 1 more person collecting unemployment benefits. |
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| Shakka |
| quote: | Originally posted by Kia Kaha
The US is a joke!
A year after the event and even you most brainwashed of pro-Bush fools can't deny that:
1. Saddam Hussein never had WMD.
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No? Never??? Well that pretty much invalidates the rest of your response.:thepirate |
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| MisterOpus1 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Shakka
First of all, movies sensationalize. I hardly believe that Gary Ross is that politically and economically savy. 3.5% unemployment is incredibly low. Just look at the unemployment rates over in some European countries like France and Germany. It's possible to have spans of time where things are booming (like the Internet boom in the late 90's, duh). But look at the results--massive overcapacity and overbuilt infrastructure, not to mention the threat of inflation. 3.5% may be acheivable, but is far from sustainable for any longer duration of time.
Honestly, unemployment in this country could be 0.0%, but only if the unemployed are willing to work for wages that are below their "pain threshold". I.e. some people just won't take a job b/c they don't view it as economically viable for them or they think they're too good to work for minimum wage. By the way--one of the tradeoffs of a higher minimum-wage is also a higer level of unemployment, because at the margin many employers don't see the economic efficiencies of hiring an additional worker at an unprofitable wage. They lose money at the margin so they don't make the hire, while the result is 1 more person collecting unemployment benefits. |
Ya, I know movies sensationalize. I was more or less making a funny about that. :D .
Interesting points about minimum wage, though. |
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| Yoepus |
hey guys! come on keep it one post at a time. Let the other guy responde...
Otherwise this thread will be very hard to view as a spectator!
Already I got like 50 articles from Mr Opus, and now Shakka butted in ahhhh!
:toothless |
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| Shakka |
| Sorry, Yoepus. Must've been a lucky break-in. I'll give you backsies for giving me frontsies.:D |
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| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by MisterOpus1
Help me out, oh wise one:D. How come 3.5% is unrealistic? Why is it unrealistic to have an incredibly low unemployment rate? Ideally (and I mean really ideally), wouldn't it be the goal of every government to have as many people to have a job as possible? Ya know, like that movie, "Dave" with Kevin Cline?
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Well I don't have a lot of time to comment on everything right now so I'll stick with the above :). Countries do not strive for 0% unemployment because it is an unrealistic goal. Instead countries strive for an employment rate that is termed full employment or natural employment. Employment can be categorized into three distinct fields: structural unemployment, frictional unemployment, or cyclical unemployment.
Frictional unemployment is caused by people simply changing jobs and taking their time about it, because they are spending time on job search or are taking a break before starting with a new employer. As such there is always going to be a certain level of frictional unemployment.
Structural unemployment is healthy as well, and it occurs when there is a mismatch between worker's skills and skills needed for available jobs. Essentially as new technology comes to the market and as old technology becomes obsolete, demand grows for skilled laborers of new technology and decreases for workers skilled in obsolete technologies. This results in unemployment which forces workers to adapt and retrain their skills to new job functions that is currentely in demand by the economy ... essentially the economy is forcing the worker to become more productive and skilled in areas that is needed.
Cyclical unemployment is the "bad" unemployment. It is the unemployment that is the government's job to reduce as much as possible. Cyclical unemployment are jobs lost as a result of the business-cycle instability ... essentially workers who have the necessary job skills and are looking for work, cannot find any due to contractions of the business cycle. The role of government is to limit or reduce these business cycle contractions as much as possible so the economy remains on the production possiblity frontier.
Therefore, when economists describe natural or full employment they mean the economy is fully employed minus workers who are experiencing frictional or structural unemployment. At this level, labor and other resource markets are at equilibrium ... meaning there is no pressure on wages or other resource prices. What is critical, is that full employment results in no pressures on inflation. The economic standard for full employment is considered to be around 5-5.5%
Anyway, I'll try to comment on the rest of your argument tomorrow. |
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| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by MisterOpus1
Help me out, oh wise one:D. How come 3.5% is unrealistic? Why is it unrealistic to have an incredibly low unemployment rate? Ideally (and I mean really ideally), wouldn't it be the goal of every government to have as many people to have a job as possible? Ya know, like that movie, "Dave" with Kevin Cline?
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Well I don't have a lot of time to comment on everything right now so I'll stick with the above :). Countries do not strive for 0% unemployment because it is an unrealistic goal. Instead countries strive for an employment rate that is termed full employment or natural employment. Employment can be categorized into three distinct fields: structural unemployment, frictional unemployment, or cyclical unemployment.
Frictional unemployment is caused by people simply changing jobs and taking their time about it, because they are spending time on job search or are taking a break before starting with a new employer. As such there is always going to be a certain level of frictional unemployment.
Structural unemployment is healthy as well, and it occurs when there is a mismatch between worker's skills and skills needed for available jobs. Essentially as new technology comes to the market and as old technology becomes obsolete, demand grows for skilled laborers of new technology and decreases for workers skilled in obsolete technologies. This results in unemployment which forces workers to adapt and retrain their skills to new job functions that is currentely in demand by the economy ... essentially the economy is forcing the worker to become more productive and skilled in areas that is needed.
Cyclical unemployment is the "bad" unemployment. It is the unemployment that is the government's job to reduce as much as possible. Cyclical unemployment are jobs lost as a result of the business-cycle instability ... essentially workers who have the necessary job skills and are looking for work, cannot find any due to contractions of the business cycle. The role of government is to limit or reduce these business cycle contractions as much as possible so the economy remains on the production possiblity frontier.
Therefore, when economists describe natural or full employment they mean the economy is fully employed minus workers who are experiencing frictional or structural unemployment. At this level, labor and other resource markets are at equilibrium ... meaning there is no pressure on wages or other resource prices. What is critical, is that full employment results in no pressures on inflation. The economic standard for full employment is considered to be around 5-5.5%
Anyway, I'll try to comment on the rest of your argument tomorrow. |
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| biznology |
you do have enough time for a double post!!
oh snap| |
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| anuneventrade |
| Occ... you just gave me a vivid flashback of a lecture a professor gave.... :nervous: I could almost see her bad teeth and strange hair and shoes that were too small.... :nervous: |
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| occrider |
Ok I found some time to reply to your other statements.
| quote: | Originally posted by MisterOpus1
I'm beginning to agree with this assessment, but only partially. The 90's boom with technology certainly contributed to our job cuts in the present. As it seems, most businesses are able to squeeze a great deal more work out of their employees without the need for hiring. What's more, with Bush's incentive to do away with overtime pay (give everyone "managerial" positions), we can squeeze even more time out of our workers without the necessity for hiring. This, however, is pretty damn disturbing to me.
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Yes I disagree with the overtime pay decision. It's not squeezing more work out of a worker by capitalizing upon their increased skills or better technology, it's squeezing additional work hours out of the employee and eliminating all long-term detriments to such a policy. Making an employee work longer is fine if that's a short term adaptation to demand. In the event of increased temporary demand, the business reaps the reward of that unexpected demand through increased sales but overtime pay cuts into that profit margin. The intent is to make it a more cost-effective long term solution for the employer to actually hire MORE workers as opposed to overworking existing ones. Therefore, I think the overtime pay decisions is a bad decision that will slow job growth.
| quote: |
In general, both your articles pointed out the need for globalization in order to not only help increase productivity (which is occurring now), but will eventually help increase job growth overall.
How much longer shall we continue to hold our breath for this to happen? I've bugged you about this before, and it does bother the hell out of me - how much longer will we continue to hear of job growth in the future? Damnit, the future is already here! Although the manufacturing sector ONLY lost 3,000 last month (the lowest so far in it's downfall trend), our private sector gained NO jobs last month! That's just ridiculous. March had better be a monumental gain in order for me to have a little more hope, because as it seems we are not able to keep up whatsoever with the natural growth in the number of potential workers.
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What's that saying ... "economics is not an exact science" or something like that? I don't know when job growth will pick up. I don't know WHY job growth has remained relatively stagnant. Maybe it takes time ... maybe it's because of x or y. What's important is that we don't committ an error of causality and incorrectly conclude what the source of the problem is (if there is a problem). As they say, it was a mild recession and this is a mild recovery ... I'll be closely watching the employment report in the coming months along with other data trends to see what happens just as you ... all I know is that trade barriers are not the solution. Just look at the success of the steel tariffs. It accomplished nothing locally except for raising the price of steel for all US based consumers of steel. Sure it helped out one industry but that policy had a ripple effect that negatively affected ALL other industries that did use steel.
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Another thing that the articles touch on is that globalization and outsourcing, for the most part, reduces production of low-tech goods here in the U.S., and will eventually increase production of high-tech goods here in the U.S. As a result, jobs will follow respectively - the low-tech jobs go overseas, whereas eventually more high tech jobs will be created here.
But as one article I ran across points out, that isin't necessarily the case with China:
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The data is simply not conclusive enough I'm afraid. A rise in China's exports might not be the cause for the drop in US exports. At any rate, I'd like to see if I can do research on this article further. Hopefully later tonight ...
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Furthermore, as it seems that would entail that higher education would be a necessity in order to be hired for these higher paying jobs that would hopefully be coming to the U.S. Well how does that bode for our increasing lower class folks without a higher education, or the means to attain one? And I must say that Bush and his GOP cronies, considering how much they love social programs (i.e. education), and considering how much education is already being cut in nearly every state (even Bush's NCLB federal program is being cut!), and considering how much higher college tuitions are rising, how will this help out anyone aside of those selected few who can actually afford a good education?
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If the unemployment is structural in nature, then yes increased education efforts would be needed to help reduce teh overall unemployment level. In the absence of such, employment will fall and productivity will decrease. I'm not quite the expert on Bush's education efforts so I shall trust in your analysis of his effectiveness/ineptitude ... unless someone would like to argue in bush's favor. |
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| DaveSZ |
| quote: | Originally posted by Izzy
Gregory Mankiw sounds like one smart d00d :cool: |
He is for supporting that Kerry/Cheney gasoline tax in an effort to curb global warming.
:) |
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