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Sailer: “Workers Need More Money. Last Month, They Finally Got Some.”
From the NYT:
… Which brings us to the wage numbers. It’s good news that average hourly earnings are up 2.9 percent over the last year,
But inflation was up 2.9 percent too, for July to July …
a sign that employers are having to boost pay to keep good employees (or pay more to poach them from competitors).
Wage gains would still need to accelerate further to get to the kinds of levels that are historically normal; in 2008, for example, the year the recession began, average hourly earnings rose 3.6 percent.
But, of course, those greedy workers getting 3.6% raises is what blew up the economy in 2008.
Oh, wait … No, actually, it was some other stuff that was more at fault.
But the fact that higher pay raises are finally showing up in the data is another piece of evidence that employers are coming up against the limits of the labor force. Just maybe, after years of trying every recruitment technique other than raising hourly pay, employers are starting to turn more to that option.
In other words, the labor market could finally be so tight that employers just don’t have a choice if they want to attract and retain workers.
Steps must be taken!
It really has been that simple all along. Average wages have stagnated because we imported endless low cost labour. This lesson should tattoo’d on the back of left wing politicians’ hands.
Muh economy !
Well, Steve, what was the writer’s conclusion? (No, I’m sure not gonna read it – that’s what you’re here for. ;-} ) Oh, is your ctrl-F function still inoperative?
Now, I’m waiting for you to post about the NY Times writing about how workers would do a lot better if the US Feral Gov’t wouldn’t steal so much of their money via income tax, SS, and most importantly, inflation. Perhaps that’d be a bridge too far.
Yes, we pay income taxes and it's used against us, mostly for diversity. We pay property tax and its used to educate uninvited aliens' children. We pay SS and its 'social security' is inflated away to pay for invading the world. Don't forget Medicare, which the Shadow President raided to help pay for the Unaffordable Care Act. Should you have enough left to live on, there is always the legalized racket called insurance to keep you humble.Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
And, yes, some restaurants will go out of business. Who cares?
Since this Tweet was Tweeted, Mr. Bourdain has passed on. Mr. Bourdain was a strong supporter of illegal immigration. Mr. Bourdain attempted to cover his own desire for cheap illegal alien labor in restaurants by attacking Trump and others who want illegal aliens deported to boost wages for American workers.
Mr Bourdain was a horrible baby boomer scoundrel who applauded all efforts to reduce wages for workers through the use of illegal immigration.
Bourdain is now in a kitchen in Hell, so he'll find it easy to find sources of fire and heat to cook with. Sort of like aluminum smelters going to Iceland to take advantage of the geothermal power source.
Tweet from 2015:
https://twitter.com/CharlesPewitt/status/660162630661877760
Anyway j recently had a back up job at a Wendy's to pick up a little extra cash. We only have 2 grillmen. I was 1 and the other guy was 58 years old and 3 years from collecting Social security.....
They hired a black kid and he quit within a week.
1st you'll pay higher prices and then at some point in the coming 10 to 20 yrs as all the Boomer fast foodbworkers retire they'll start shuttering stores for want of labor.Replies: @black sea
Restaurants have the highest failure rate. They are the default business for immigrants and losers. Drive on any business street mini mall after mini mall. At least 6 of the 8 mini mall stores are restaurants. Some mini malls are all restaurants.
The reason restaurants need such cheap cheap labor is that there is too much competition for too few customers.
Asian Mexican and southern Italian food is responsible for the obesity epidemic. It’s just beans noodles rice tortillas the Italian cheese and starch.
We were thin for 100 years of hamburgers and French fries. Then along came the rice beans noodle and tortilla cuisines and we exploded in blubber.
The original weight watcher diet was fish eggs and low calorie vegetables.
Asian Mexican cuisine is an ounce of shredded fish mixed up with 10 ounces of million calorie carbs.
Nyt much more concerned with “the economy” than mere “workers”. Those workers are actual human beings with families and bills to pay and dreams and aspirations for themselves and their kids.
The nyt cant fathom or stand the idea they might need or get a decent pay raise to even keep pace with inflation. To the nyt these “workers” are an abstraction that do meaningless simple things and are faceless and interchangeable.
What could possibly go wrong?
How many robots entered the workforce this year? What, we don’t report those numbers? How many entrepreneurs go to self employment? Don’t report that?
How many hours per week for human workers? Up, down, reported at all accurately? And what is the real inflation rate?
Pointless gibberish from worthless or completely inaccurate data, but all too typical of public discourse on Economics.
Obviously, the solution to any putative labor shortage, which doesn’t actually exist, is to import the worst scum that Central America has to offer, and the least successful people from SE Asia. Because they are going to make dandy workers doing the jobs Americans won’t do, at below market wages.
BTW Steve, I love your snippets from the NYT, because some day it will let me determine if they are just woefully incompetent buffoons, especially on Economics, or truly evil liars, especially on Economics.
The Fast-and-the-Furious-ization of American culture?
Maybe employers could license the patent for Jeff Bezos’ steel cage.
The left used to make the point that free trade damaged American workers because they would have to either work for less or be laid off to be competitive with products made abroad…yet at the same time they embraced importing tens of millions of cheap foreign laborers and act as though it’s all upside with no negative benefits to lower-skill Americans.
Trump is basically doing on trade what the labor wing of the left wanted for decades and the economy is increasing wages organically rather than some artificial increase in the minimum wage. If we had a real media, they’d start asking prominent Democrats if they would reverse Trump’s efforts on trade and immigration if they were in charge and how that would help our economy and Americans in hourly jobs.
Trump is basically doing on trade what the labor wing of the left wanted for decades and the economy is increasing wages organically rather than some artificial increase in the minimum wage. If we had a real media, they'd start asking prominent Democrats if they would reverse Trump's efforts on trade and immigration if they were in charge and how that would help our economy and Americans in hourly jobs.Replies: @Travis
well stated. The Democrats are so opposed to Trump because he stole the policies they once supported prior to the 90s. Most Democrats opposed NAFTA and the unions opposed amnesty and more immigration. Which is why Senator Gore and many Democratic Senators voted against the Immigration Act of 1990.The Bush immigration bill expanded amnesty to central Americans and created the diversity visa and the H1b visa program and resulted in a 100% increase in Legal immigration.
One wonders how our economy boomed in the 80s when immigration was restricted to 450,000 per year from 1965 -1990. Also surprising that allowing 20 million to immigrate from 1990-2005 did not prevent the worst financial meltdown since the Great depression.
The Deep State does. They are too busy working on their difficult Deep Statey projects to cook dinner. They’ve been pushing hard for Cuisine Change (h/t – MikeatMikedotMike)
I always wonder why nobody ever asks the question. If say in Britain all unskilled EU migrants were forced to leave what exactly would happen that would outweight freeing up all that housing stock, school places and increasing the homogeneity of the country. And those benefits keep going forever, the costs are temporary.
Petrol stations would probably have to either pay staff more or close earlier for a time before they either paid people more to stand around for stupidly long hours alone in the early morning or replace some services with more automation. Perhaps many offices would be cleaned less frequently (My office recently employed a company that exclusively hires sullen Brazilian men to clean the office every bloody day when we didn’t have them before. It’s an utter manifestation of cheap labour. They clean the glass partitions every day! It’s a total waste, even if they didn’t come in but once every 3 months you’d never notice the difference.) and the carpets might get a little ragged. Practically every office staff cleans up after themselves today anyway, which is what my office staff got used to and still do even with the new cleaners. (It’s a wonderful Western behaviour to be uncomfortable with servants and cleaners and massive power gaps. I like not living in India, China or South America)
But muh tacos…
Now, I'm waiting for you to post about the NY Times writing about how workers would do a lot better if the US Feral Gov't wouldn't steal so much of their money via income tax, SS, and most importantly, inflation. Perhaps that'd be a bridge too far.Replies: @densa
“workers would do a lot better if the US Feral Gov’t wouldn’t steal so much…”
Yes, we pay income taxes and it’s used against us, mostly for diversity. We pay property tax and its used to educate uninvited aliens’ children. We pay SS and its ‘social security’ is inflated away to pay for invading the world. Don’t forget Medicare, which the Shadow President raided to help pay for the Unaffordable Care Act. Should you have enough left to live on, there is always the legalized racket called insurance to keep you humble.
The Destructive Power of Inflation
Real life inflation anecdotal-data(?)
On Inflation, Oil, and Roofing Shingles
How can there be a so-called labor shortage when the labor force participation rate is so low? I am sure there are lots of people who would come back into the labor force for higher wages.
He’s changed his tune recently, but Bernie Sanders recognized the negative impact of immigration on the working class.
Full Disclosure:
Since this Tweet was Tweeted, Mr. Bourdain has passed on. Mr. Bourdain was a strong supporter of illegal immigration. Mr. Bourdain attempted to cover his own desire for cheap illegal alien labor in restaurants by attacking Trump and others who want illegal aliens deported to boost wages for American workers.
Mr Bourdain was a horrible baby boomer scoundrel who applauded all efforts to reduce wages for workers through the use of illegal immigration.
Bourdain is now in a kitchen in Hell, so he’ll find it easy to find sources of fire and heat to cook with. Sort of like aluminum smelters going to Iceland to take advantage of the geothermal power source.
Tweet from 2015:
The real question is how much has actual immigration been reduced? Trump may have helped to cut illegal immigration (more by keeping people away than deporting people already present) but it seems to me that legal immigration numbers haven’t changed much. I’d love to see recent data on that, if anyone is aware of where that can be found? (Or I could, you know, look for it myself.)
One of the big problems with the current economy seems to be a housing shortage. You pribably need 300-400 thousand new housing units a year just to cover the number of legal and illegal immigrants who enter. Reduce the number of immigrants and some of the housing shortage problem will go away.
Yet for me, a late Boomer contractor, I’m about to go through my third background check and drug screen in 5 years just to walk into my client’s buildings.
Obviously, the solution to any putative labor shortage, which doesn't actually exist, is to import the worst scum that Central America has to offer, and the least successful people from SE Asia. Because they are going to make dandy workers doing the jobs Americans won't do, at below market wages. BTW Steve, I love your snippets from the NYT, because some day it will let me determine if they are just woefully incompetent buffoons, especially on Economics, or truly evil liars, especially on Economics.Replies: @Hail, @Svigor, @Anonymous
While aggressive gang-member (implied by “scum”) imagery sells to the FoxNews audience, the reality is more a Tyranny of Mediocrity.
The Fast-and-the-Furious-ization of American culture?
We will have a recession to correct this problem. Rates are being raised and Fed assets sold to engineer one.
One thing people not marinated in money culture don’t understand is words are used differently in high level finance culture. A few examples:
– Inflation = Wage Inflation. This is baffling to most people as they can often see all kinds of inflation around them (asset prices, healthcare, tuition) but people give speeches saying inflation is fine. Once wages start going up inflation all of a sudden becomes very real.
– Growth = Loan Book Growth. People tend to see the word “growth” as being the actual economy firing but that is not what is being talked about. This one is even more confusing because loan book growth juices what people feel as growth (higher credit card limits means more vacations, which feels good and then actually helps with employment where the new money is getting spent).
The Marxist lunatics are correct that the system we have is designed to extract value from labor.
“Workers’ wallets need more dollars. Last 50 years, they got less.”
Pay higher wages, skinflints.
I do. It’s a glorious thing. Just ask economists about “creative destruction,” or whatever jargon they use, when it suits oligarchs’ interests.
Ask Mr Bryan.
Obviously, the solution to any putative labor shortage, which doesn't actually exist, is to import the worst scum that Central America has to offer, and the least successful people from SE Asia. Because they are going to make dandy workers doing the jobs Americans won't do, at below market wages. BTW Steve, I love your snippets from the NYT, because some day it will let me determine if they are just woefully incompetent buffoons, especially on Economics, or truly evil liars, especially on Economics.Replies: @Hail, @Svigor, @Anonymous
They can’t be both?
Well you’re the one with the deep pockets. Duh. Importing third worlders means importing third world norms.
Who knew?
All who read this just go to Mises.org and read Rothbard’s book called if I remember America’s Great Depression. You’ll never look at economic numbers the same.
Well said.
It just amazes me how poorly nationalist/restrictionist politicians do in messaging this. It’s not like it requires explaining some sort of new triple-bank-shot economic theory.
“Supply and demand”. It’s so obvious and well worn even the NYT has to acknowledge it even in an article spinning, spinning, spinning rising wages for more immigration.
There aren't too many such politicians, and if they stray too far from the Global-Capitalism line, the Kochs and Norquist will find them a primary opponent and fund them with millions.
Thus you have otherwise great nationalists like Steve King, Scalise, Sessions support Wall Street/Cato libertarianism (rule by billionaires, not involving all that much actual liberty).
Which is why I am so pleased Trump looks like he is going to seriously hit China with tariffs. Already, just the threat of them caused Ford to cancel plans to import some deathtrap car from China to the USA.
The NY Times pushes wage-reducing mass immigration to assist in the globalizing of the United States and the racial transformation of the United States.
The Democrat Party pushes wage-reducing mass immigration to attack living standards for workers. Remember, the NY Times is fully on board with the Anthony Bourdain plan to utilize mass immigration as a means to keep wages low or declining in restaurants and other establishments of dining.
Central bankers push wage-reducing mass immigration because it forestalls the wage inflation that would ordinarily occur during bouts of monetary extremism. Remember, we have neither capitalism nor an economy anymore, we have central banker shysterism.
Greedy cheap labor hogs — such as the GOP guy who employed the illegal alien who killed that Mollie Tibbetts lady out in Iowa — want mass immigration to keep the supply of cheap, docile labor high. Remember, sometimes the docile cheap labor units are not so docile. Many times they rape, kill, butcher and maim Americans.
Tweet from 2014:
Yep.
Heresy of heresy to the NYT and The Economist: ‘A fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work’.
It’s good news that average hourly earnings are up 2.9 percent over the last year
In Feb. 1987, I received an annual raise of 7.5%. According to the US BLS, the inflation rate (i.e. change to CPI-U) from Feb. 1986 to Feb. 1987 was 2.1%. In the 31 years since, I’ve never received an annual raise greater than 5.5% and, due to “budget constraints,” it’s usually been just 1.5 to 3.0%, and always with the highest performance rating.
https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/consumer-price-index-and-annual-percent-changes-from-1913-to-2008/
They don’t care. The well being of their constituents is of no concern to them. Most politicians don’t work for their constituents.
I’ve worked quite a bit of fast food the last 5 years…..not many know the profit margins for many franchises are “0-5%”….meaning a penny to a nickel profit for each dollar taken in. I recently moved on to the casino business in a unionized job. I haven’t looked back.
Anyway j recently had a back up job at a Wendy’s to pick up a little extra cash. We only have 2 grillmen. I was 1 and the other guy was 58 years old and 3 years from collecting Social security…..
They hired a black kid and he quit within a week.
1st you’ll pay higher prices and then at some point in the coming 10 to 20 yrs as all the Boomer fast foodbworkers retire they’ll start shuttering stores for want of labor.
“It just amazes me how poorly nationalist/restrictionist politicians do in messaging this.”
There aren’t too many such politicians, and if they stray too far from the Global-Capitalism line, the Kochs and Norquist will find them a primary opponent and fund them with millions.
Thus you have otherwise great nationalists like Steve King, Scalise, Sessions support Wall Street/Cato libertarianism (rule by billionaires, not involving all that much actual liberty).
Which is why I am so pleased Trump looks like he is going to seriously hit China with tariffs. Already, just the threat of them caused Ford to cancel plans to import some deathtrap car from China to the USA.
Yes, we pay income taxes and it's used against us, mostly for diversity. We pay property tax and its used to educate uninvited aliens' children. We pay SS and its 'social security' is inflated away to pay for invading the world. Don't forget Medicare, which the Shadow President raided to help pay for the Unaffordable Care Act. Should you have enough left to live on, there is always the legalized racket called insurance to keep you humble.Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
True, Densa. The SS won’t keep up, as the Feral Gov’t BLS puts out numbers that are quite a bit lower than reality. Shadow Stats has the whole scoop on this, but Peak Stupidity has been on a somewhat-obssesive roll lately in discussing inflation:
The Destructive Power of Inflation
Real life inflation anecdotal-data(?)
On Inflation, Oil, and Roofing Shingles
60 percent of the restaurants in the country could close downs and there would still be an over supply.
Restaurants have the highest failure rate. They are the default business for immigrants and losers. Drive on any business street mini mall after mini mall. At least 6 of the 8 mini mall stores are restaurants. Some mini malls are all restaurants.
The reason restaurants need such cheap cheap labor is that there is too much competition for too few customers.
Asian Mexican and southern Italian food is responsible for the obesity epidemic. It’s just beans noodles rice tortillas the Italian cheese and starch.
We were thin for 100 years of hamburgers and French fries. Then along came the rice beans noodle and tortilla cuisines and we exploded in blubber.
The original weight watcher diet was fish eggs and low calorie vegetables.
Asian Mexican cuisine is an ounce of shredded fish mixed up with 10 ounces of million calorie carbs.
The problem right now is that Trump doesn’t have any kind of industrial policy, and it’s not clear that any kind of serious industrial policy can be implemented under the current political environment and regulatory regime. The tariffs aren’t really a part of a broader industrial agenda that is opposed to free trade, but rather part of what might be called free trade imperialism.
Serious industrial policy would require a large expansion of domestic industrial capacity, and more domestic building and development, which would go against entrenched regulations and interests like environmentalists and many middle class Republican homeowners and the like. Moreover, domestic industrial expansion fuels demand for the importation of labor.
The problem is that there could eventually be stagflation. Inflation, tariffs, and lack of expansion of domestic capacity could lead to stagnation in the economy accompanied by inflation. Although this likely won’t hurt until the middle to latter part of Trump’s second term. It would hurt the next GOP candidate.
One thing people not marinated in money culture don't understand is words are used differently in high level finance culture. A few examples:
- Inflation = Wage Inflation. This is baffling to most people as they can often see all kinds of inflation around them (asset prices, healthcare, tuition) but people give speeches saying inflation is fine. Once wages start going up inflation all of a sudden becomes very real.
- Growth = Loan Book Growth. People tend to see the word "growth" as being the actual economy firing but that is not what is being talked about. This one is even more confusing because loan book growth juices what people feel as growth (higher credit card limits means more vacations, which feels good and then actually helps with employment where the new money is getting spent).
The Marxist lunatics are correct that the system we have is designed to extract value from labor.Replies: @kimchilover, @Anonymous, @Anonymous
Wow, way to knock the smile off my face. I wish I had the background to make a plausible counter-argument, but I don’t.
Why stop with tariffs? Why not restore the embargo.
Or even do what Australia did with serious rifles and England with pistols– outlaw the possession of all Chinese-made products, and threaten those who don’t surrender them with extended jail terms?
Hey, it worked for vaccination, fluoridation, and the teaching of evolution. The common folk had those shoved down their throats as well.
Ask Mr Bryan.
South America is not uniformly “non-Western.” It does vary from place to place, but in general Latin Americans are culturally quite Iberian/European and Catholic. The culture shock a non-“Latin” Westerner gets when visiting Latin America is relatively insignificant compared to the shock of visiting India, most of Africa, much of the Islamic world, or most of Asia.
Anyway, it’s only been about century since 1.5 million British people worked as servants. The numbers in the US were likely similar. These servants were arguably more powerless than today’s servants in Latin America.
So to the very limited extent that our economic egalitarianism can be called a “Western” thing, it’s certainly a very recent thing.
amended as
The nyt cant fathom or stand the idea they might need or get a decent pay raise to even keep pace with inflation. To the nyt these "workers" are an abstraction that do meaningless simple things and are faceless and interchangeable.Replies: @Redneck farmer
The NYT editorial board are B Arkers.
Thank you for this recommendation. Their search engine is a bit clunky, but it’ll get you there.
While the NYT, WashPost and other leftie outlets rail against the horrors of a competitive (for the employers for a change) labor market due to a tighter labor market, the ever vigilant left never notices that the immigration restrictions they so hate are the reason for the rising wages. Instead, the left mindlessly stays in constant outrage about how Trump and immigrating restrictions are an attack on the people. Sometimes this is because the left is really just SJW but it is also when the lefty is pro labor.
This is an example of why I think the country is ultimately screwed. No matter what polls show about distrust of the media, I find every college educated person I meet blindly follows these ridiculous and contradictory narratives. Politics is a religion now.
Welfare economics at work. They frame this as being about “the labor market” as if there is exactly one commodity and we either have too little or too much. Emergency, there’s literally nobody to hire anywhere, something must be done!
There is no “labor market”. There are thousands of distinct labor markets. For example, there have always been labor “shortages” at top-tier tech companies, investment banks, and even several skilled trades, whereas agriculture and hospitality have had labor surpluses for a very long time. Of course, any surplus can be made to look like a shortage when buyers refuse to pay market-clearing rates.
KFM is an acronym everyone really should know. You see it everywhere, once you know what to look for. “We must do X to raise meaningless aggregate quantity Y in order to stabilize unmeasurable aggregate quantities Q and Z”, with X almost invariably being something that progressives wanted to do anyway, like nationalize more industries, raise taxes, or bring in more migrants.
Also, KFM isn't an acronym per se, since it can't be pronounced.
Anyway j recently had a back up job at a Wendy's to pick up a little extra cash. We only have 2 grillmen. I was 1 and the other guy was 58 years old and 3 years from collecting Social security.....
They hired a black kid and he quit within a week.
1st you'll pay higher prices and then at some point in the coming 10 to 20 yrs as all the Boomer fast foodbworkers retire they'll start shuttering stores for want of labor.Replies: @black sea
Congratulations on having found a better situation for yourself. Hope the trend continues.
One thing people not marinated in money culture don't understand is words are used differently in high level finance culture. A few examples:
- Inflation = Wage Inflation. This is baffling to most people as they can often see all kinds of inflation around them (asset prices, healthcare, tuition) but people give speeches saying inflation is fine. Once wages start going up inflation all of a sudden becomes very real.
- Growth = Loan Book Growth. People tend to see the word "growth" as being the actual economy firing but that is not what is being talked about. This one is even more confusing because loan book growth juices what people feel as growth (higher credit card limits means more vacations, which feels good and then actually helps with employment where the new money is getting spent).
The Marxist lunatics are correct that the system we have is designed to extract value from labor.Replies: @kimchilover, @Anonymous, @Anonymous
What do you mean it “becomes very real”?
Obviously, the solution to any putative labor shortage, which doesn't actually exist, is to import the worst scum that Central America has to offer, and the least successful people from SE Asia. Because they are going to make dandy workers doing the jobs Americans won't do, at below market wages. BTW Steve, I love your snippets from the NYT, because some day it will let me determine if they are just woefully incompetent buffoons, especially on Economics, or truly evil liars, especially on Economics.Replies: @Hail, @Svigor, @Anonymous
What is important about these particular pieces of information?
One thing people not marinated in money culture don't understand is words are used differently in high level finance culture. A few examples:
- Inflation = Wage Inflation. This is baffling to most people as they can often see all kinds of inflation around them (asset prices, healthcare, tuition) but people give speeches saying inflation is fine. Once wages start going up inflation all of a sudden becomes very real.
- Growth = Loan Book Growth. People tend to see the word "growth" as being the actual economy firing but that is not what is being talked about. This one is even more confusing because loan book growth juices what people feel as growth (higher credit card limits means more vacations, which feels good and then actually helps with employment where the new money is getting spent).
The Marxist lunatics are correct that the system we have is designed to extract value from labor.Replies: @kimchilover, @Anonymous, @Anonymous
What “problem” are you referring to?
There is no "labor market". There are thousands of distinct labor markets. For example, there have always been labor "shortages" at top-tier tech companies, investment banks, and even several skilled trades, whereas agriculture and hospitality have had labor surpluses for a very long time. Of course, any surplus can be made to look like a shortage when buyers refuse to pay market-clearing rates.
KFM is an acronym everyone really should know. You see it everywhere, once you know what to look for. "We must do X to raise meaningless aggregate quantity Y in order to stabilize unmeasurable aggregate quantities Q and Z", with X almost invariably being something that progressives wanted to do anyway, like nationalize more industries, raise taxes, or bring in more migrants.Replies: @ScarletNumber
Kentucky Fried Movie?
Also, KFM isn’t an acronym per se, since it can’t be pronounced.