Hope and Fear – Part I: Year of Promise - Eric Janszen

[gwynedd1]

Re: Hope and Fear – Part I: Year of Promise - Eric Janszen

I could not possibly add any more detail but the fundamental cultural problem is we don't like command economies( more as rhetoric). However no one seems to realize that we don't have a functional financial system to activate what ever it is the government decides to leave to the private sector to activate.

In short the financial system is broken. Its not mobilizing resources and making money is less and less associated with real wealth creation. Doesn't matter what the government spends or doesn't spend. It will either be driven on public highways or put in private garages.

The only good decision makers we had left were consumers. And now we FICA'd all over them with a big FICA you.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Hope and Fear – Part I: Year of Promise - Eric Janszen

You hit the nail squarely on the head; the financial system is broken.

This is not a small matter about a dysfunctional company or two; it is the entire system. Those of us with great ideas are stuck. Unless you are already in possession of substantial funds to carry you forward; there is no mechanism to enable a new start by an unfunded individual with an idea for a new business model.

Today, Prof. Yanis Varoufakis placed up a video of Gabe Newell which is a classic example of how a new free enterprise model can be so much more successful than any old fashioned VC funded corporation.

Gabe Newell, founder of Valve Corp. On Productivity, Economics, Political Institutions & The Future of Corporations: Reflections of a Video Game Maker http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=t8QEOBgLBQU

Personally I found this to be a very remarkable input to the debate about where we should all be going into the future.

But please, reflect upon that he had the funds to set off in the first place.

[Polish_Silver]

Re: tax vs work hours in Asia, europe

" but the idea that human labour units somehow or other can rationalize their 'selling price' seems weird - and it is weird.
See you around. Brian.

Labor markets have many non-rational, and non-efficient dimensions. Wages are fixed by contract, and do not rise/fall with the company profits.

In some cases, people do get a sense of thier market value, and change jobs if their salary is too low. Silicon valley engineers often do this kind of arbitrage. Another problem I have with EJ's analysis is that many people cannot choose to do more or less work for more or less money. Many hourly employees have fairly well defined tasks, and no matter how motivated, they cannot do more than be "competent".

An incentive of "extra work" for "extra money" is most applicable to small entrepreneurs, which are probably a small part of the labor force and tax revenue. It might also be applicable to farmers, who could plow a bit more land or something.

[seobook]

Re: Hope and Fear – Part I: Year of Promise - Eric Janszen

If you can't see the dynamic chart in EJ's post there's nothing wrong with your browser. The Fed's web site has been up and down today. Chinese hackers?

On these dynamic charts, would it make sense to take current snapshots of them & put them side by side with the dynamic ones?

a couple reasons why it could be a good idea...

• if they ever have hosting issues (like today)
• if they ever change their CMS / URL paths (surely rare, but significant)
• if you read a post 2, 3 or even 5 years later and the chart shows an entirely different view than one that a chart from that many years earlier would show

[FRED]

Re: Hope and Fear – Part I: Year of Promise - Eric Janszen

On these dynamic charts, would it make sense to take current snapshots of them & put them side by side with the dynamic ones?

a couple reasons why it could be a good idea...

• if they ever have hosting issues (like today)
• if they ever change their CMS / URL paths (surely rare, but significant)
• if you read a post 2, 3 or even 5 years later and the chart shows an entirely different view than one that a chart from that many years earlier would show

Great idea! Like this?

[seobook]

Re: Hope and Fear – Part I: Year of Promise - Eric Janszen

Great idea! Like this?

yup...and totally minor point here...I might be biased based upon my stupidly wide monitor (and am sure anyone reading on a cell phone or tablet would disagree with me), but side by side might be slightly better than above & below.

another option would be taking a static snapshot & then linking it to the associated dynamic chart.

just throwing ideas out there. would hate to see old threads get carved up if one day the old charts stop working & then one has to go try to rebuild hundreds or thousands of charts in the entries some day/week/month down the road.

[BadJuju]

Re: Stable credit and money supply vs 12%/year

You can't possibly come to that conclusion honestly without a whole lot more information. Context matters.

I suppose you are right, sir. There are a lot of factors that could greatly affect a person's fiscal situation, like medical bills. I just feel that a lot of people are kind of divorced from reality in terms of their finances. Like those people that act like they are barely scraping by on 400k a year because they are finding it difficult to keep up with their multiple homes. Heck, my father makes 60k a year, which is more than double the average income of this area, and he complains about being unable to make ends meet. I make ends meet on 5k a year in the same area. And that is with me being very generous with my share of the rent and eating well.

[seobook]

Re: Stable credit and money supply vs 12%/year

I suppose you are right, sir. There are a lot of factors that could greatly affect a person's fiscal situation, like medical bills. I just feel that a lot of people are kind of divorced from reality in terms of their finances. Like those people that act like they are barely scraping by on 400k a year because they are finding it difficult to keep up with their multiple homes. Heck, my father makes 60k a year, which is more than double the average income of this area, and he complains about being unable to make ends meet. I make ends meet on 5k a year in the same area. And that is with me being very generous with my share of the rent and eating well.

You are probably more of a outlier than some of the 400k folks are.

$5k a year isn't much if you live somewhere expensive. that is actually low for monthly spend if you live where it is rather expensive.

Out here in California rent on a (not particularly huge) condo can be $30k/yr. And of course you are taxed on the income needed to pay rent...in California you can just about double whatever something costs if you figure the pre-tax income needed to pay for it. So that's the first >50k. Then mix in health insurance for a grand a month (more if you have health issues). That's >$62k. taxes on that...now you're at >$68k.

So with no car or gas or car insurance or food or electricity you are closer to $100k than $5k. that leaves $30kish/yr ... or $2.5k a month for food (say $300/mo) + electricity (say $100/mo) + web connection (say $50/mo) + gas (say $100/mo) + auto payment (say $300/mo) + car insurance (say $150/mo) & then taxes on that income (say another $1k of the 2.5k) ... that would leave $500 a month of slack if you saved nothing for retirement, nothing big came up (eg: health or car), you were not helping pay for a kid's schooling, etc etc etc.

I am not saying the above to say that "yeah totally 400k is scraping" but I would imagine that someone who was living in Manhattan & paying alimony could legitimately claim they were:

After Mr. Goldberg's wife filed for divorce in 2010, a court ruled that his annual income was $500,000, the majority of which was due to a substantial bonus.

Once the formula was applied, and a judge added other household and personal expenses and child support, Mr. Goldberg's monthly payment was determined to be at least $17,244, with additional expenses that varied. His take-home pay adjusted for taxes was slightly less than $12,000, he said.


When his 2011 bonus arrived, he said it was substantially less than it had been before: $70,000. In August he was laid off.

"I need to pay in excess of 100% of my income in order to provide the support that the court felt was necessary," Mr. Goldberg said.

When everything you make is insufficient that's a pretty crappy motivational situation. Not surprising he eventually got fired...who would stay motivated & do their best when no matter what they did it was always not good enough...that is just asking someone to break down.

I should also add that when I got started on the web I had $300 a month of revenues for the first 3 months or so (lived in a trailer so costs were low enough that it worked) so I do know how to use an $8 folding chair for years, but in many of the expensive metro areas propped up by FIRE or tech bubbles costs can scale far faster than income.

[bart]

Re: Stable credit and money supply vs 12%/year

count the number of employed, not unemployed, and compare this to the population. I am using the bls own numbers of full time, part time, and self employed.
Right now I am getting 46% employment. Unfortunately I do not have numbers pre-crisis. I started doing this only after i learned the u6 numbers were junk also. 2010 the reading was 45%. I don't care if your looking for work or not. The workers must support the the non-workers and pay the bills.
...

And a way off the beaten path employment series, the most interesting point to me currently being the drop off in annual growth rate the last 7 months.

[bart]

Re: Stable credit and money supply vs 12%/year

The unemployment/population ratio is useful, yes, but it gives skeptics some leeway to claim that a large part of the fall is due to baby boomer retirees.
...

Which is basically horse puckey in my opinion.









edit/add:
from bls data

[bart]

Re: Stable credit and money supply vs 12%/year

Niall ferguson claims the number of "disabled" people covered by FICA has gone way up under Obama.
So they are not counted as "unemployed". You need to look at number of people 18-65 vs number employed in that age group.

I urge some caution.

[metalman]

Re: Stable credit and money supply vs 12%/year

Which is basically horse puckey in my opinion.









edit/add:
from bls data

[Polish_Silver]

4M disabled--track that!

Niall ferguson says a lot of unemployed have been conveniently classified as "disabled", to get them out of the "unemployed" column.

INteresting if you can check that!

[metalman]

Re: 4M disabled--track that!

Niall ferguson says a lot of unemployed have been conveniently classified as "disabled", to get them out of the "unemployed" column.

INteresting if you can check that!

read this & report back.

[bart]

Re: 4M disabled--track that!

Niall ferguson says a lot of unemployed have been conveniently classified as "disabled", to get them out of the "unemployed" column.

INteresting if you can check that!

Perhaps there's some, but I'm unable to say from the actual stats that it's a substantial amount. Check the chart I posted - the number of disabled sure is way up, but the disabled as a percentage of non farm payroll or total population is down for many years.


But there certainly is a big and very under recognized issue with the growth of part timers the last few years. They're technically employed but the quality of employment (aka, "hedonics" or "substitution bias" ;-) sure leaves something to be desired.
Obamacare sure seems to be "helping" too. :-(