I think he's linking it in showing how globalisation has effected the poorest in the world. But really it's a pointless stat has you only have to change what UN consider absolute poverty by a few dollars and the results show a completely finding that says poverty is getting far worse.
In conclusion, it’s all doom and gloom. But wait! From another perspective, the story of the last ten years has been one of huge success. At the time of the crash, 19 per cent of the world’s population were living in what the UN defines as absolute poverty, meaning on less than $1.90 a day. Today, that number is below 9 per cent. In other words, the number of people living in absolute poverty has more than halved, while rich-world living standards have flatlined or declined. A defender of capitalism could point to that statistic and say it provides a full answer to the question of whether capitalism can still make moral claims. The last decade has seen hundreds of millions of people raised out of absolute poverty, continuing the global improvement for the very poor which, both as a proportion and as an absolute number, is an unprecedented economic achievement.
The economist who has done more in this field than anyone else, Branko Milanović, has a wonderful graph that illustrates the point about the relative outcomes for life in the developing and developed world. The graph is the centrepiece of his brilliant book Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalisation.† It’s called the ‘elephant curve’ because it looks like an elephant, going up from left to right like the elephant’s back, then sloping down as it gets towards its face, then going sharply upwards again when it reaches the end of its trunk. Most of the people between points A and B are the working classes and middle classes of the developed world. In other words, the global poor have been getting consistently better off over the last decades whereas the previous global middle class, most of whom are in the developed world, have seen relative decline. The elite at the top have of course been doing better than ever.
I see that's comparing income, but is the effect of QE and ludicrously low interest rates more marked on the value of existing assets? Anyone with substantial assets in property or investments has gained a lot in the last few years, compared to those whose income is used for day to day living.
It's right. A jump of 33%.
That is incredible. I know a country's finances don't work like a bank account, but if you are spending ~$1tn more than you are earning every year, that doesn't strike me as particularly sustainable especially when this is the situation when things are generally ok with the economy.
It's hardly a surprise. The right always spends, the left always makes the cuts when it goes tits up. Happens in just about every democracy everywhere. There are loads of good reads out there about why it therefore makes them a good combo (basically right tend to be money happy and left tend to be stingy, so without both it'd be highly unbalanced).
Yep, the right thing for American workers
Actually, it's not. It is mostly down to massive govt spending on Healthcare caused by the baby boomers retiring and social security payments. This is going to be a problem that gets worse until around 2038 when it will peak.
From the govts point of view, income means income taxes. The govt takes in about $3.4 trillion a year mostly made up of people's taxes and we spend $4.3 trillion a year. So, we will have a deficit of $900 billion this year. The point is that most of the spending (62 percent of it) is mandatory spending on social programs. Most of what remains is spending on defense and then a very small sliver of that pie is discretionary spending that funds all the rest of the govt's activities. So, when you go on about a massive transfer of wealth, you are right. But it has nothing to do with govt spending. What it has to do with is globalization and the failure of the govt to protect American workers from having to compete with places like China where they will do a job that used to be paid $25 per hour in the US for $4 per hour. And so, companies have to move to stay competitive. That is what has created the current climate of anger towards the wealthy and the contraction of the middle class.
And back in the real world... Seriously! The retirement age needs to be reduced??? We have more people retiring than we can afford to pay for currently and are funding this program by borrowing from China and other countries.
But I don't see much economic data in your post. And he does understand trade deficits and that other countries are protecting their workers whereas the US is not. So, actually, everything you said except the opposite. And I do think Bernie might have done something similar but he would have also raised taxes, or tried to, on the wealthy. I agree that Trump is rude, arrogant and a bully. That might just be exactly what is needed at this moment in time. But, I do get why you don't like him.
Not true. If we put a tariff on Japan, for example, on Sony televisions. We will have to buy an American made product that is a little bit more expensive than the Japanese import but we won't have to compete with Japanese workers for the job of making that television. So, we will have a good paying job for about $50k a year as opposed to no job, or a job that pays 30k. I'll take the extra 20k a year and the more expensive TV
... But the Japanese aren't paid 4$/hour !?
@Silva , worth watching twice Seriously. only 350million live in the US? I guess that means US markets must only be...lets see 350/7 billion percent of the world GDP. Oh wait, no it's actually over 15 percent.... But the Japanese aren't paid 4$/hour !?
Also you'll still be competing, and a 25% tariff only gives the US company a 20% edge (when competing at the same retail price)... But all the components in said TV will also be imported with 25% tariffs (in form of raw materials or finished chips, doesn't matter), hence the US company only has the 20% edge on the labor costs. Which will just lead to Americans becoming less competitive in a more competitive world. This would all be fine if it we're still the 1950's and the US still represented the vast majority of the global economy, but it's 2018 and we're 7 billion people and only some 350 million of them live in the US.
. We'll be just fine if we put up a few walls and depend more on our domestic market. That won't be the case for countries who depend massively on exports to the American market though!Seriously. only 350million live in the US? I guess that means US markets must only be...lets see 350/7 billion percent of the world GDP. Oh wait, no it's actually over 15 percent.
I don't know...history. Why did we have a booming economy in the 80s? It was partially because we had a manufacturing sector. It was easy to get a job - you could get out of high school and get a high paying job. All that is gone now. What happened? Well, it's quite obvious really - you wipe out a whole major sector of the economy and you have a lot of jobless people who have to find something else. Why does China always have crazy high economic growth? It's because the took our manufacturing sector. We want it back.
America depends on those imports just as much as the exporting countries do. What smartphones are Uber etc. going to run on? America doesn't have a Foxconn/Samsung with 10s of thousands well trained staff willing to do hard labor for 12h shifts. Most of the high value manufacturing done in the US is done within a global supply chain selling to a global customer base. There's parts from every major economy in every Boeing, and there's Boeing's in every major economy (Boeing being an example, it might as well be GE, IBM, HP, Caterpillar etc.) Could Boeing build a plane from parts only manufactured in the US? Probably, but you'd be looking at F35 prices (and all the knock on effects that would have on the aviation industry). The US wouldn't be "just fine" if they put up a few walls and solely depended on their domestic market, the now remaining parts of the manufacturing sector would be noncompetitive within less than a decade.Seriously. only 350million live in the US? I guess that means US markets must only be...lets see 350/7 billion percent of the world GDP. Oh wait, no it's actually over 15 percent.
Great gif.Hate to break it to you but the US is now a service economy and the manufacturing jobs aren't coming back. Labor is cheap in other areas of the world and many manufacturing jobs have been replaced by services ones and others are simply going away because of technology.
Below is a timeline of how we have gradually transitioned away from being a manufacturing economy.
No argument from me about the Healthcare. I think the only solution is Medicare for All but we will never get that (given that one sixth of the US economy is healthcare). So, I would start by getting rid of Medicaid and putting the people eligible for it into Medicare. But that's another discussion.
