That is Fall River. People actually work up this neck of the woods. Care to explain why all the other jobs are unfilled? Do your best asshole.
The working class is getting royally screwed.
- Thread starter American Man
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That is Fall River. People actually work up this neck of the woods. Care to explain why all the other jobs are unfilled? Do your best asshole.
Which Clinton tax cuts do you mean? Overall, taxes were raised during the Clinton years.
Specifically, the average federal tax rate in 1992, Bush's last year in office, was 21.6%. By 2000, Clinton's last year, it was 23.1%. However, it is worth noting that those increases were not across-the-board. Tax rates came DOWN for the bottom 60%, thanks to Democrat-supported measures like child tax credits and other targeted tax relief meant to help the poor and middle class. But taxes went up for the highest quintile of earners, from 25.4% in 1992 to 27.8% in 2000. That brought in enough revenue growth to take us from record deficits to record surpluses, even as we provided some tax relief to those who most needed it. I count that as a HUGE Democratic win, and an excellent guide for future policy. We should continue to raise taxes overall, but in a way that spares those who are struggling to get by.
NiftyNiblick
1960s Chick Magnet
It's because things that civilized nations have in the public sector--like healthcare and education--are inaccessible to the working class here.
Laissez faire capitalism is an anachronism. Everything worth doing is worth planning, and that includes the economy. It includes procreation too, by the way.
Yes, liberal Massachusetts is well known for having hard workers. But, that's not an isolated thing. As the story pointed out, that was part of widespread demand for those jobs at nearly a dozen Amazon facilities, with others being in Ohio, Kentucky, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Illinois and Indiana.
As for why some jobs are unfilled, that's always the case. Some people, for example, will attend school or other training with the idea it will open up better jobs for them in the future (which, statistically, tends to be the case). They know that physical jobs often wind up being automated out of existence, so while it can be lucrative in the short-term, it can take you down a painful career dead end. You don't want your experience to exist strictly of pulling packages in an Amazon distribution center if some genius comes up with a robotic way to do it faster and cheaper without you.
That can be an issue with all kinds of physical work. One day, John Henry is manually driving steel, the next there's a steam-powered machine that lets one guy do the work of 20 and that physical skill is valueless. That could happen with even highly-paid physical jobs today. Like consider plumbers, who currently make good money. Maybe some genius comes up with a new kind of pipe-and-joining system that lets one minimally skilled plumber install things at a speed that would have taken ten highly skilled plumbers in the past -- and maybe those systems are more durable and reliable, so that it eliminates a lot of work addressing leaks and blockages, too. Suddenly, there are way too many plumbers for the demand, and the pay goes to shit.
So, I can't really blame people for thinking long and hard before tying their career future to physical labor. Often, training up for something that can't be mechanized very easily makes more sense.
That said, what's noteworthy right now isn't that a lot of people are sitting on the sidelines, but rather that so few are. The employment-population ratio, right now, is 60.0%. For most of American history, that would have seemed impossibly high. Back in the 1950's, we were generally around in the 55%-57% range. We didn't hit 60% in all of American history until 1979, and we only touched on it for about eight months, back then. It wasn't until the mid-to-late 80's that employment levels this high became common. And that's despite so much of our population now being elderly and retiring.
That part of Massachusetts is not the liberal part. In fact most of the state is not. Mostly just around Boston. And ah, still no fucking answer as expected.
Matt Dillon
Semolina comes from wheat
From your own statistics:
"In 1982, the median family earned $23,433. Today it's $84,008:" Money earned has risen rougly 4x
"In 1982, median home price was $62,113. Today it's $366,555:" Whoah, housing now costs 6x more
Okay, so the pay rose 4x, but the housing rose 6x.
Thank you proving so well that the cost of housing takes more out of peoples' pockets these days.
Why did you leave out fuel? Was that intentional?
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That would be a reasonable way to look at it if people generally bought houses with cash. But they don't. They finance it, so the cost of the house is the cost of the mortgage for it. As you can see with my calculations, in terms of what the actual housing cost is for buying a median home today, it's far lower as a share of income than it was 40 years ago.
Try rereading. I proved the opposite.
You said "far more of Americans' income goes to housing and food costs per month than 40 years ago." That was the claim I was responding to. If you want to add fuel as a cost, we can do that. Let's look at costs per mile for a typical car.
In 1982, gas was $1.22 per gallon and the average light duty vehicle got 16.9 miles to the gallon. $0.072 per mile, approximately. Right now gas is $4.60/gallon, and the average light duty car gets 25.7 mpg. So, $0.179 per mile. So, with a median 1982 income, you could afford to pay for 325,458 miles. With a median income today, you can afford to pay 469,318. So, fuel's more affordable today, too.
All of Massachusetts is fairly liberal. Every single county in Massachusetts went for Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020. In fact, it's one of only two states that can boast of having handed Trump defeat in every county both times (the other being Hawaii). Fall River went for Biden over Trump by 12.7 points.
Also, I did answer. Try rereading.
A lower level of poverty is better for everybody compared to just reducing poverty. I could have used the example of President B: 15-14-13-12. This is reducing poverty and having a lower poverty level all four years than President A who decreased poverty much more but had more people living under poverty his entire four years.
Would you prefer living under President A if he was a Republican although he reduced poverty more?
Nobody has ever eliminated poverty because we don't know how.
Truck Fump / h1b
Verified User
your median number is skewed by the rise of billionaire oligarchs.
Taichiliberal
Shaken, not stirred!
Third Party, anyone?
Taichiliberal
Shaken, not stirred!
We live in a competitive society with limited resources and opportunities. The "winners" have little regard for the "losers", and only grudgingly allow for "social services" that is beyond the control of the "boss" or "bosses".
As long as this exists, regardless of political party, sexual identity, racial identity or social/economic standing, nothing will change ... and this country will continue it's slide into anarchy, fascism and the dissolving of "democracy" and a sense of freedom.
As long as this exists, regardless of political party, sexual identity, racial identity or social/economic standing, nothing will change ... and this country will continue it's slide into anarchy, fascism and the dissolving of "democracy" and a sense of freedom.
Youj are full of shit. Th9sel that want to want to succeddded are conservative, those that need goverment assistance are liberals.zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzw\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
. Basi
You welfare collecting mother fucker. MA has alwayus been hardworking conservativfe people Basically what thiis entire country was founded on. You welfare colleting piece of democrat sjhit
In 1974, minimum wage was $2, so he was making 3.125 times minimum wage. Today, minimum wage is $7.25, 3.125 times that is $22.66, and a mechanic can expect to make $25 an hour.
Hmmm... Interesting how that works.
We cannot blame "globalism", because cars are not usually sent overseas to be repaired.
The two parties have a stranglehold on Democracy.
Truck Fump / h1b
Verified User
so are there any problems with the economy?
That's not how medians work. You may be thinking of averages.
Say you've got 11 people, all of whom earn $50,000 per year, such that the median income is $50,000. What happens if next year one of them earns $1 billion, and the others are unchanged? What's the new median? It's still exactly $50,000. A median is simply the middle number in a series, and it isn't altered by changes in any number that doesn't alter what that middle number is. So, the rise of oligarchs would only alter the median number to the extent some of that wealth also trickled down to those right in the middle.
Truck Fump / h1b
Verified User
right. so the higher the top value is the higher the median is.
Truck Fump / h1b
Verified User
oligarchs raise the standard deviation, or how spread out the data it.
averages become less representative of concrete reality instances with a more dispersed data set.
averages become less representative of concrete reality instances with a more dispersed data set.
Is there a particular fact I shared that you're disputing, or does "full of shit" for you mean less "wrong about the facts" and more "hurtful to my feelings"?
No. I think the key difference is compassion. Many liberals, like me, have been economically successful, but we see that as coming with a moral obligation to pay it forward to others, to increase their chances to be successful, too. I think the conservative mindset is more like "well, I made it across that bridge, so it's time to burn it to the ground, so nobody uses it to overtake me."
As for Massachusetts being conservative, I suppose it depends on what you call conservative versus liberal. In the very traditional sense of the word "conservative," you could call Massachusetts conservative since it's full of people who favor policies that conserve our natural resources, for example, and people who favor taking a cautious approach when it comes to burdening the environment with pollutants. In that traditional sense, the radicals are those right-wingers in a rush to burn up all our fossil fuels and dump that into the air, blindly taking our chances with climate change.
However, in the sense that "conservative" is generally used in the US, Massachusetts is about as far from conservative as communities get here. It's a state that has voted for a Democrat for president in all but two elections in the last 60 years (even when a home-grown Republican, Romney, was on the ballot). It's a state where over 90% of the senate is Democrat, along with over 80% of the lower house of the legislature, and that hard tilt left has continued year after year for decades. It's a state where the biggest city hasn't elected a Republican mayor in about a century. It's a state that sends Congress members to Washington who routinely rank among the most liberal in the country. For example, Voteview's rank ordering by actual votes put Warren as the most liberal senator in the last session, while Markey was 5th-most liberal. Even the most conservative member of Massachusetts's Congressional delegation, Moulton is more liberal than 60% of the House.
https://voteview.com/congress/senate
It's a state that was first in the nation to embrace gay marriage. It's a state where Trump lost every county in both the elections, and where Biden demolished him by over 30 points. It's a state where even the leading Republicans, like Charlie Baker, tend to be pro-choice, pro-environmentalism, pro-gun-control, and anti-Trump
https://www.boston.com/news/politic...achusettss-strict-gun-laws-as-national-model/
If that's "conservative," then it would be great if there were more "conservative Republicans" in this country.