Politics Obama - Actually doing a good job?

Ace, I pointed out how trade agreements under three different presidents have not only hurt US workers, but are not good for the US economy, most notably in the form of higher trade deficits.

I pointed out how productivity has increased significantly but wages have not; workers are not benefiting from that increased productivity. Fewer injuries? Seriously? Down from maybe 5-6 per 100,000 workers to 3-4 per 100,000 workers. I would suggest the workers would rather benefit from the increased productivity in the form of higher wages, particularly given that higher productivty has also resulted in fewer workers.

The goal of government economic policy should not be solely to maxmize profits for multi-national corporations or make it easier for businesses to out-source w/o consideration of the impact on US workers.
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I agree as well, particularly in the form of public/private initatives,with the public part being tax incentives for work-study to provide hands on training.

And I agree that we need to focus more on work force development and retraining (of older displaced workers) to keep up with changing needs of the workplace. Unfortunately, Republicans in Congress do not see this as a high priority role of government and have gutted or refocused workforce development programs in a manner that does not benefit those in need .

 

I can't find the chart but there's one that has a direct tie to increased productivity with the number of Starbucks around the country.

While I don't necessarily believe that's totally believe this I can say from working retail that in the stores I've been in management has cut staff to the bone and done what is called customer/staff tracking where they schedule according the when traffic is highest.
Which makes sense from a management point of view but means four hour shifts for the employees and a constant fight to get enough hours for basic thing like paying the rent and health insurance.
One of the things that was found supports employees mental health is a consistent schedule and paycheck.
The way that companies have increased productivity does not lead to that.

 

I disagree that trade agreements have hurt US workers. Given one narrow method of looking at the agreements, you may be correct. I take a broader view. I suggest that we make the metaphorical pie bigger when we engage in trade agreements that expand the wealth of other nations. Do you actually disagree with this point? I agree that if we enter an agreement that hurts US sugar producers there is some pain in that particular industry - but perhaps if South American countries produce more sugar cane, they produce less cocaine, perhaps they buy more computers, more planes, more cars, more US food, etc.

No you have not. In my business I use fewer employees now than in the past, because of my investments in technology and software - in my case employees are not more capable based on anything they bring to the table. This is true in many circumstances.

Injuries are one aspect of a safe work place, there are others. Look at the NFL as an example. Injury rates may be higher today, but my assessment is that the player who retire under the new safety protocols will live better lives in their old age. Again, take a broader view.

In addition, how much does it cost to reduce the injury rates by 5-6 per 100,000 per year - and the follow up question - is it worth the cost? That is q good question for a policy debate. Perhaps the conclusion is that workers would be better of with receiving those costs in the form of wages. This begins to illustrate my point of policy issues affecting wages. We can go down a long list of this types of policy trade-offs.

I would suggest the workers would rather benefit from the increased productivity in the form of higher wages, particularly given that higher productivty has also resulted in fewer workers.

The goal of government economic policy should not be solely to maxmize profits for multi-national corporations or make it easier for businesses to out-source w/o consideration of the impact on US workers.[/quote]

Maximize profits, maximize tax collections, maximize national wealth. There is consideration to the US worker - but the US worker does not need charity. The US worker is more than capable of being the best worker in the world. I don't understand your point of view on this.
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When I was a teenager and in college I worked at a McDonald's and I thoroughly enjoyed those times when we had about 10-15 crew members working and nothing to do. I also thought the manager was a dumb-ass for not knowing how to schedule. If they wised up, I would not say this was a productivity increase worthy of employees getting a raise. Accept the the guy who would come in as the new manager and get it figured out, he should get the raise. Reward the ones who actually do better.

 

Why is the Korea trade agreement in US interest?

In addition to out-sourcing at the expense of US jobs, it has resulted in highertrade deficits every year since it was signed.
Foreign Trade - U.S. Trade with Korea, South

That is the point, Ace.

Fewer employees and greater productivity. So why are those employees not seeing the benefits.

No, lots not take the NFL and the salaries in the $millions. It is hardly representative in either pay structure or work environment.

How does maximizing national wealth help workers with stagnant wages?

Further, why should an office assistant have a higher effective tax rate than the CEO?

 

Pretty soon, you will see the customers punching in their orders on touch screens though. I've done it before at some fast food places already. Now, they might be able to stay open an hour later or something, but overall, there will be fewer jobs as cashiers. But, the out of work cashiers can now go to community college without needing to work (for a paycheck as much).

I think the 2 years of college is an interesting proposal, and will help some people for sure. But, it also helps companies, and it helps the local tax base if people are qualified for a job they like now. And it should be sold as job training, or a stepping stone to a 4 year degree. They will pay more in income taxes over their lives, they will make more money, they will be able to afford to fix up their homes that they can potentially afford, and pay property taxes...

It just needs to be setup to be focused on training for a job, and maybe with a guaranteed paid internship if they score highly as incentive to study hard. Not just 13th grade in high school.

 

Workers aren't safer because of companies efforts. Workers are safer because of those horrible job killers known as REGULATIONS.

 

Here is a source for review:

Why a U.S.-Korea Trade Agreement?

Are you an isolationist? Are you arguing the position that international trade is harmful on a net basis to the US? I agree that some trade agreements can have specific eleiment that are not good either in the short-term or for specific segments of the US economy - but overall I support international efforts in the direction of free trade.

I would expect a wealthier nation to be a net importer. Again, clarify your point. Are you saying net imports with another nation is harmful? Remember the guns v. butter lesson from Econ 101? Again, I argue that as a result of increased free trade we economically benefit other nations and in turn that benefits the US - the pie gets bigger. Before we move on do you fundamentally disagree with this concept?

If I invest $1,000 and my employee becomes more productive, how do you figure the employee became more productive? The employees productivity is constant. Net productivity increased due to investment. Employees, on a net basis, are not generally going to be rewarded for this type of productivity increase. On the other hand if the employee invested $1,000 through training (paid directly or by the employer, or gov.) to improve their skills - employees generally do get rewarded for this type of productivity gain. The point is we have to drill down a bit into the productivity statistics you cited in order to better understand them - I made that point early on, our lawmakers need to understand these things as they make policy.

Here is the point. I mentioned total costs in the context of employee safety - Total costs. You responded with frequency statistics. The formula for total costs would be Total Costs = Frequency X Severity. In the NFL the current measures being taken will reduce severity impacting total costs. There are expenses related to reducing frequency and to reducing severity. Using the example of the NFL or any other line of work the principles are the same in this context.

Is this a trick question? Personally I am more interested in wealth. With wealth, my wage is unimportant. Perhaps too many people focus on the wrong thing. Using numbers, if my wage is $1/year, but I get the benefits of $100,000/year compared to my wage being $50,000 with no additional benefits - I would take the $1/year scenario. What would you do? Again, using employee safety, I would rather have life and full functionality will into a normal life span making a little less each year - than making more money knowing it was shortening my life - think of the coal industry or other dirty professions where workers lost decades off of their lives in the past.

On final point from me on the wages issue (although there are many others), white males in the US have historically had artificially high wages due to discrimination. Woman and minorities were not able to compete with white males in many instances through most of US history. This inflated their wages. As discrimination ended, the trend is not for new participants to get the inflated wages, but to get the normalized wages while the inflated wage filter out of the system. This phenomenon depresses wage increases while it occurs.

Further, why should an office assistant have a higher effective tax rate than the CEO?[/quote]
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Employers incur costs when workers get hurt - outside of the morality of caring for our fellow man, there are some economic incentives for employers to have safe work places. And workers have economic incentives as well. Often it is REGULATION that either restricts competition or restricts the employee from leaving an unsafe work environment. Regulations can be good or they can be bad - it depends. We have to evaluate regulation on a case by case basis. I am not an anarchist or anti-regulation. I am anti-bad regulation - mostly when it restricts competition and free choice.

 

Ace,

I am all in favor of fair trade not trade agreements that results in job losses in US, increasingly high trade deficits with the country in question, little or no labor and environmental controls, no controls over currency manipulation and fast tracked w/o proper congressional oversight.

Wage stagnation is not helped by bad trade deals. Nor is it helped by tax policies that favor out-sourcing.

 

I am trying to point out the difference between what can appear to be job losses and the net impact on jobs. I am not sure why you won't acknowledge that in general free trade is beneficial to both sides. If Korea can more efficiently produce certain items and the US can more efficiently produce other items that is what I want to happen. Sure, if US workers are involved in work better done by Koreans those workers will have to go into other areas of the economy, and perhaps require training and new skills - in the long-run those worker benefit.

In the US we seem to have a problem with some segments of our economy were workers have a sense of entitlement and tend to refuse to get the training they need to enter productive careers. Why do we have a nursing shortage? Our Junior College system can address this very easily in every region of our country - good paying jobs! A former assembly line work would have to go to school. If we make JC's free or lower the cost it may help - not only these specific needs but perhaps to change our culture were everyone begins to believe in life long learning and growth.

We have tax policy that favors out-sourcing???? Perhaps if we lower the corporate tax rate big multinational corporations based in the US will bring money in off-shore accounts on income earned off-shore back to the US and be reinvested. I am going to assume this is not what you meant. And I will repeat, I have no problem with corporations investing money earned in other countries back into those countries. If you do, I think it is a sad reflection of your views of other people. US and US workers are doing fine!

 

It's funny, I actually don't have a problem with the idea of lowering the tax rate for bringing money into the country.
Make it competitive with Ireland and some of the other countries who have done well by allowing companies to park their money.
That way companies will have money to invest in expanding and paying their employees.

However I think we need to go back to the higher tax rates for individuals and companies.
So when they take that money as income the government can get a reasonable share.

 

Ace, what you "want to happen" and what is happening are two different things. Trade agreements are resulting in higher US trade deficits and forcing wages down in the US.

Medical services, inc luding nursing, are among the fastest growing sectors of the economy.

JC's can help, but so can federal workforce development programs that retrain displaced (oldedr) workers. I would agree that there were too many redundancies and too many federal agencies with overlapping programs that should be consolidated. However, the Republican solution is to gut these programs.

Yes, there are tax advantages (loopholes) to outsouring and, as a result of those and other loopholes, the effective US corporate tax rates is among the lowest in industrialized countries.

The US economy is doing much better; US workers are not.

 

Medical services are fast growing, but getting trained is a different story. My ex-wife went to Montgomery College in Maryland (Harvard on the pike). It's a good community college with a good nursing program. She went through almost ten years ago. She had to have an incoming GPA of about 3.5 to get into the program because the demand was so high and space was so limited. My girlfriend has a masters in nursing and was working towards her nurse practitioner license. She couldn't find a preceptor to take her. So the demand for jobs is high, but the programs aren't there to support training the industry. And with medical costs spiraling out of control, who's going to be able to afford to pay the medical staff someday?

 

Obama is playing the Republicans like a fiddle.

The biggest piece of his tax proposal is raising the rate on capital gains to the Reagan level. If it was good enough for Ronnie, how can they complain and even more so when their proposal is likely to be a rehash of the Ryan plan from '12 that was voodoo economics at its worst by nearly all analyses, benefiting the wealthiest at the expense of working families.

Add in the recent proposals for free JuCo tuition and paid sick leave and the Republicans are left floundering w/o a response.

 

The minimum wage thing is also helping him.

But, you need to get those people engaged and feel that they are important. That is something that Clinton could do that Obama has problems with outside of the general election (where did all those people go?). It isn't just "getting out the vote", it is explaining why voting is important and what happens when too many people don't. It is being connected to some politics or at least one issue even after the election.

It is also about selling the long term benefits. Yes the 2 years of 'free' education will cost some money. But, will the student end up making more money, paying more taxes, and leading a better life then if they hadn't gone to college? Yes health insurance costs some money, but what if you need to use it?

The Democrats need to go after small businesses and medium sized businesses hard in the next election. Republicans always go after the voters saying "if you raise taxes or the minimum wage, the business won't be able to pay for as many employees". And it makes sense and to refute it will take a lot of studies, and it still might end up hurting a few specific people they can parade around.

 

I remember when he was first elected president and he gave that speech where he ended every idea with "Yes we can." I can see why he left the second part of the "Yes we can" refrain unsaid. "Yes we can pretend to care about this for short term political gain (provided the political environment is such that we can't actually accomplish anything meaningful" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

 

I dont disgree.

Thats politics, but it does put the Republicans on the defensive with their policy agenda for the year, nearly all of which is on the wrong side of popular support....the Ryan tax plan from '12 election that was laughable, the plans to further cut social programs and gut regulations., and even no alternative to the ACA, no comprehensive immigration reform policy, etc.

It puts Obama in a position of compromising from (relative) strength and puts Boehner in having to balance the demands of the Tea Party members of his caucus vs public opinion.