[Albert]

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/05/the-us- ... point.html

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Thank you our benevolent supreme leader, thank you Trump!

[One Degree]

It is going to be so much fun watching wages rise and we haven’t even limited immigration much so far.
We will soon be back to pre 1970 where you could live without government support if you had a job. I can only imagine how the young feel today working full time and still needing government support.

[Rancid]

How sure are we this is due to Trump?

[Truth To Power]

Thank you our benevolent supreme leader, thank you Trump!

LOL! To claim the USA has a labor shortage is absurd. What it has is a system of privilege so egregious -- that appropriates so much of production to give to rich, greedy, privileged parasites -- that not enough is left to pay workers a living wage. Offer living wages and see how fast your "labor shortage" ends!

[One Degree]

We still have a large pool of unused workers. 7% work for the government. Think about that? 1 in 14 works for the government. I think we can get by with fewer people watching over us.

[Ter]

Interesting that truck drivers are mentioned as being in short supply.
I just heard recently that a distant relative of mine works as one and he earns too little to get by, his parents have to continue to support him financially.
It looks as if companies do not pay their employees and workers enough.

[Crantag]

The entire tone of the article was lamenting the prospect of rising pay. The prevailing ideology is that rising pay is bad for Wall Street. It's not even settled fact that this is so. When people have more income they have more money to spend and a virtuous cycle may persist. But the fixation is on inflation. The economy in the US is not organized to benefit the people. At the same time, there is a massive groupthink about the danger of rising wages, which pays no consideration to working people.

The article was full of innuendo to these effects.

[JohnRawls]

The entire tone of the article was lamenting the prospect of rising pay. The prevailing ideology is that rising pay is bad for Wall Street. It's not even settled fact that this is so. When people have more income they have more money to spend and a virtuous cycle may persist. But the fixation is on inflation. The economy in the US is not organized to benefit the people. At the same time, there is a massive groupthink about the danger of rising wages, which pays no consideration to working people.

The article was full of innuendo to these effects.

But it is perilouse for wall street. You are equating wall street=economy but that is not the case. For the economy, it is not so bad. But wall street relies on the fact that its trading companies in one way or the other, or profits, or commodities etc. If the wages go up so do the profit margins go down. That is not acceptable for wall street. The margins must always go up.

As for the job figures, both Trump and specially Obama have to be thanked for this. Obama deported far more immigrants and improved the economy much more compared to Trump if you look at the statistics. Not to mention his fixes were structural and should last at least until the next big recession. Trump can take the credit for the tax cuts though which is a couple of year boost to the economy. Next step would be to rebuild / spend more money on the infrastructure if that is possible.

[Crantag]

But it is perilouse for wall street. You are equating wall street=economy but that is not the case. For the economy, it is not so bad. But wall street relies on the fact that its trading companies in one way or the other, or profits, or commodities etc. If the wages go up so do the profit margins go down. That is not acceptable for wall street. The margins must always go up.

As for the job figures, both Trump and specially Obama have to be thanked for this. Obama deported far more immigrants and improved the economy much more compared to Trump if you look at the statistics. Not to mention his fixes were structural and should last at least until the next big recession. Trump can take the credit for the tax cuts though which is a couple of year boost to the economy. Next step would be to rebuild / spend more money on the infrastructure if that is possible.

I'm not conflating them. I was pointing out the article's conflating of them. However, it's not true that when wages rise profits must rise. On the contrary, cutting wages is an easy way to raise profits. But, this applies to the individual firm. On a system-wide basis the effect may be the opposite. I pointed this out as well in my last post.

[JohnRawls]

I'm not conflating them. I was pointing out the article's conflating of them. However, it's not true that when wages rise profits must rise. On the contrary, cutting wages is an easy way to raise profits. But, this applies to the individual firm. On a system-wide basis the effect may be the opposite. I pointed this out as well in my last post.

Pretty much. But system-wide basis is not an interest Wall Street has. Wall street works with individual firms.

[Steve_American]

Where to start?

1] IIRC, the unemployment rate is not the right measure now after the GFC of 2008. You should be looking at the Labor Participation Rate. IIRC, it has still not gotten to anywhere near the all time high. All time high came after more women entered the workforce. People who gve up looking and people with part time jobs are not counted as "unemployed", yet they could get a full time job if there was one they could do.

2] The article talks about a lack of people with the required skills. So, now we should hear about how our schools have failed to output young people who have the skills necessary to smoothly slide into a job. After decades of freezing and even cutting school budgets now we hear that the students can't get jobs because they lack the skills. Maybe the company owners will have to *pay* to send "interns" to trade schools to have them taught what they need to know. Incl. a stipend to feed them while they learn.

3] But, yes, wages are way too low. the economy is always in a war. A war between the workers and the owners. After Reagan the labor laws have been changed or ignored to benefit the owners and now the owners are crying that they have squeezed the workers so hard for so long that the next generation of workers [i.e., the children of the squeezed workers] are not educated enough to hold down a job. The owners got all they wanted and now are crying. I say tough shit.

4] Who's fault is it that the current crop of graduates is sub-standard? If we can even prove that they are such. In my mind, it is not right to blame a whole generation of students. They were just kids. They mostly all didn't have the life experience and/or skills to know what they had to do. They looked to their parents and society to tell them what they needed to do. To teach them what they needed to know. Did our society do a good enough job at doing that? It seems not.

5] I was one of the people who was forced out of the labor market by the GFC of 2008. I had a one man carpet cleaning comp., I had a great reputation in my community. But, people didn't have enough money to pay to get their carpets cleaned. My business suffered. My business got to the point in early 2009 that in Jan. [winter] I did $100 worth of work all month and then in Feb. it was $150 all mo. I went to the welfare office and was told I would have to take early Soc. Sec. which meant getting less for the rest of my life.
. . . I'm guessing there are a huge number of older people like me who are now on Soc. Sec. and the rules may keep them from going back to work if the economy/nation desperately needed them to work at something they were very good at and physically able to do. But, they are not "unemployed".