Warming climates destabilize fisheries and littoral industries, and historically displaced workers from those two industries are the people who become pirates. Obviously I'd want a per capita comparison but even that wouldn't surprise me.

I don't think that BLS claims NAFTA helped the median American.

DU claims that NAFTA harmed the median American. After its passage, the median American's wage went up, along with his chance of being employed. This isn't even correlation vs. causation; this is simply "what actually was this harm people are claiming?"

Note that the number of pirates DECREASES across time as mean temp INCREASES. So yours was a great ad hoc speculation except for the fact that it predicts the reverse of what is observed.

That count of modern pirates is absurdly low; there are more today than in 1640.

Piracy seems to be doing quite well these days.

Again leaving per capita considerations aside.

And pretty much all of it will directly affect the Indian Ocean rim, which America barely acknowledges the existence of.

The question is how much better or worse did the economy actually perform than it would have without NAFTA. If the median American's wages went up by $1, but without NAFTA, they would have gone up by $2, that means NAFTA cost the median American $1 in wages.

This is what studies like the one Manny was talking about try to determine.

I agree with your analysis. I just don't have the time or energy to engage with this debate, so I'll give you my proxy.

Since population growth is entirely due to immigration, that's one job for every two people who immigrated here and their offspring.

The population grew by 53 million in that timeframe.

The facts aren't in question, the spin is.

That treaty is mostly about trying to form a counterweight to China as it moves into the Indian Ocean rim. I understand why the countries that are pushing for it want it, but I also think it's going to have a lot less impact on Chindia vis a vis Africa than they think it will. My beef here is with DU living in some fantasy land where NAFTA ruined the US economy.

but your pro-NAFTA screed betrays your feigned indifference re: TPP.

In fact I have some reservations about the TPP, which even a pretty cursory search of my post history would tell you. I think it will have a marginally positive effect on wages, just not enough for the political and diplomatic hit it's going to cause.

... at least to the extent that you support TPP at all.

Beyond that, I'm happy to 'agree to disagree' as needed.

I acknowledge that you have honestly-held opinions on this that differ from mine. I just get tired of the sort of "crusade" style that this board has taken on this and some other issues.

and visa-versa.

It's all about where we stand .. or sit .. as the case may be.

allowed to see what it is we are doing, and many of those Corps are foreign, simply to STOP someone else from doing something, that is the equivalent of a child breaking a toy so someone else can't play with it. All he has then is a broken toy.

That seems like one of the WORST reasons to take such potentially disastrous steps.

And btw, I don't believe that is the reason.

I think we all KNOW the reasons.

Or is it simply an article of faith to you that NAFTA must have been bad, despite whatever its actual outcome was?

yeah, sure, half are above it and half below it, but a rising median income does not mean universal prosperity, nor does a falling median income mean universal suffering.

Consider, again, some small distributions

1,1,2,2,5, 7,7,7,25 - the median is 5
then shift it some
2,3,3,3,4,9,10,11,12 - the median is now 4

the median went down, but 8 of the ten are better off than originally (and just for fun, I made the two means the same, the average of both groups is 5.7)

Of course with the US, you are talking about 100 million or so households (and growing) so most oddities should be smoothed out, but it is also a huge area, with households in California and Nebraska and Delaware, with a large difference in both wages and cost of living. And the bottom line STILL is that a rising median doesn't mean excrement to those people well below the median.

It is kinda funny to me when I consider. I used to rage at the media in the 90s. In the 90s the media kept playing "happy days are here again" and there I was, in a country that was supposedly prosperous, working sh*tty jobs, unable from 1998 until 2001 to find a real job in Iowa. I spent three years working as a fu%&ing temp while the Democratic Governor of Iowa was concerned about some supposed future labor shortage in Iowa. I pretty much had to leave Iowa to find a non-temp job.

And Wisconsin wasn't any better. In Wisconsin I worked in a factory for a little over two years at $5.4 an hour. Then I was laid off (on my 33rd birthday). Then I was denied unemployment. Then I got a part-time janitorial job for $5.5 an hour in May of 1996. Got an auto parts factory job - brutal job it was, for $7.15 an hour. My previous employer gave me a raise to $7.15 because he could not replace me. That was September 1997. Ironically the Tuesday after labor day from 2 AM until 2 AM the next morning, I worked 21.5 hours in that 24 hour period.

Happy labor day to me. Oh, it was an unpaid holiday too. I didn't get a single paid holiday, or paid vacation for the entire decade of the 1990s.

Not that that was due to Nafta, but you asked "have people forgotten the 90s?" I have not forgotten. It was a horrible decade for me. Oddly enough, I have done much better in the Bush economy, even after I got fired in March 2002 (what is it about my birthday month that I keep losing jobs in it?) This time I actually got unemployment, and found a decent paying part-time job with benefits in August of 2002.

I can only imagine the reason you have thought to present this tripe.Perhaps you've not participated in the U.S. job market since NAFTA sailed through? Perhaps you are flurrying your fingers from across the world?

I recall purchasing a copy of NAFTA volumes I and II, which was quite a read. After seeing that the door would be left open within a few years for outside labor markets to compete for jobs inside health care (regulated, licensed if you grew up in the U.S.), I gave both volumes away at a garage sale. I continued to see the impact on labor forces competition and the race to low wage for a few more decades. Those in the health care sector felt the real effects after Clinton, Bush and now Obama, meanwhile seeing the effects of GATT, and the Pacific Rim.

What kind of labor markets were affected? Immediately after NAFTA sailed through, the NYTimes danced in unison to the boost the new economy would add to investments, banking, and how consumers would be "big winners". But, the real number of jobs that were off-shored showed the opposite. Unskilled work forces decreased for real where I have lived in FL, TX, and PA, regardless of the Clinton administration's fantasies about retraining workers. That was a fantasy. We had already been loosing the manufacturing industries by then late 1980's. NAFTA and GATT exacerbated the giant sucking sound.

The same was true of skilled white-collar workers. So, where the fuck have YOU been?

Tell me, can you get software programmers in India who are very well trained at a fraction of the cost of Americans? You should know this. The answer, "yes". Somebody involved in this business recently told me that Indian programmers are actually being brought to the US and put into what are kind of like slave labor camps and kept at Indian salaries-a fraction of American salaries- doing software development. So that kind of work can be farmed out just as easily.

Look no further than the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Better yet, come back to America.

You know, corporations can operate internationally, but unions can't-so there's no way for the work force to fight back against the internationalization of production.

There already is a net effect - a decline in wealth and income for most people in Mexico and for most people in the US. Those plants along the border that started to "compete" in manufacturing refrigerators and other household appliances could not afford buying one. Compare hourly wages… so much for NAFTA, and so much for your insisting that the giant sucking sound was nonexistent. Maybe you need to move a little closer to the U.S. labor market. Maybe you need to see what kind of upward mobility there is left in a labor force not represented by anyone but the corporate structure they are stuck into. No increased mobility to skilled and non-skilled… No labor presence, WHICH, BTW, was the driving force behind these trade agreements.

Your entire OP is really the giant sucking sound, because it SO will not support the shift of labor markets and ability to support middle class in the U.S. or anywhere that competed with it. What a damned shame that you used this opportunity to present your data. It doesn't convince anyone with an IQ within 1 SD of the norm otherwise what we clearly experience.

You're wrong in most of what you say, and furthermore, you know it, so you can stop playing with me, okay?

Here… Let's looks at how our economic policy was affected in a report on trade and globalization researched and written about 10 years after NAFTA and presented to the Economic Policy Institute.

We're still feeling it today.

Simple question: since NAFTA was a job creatin' panacea, why has job creation under Obama only been able to barely keep pace with population growth?

Employment to population ratio

exacerbated the giant sucking sound."

We have actually been losing manufacturing jobs since the since the late 1970's - long before NAFTA. One of the periods when manufacturing employment increased as during the Clinton administration after NAFTA. It declined fast and hard under Reagan, Bush I and Bush II.

If the "giant sucking sound" was all due to NAFTA (and GATT which died in 1994) how do you explain the manufacturing declines under Reagan and Bush I, the increase under Clinton and the recovery under Obama that started after the bottom of the Bush II-recession was hit in 2010? And does Bush II get a pass for the horrible drop in manufacturing employment during his 8 years? Was he just an innocent victim of Clinton's diabolical NAFTA?



And GATT had been around since 1948 (blame FDR and Truman for that one) so it's hard to see how it could suddenly "exacerbate the giant sucking sound".

As other posters have noted, "permanent normal trading relations" with China probably had the biggest effect. It happened right after Bush came into office. And, of course, if you look at the rapid loss of jobs, it appears to coincide perfectly.

But looking at that graph it did appear to peak in late 1979. We lost 2.5 million jobs by the time NAFTA was enacted.

peak around 1979-80, right before Reagan came to power and before the biggest recession since the depression and the financialization and destruction of business that went with that PLANNED, DELIBERATE recession.

NAFTA is just more of the same ongoing war on workers.

And I didn't mean to say that Regan didn't influence it, I do think that the deregulation that Carter passed (later leading to the S&L crisis) contributed to the recessions that were the main reason for the initial decline. Regan of course worsened it by budget cuts. (The graph shows it was a double dip kind of recession, with Regan's side much worse than what started under Carter.)

that was GHWB's department.

Congress deregulated the banking and natural gas industries and lifted ceilings on interest rates. Federal price controls on airfares were lifted as well. The Environmental Protection Agency relaxed its interpretation of the Clean Air Act; and the Department of the Interior opened up large areas of the federal domain, including offshore oil fields, to private development.

The results of deregulation were mixed. Bank interest rates became more competitive, but smaller banks found it difficult to hold their own against larger institutions. Natural gas prices increased, as did production, easing some of the country's dependence on foreign fuel. Airfares on high-traffic routes between major cities dropped dramatically, but fares for short, low-traffic flights skyrocketed. Most critics agreed, however, that deregulation had restored some short-term competition to the marketplace. Yet in the long-term, competition also led to increased business failures and consolidation.

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3367

The data is from BLS. Your interpretations of these data practically refute themselves, they are so spectacularly untenable. I'm sure there are some corporate and right-wing sources from which you could cut and paste far more persuasive bullshit than the amateurish bullshit you've presented here.

Obviously if we restore pre-Bush policies and go back to Clinton era tax rates things change dramatically.

But I don't think US economy is safe if it's service-side and finance-industry side, I think that is indeed why wealth disparity has gone up.



NAFTA certainly benefited the US economy as a whole when looked at from afar, but mainly the rich:



You may not be able to blame NAFTA for this specifically because if you did have progressive taxation (no more Bush style taxation), and proper welfare, things would change, but I think NAFTA didn't alleviate it on its own. All trade policy requires powerful domestic policy that keeps its negative effects from happening.



Source for above image: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-12-30/nafta-20-years-after-neither-miracle-nor-disaster

We employ a lot fewer farmhands than we did 150 years ago, and for the most part we think that's a good thing. There were the William Jennings Bryans of the day who wanted to freeze the current labor allocation in place but I doubt (as much as Bryan may be admired in corners of DU) that there would actually be much support for his silver plan here.

I don't think having a service-centered economy is a bad thing. It's not like we're fighting a two-ocean war or anything. And, what with the robot overlords and all, it's a direction the whole world is heading before too much longer, so we should start figuring out how to make it work. (Step 1: raise taxes, social spending, and the minimum wage.)

But I think we want a diversified economy. If we put everything into one basket we are really susceptible to significant changes. And putting so much into financial services I think is really risky, as the Great Recession arguably showed.

What you say will even be more apparent as automation takes over and many jobs are rid of. What about self-driving cars in a decade or so? That's several million taxi workers, forever out of a job, overnight.

In fact, that's how I see TPP, I think it is a distraction from the overarching issues that we're going to face. TPP is a symptom of an economy heavily dependent on outsourcing. I expound upon that a bit here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5234537

We have a pretty diverse economy by output:



I'd like to shift some of those pie wedges, but more or less this is what a diverse economic output looks like to me.

My chart puts Finance and Real Estate in the same category and many service industries are cut up in the pie chart but combined in my graph. The pie chart certainly looks better.

But if everyone is working at McDonalds and Wal-Mart and eating at McDonalds and buying goods from Wal-Mart, I wouldn't call that a diversified economy. I'm just throwing an analogy out there, btw. I think the more important picture is the wealth disparity picture.

I cannot blame NAFTA for the wealth disparity though, but I do think that NAFTA does nothing to alleviate that shift.

Though at least for the oughts that's probably a fair assessment ("The US economy consists of Americans borrowing money from China to buy houses from Americans", a Lebanese friend of mine said back then).

But if everyone is working at McDonalds and Wal-Mart and eating at McDonalds and buying goods from Wal-Mart, I wouldn't call that a diversified economy.

Sure, that's a planned economy by another name (or, to paraphrase chairman Mao, socialism with capitalist characteristics).

I cannot blame NAFTA for the wealth disparity though, but I do think that NAFTA does nothing to alleviate that shift.

That's true, it's pretty much orthogonal to that. But income inequality is much easier to address politically (barring a sans coulottes moment).

Seems to me that's where I'd want to put some of our future domestic economic eggs, or stuff like science-based advanced technologies.

Let me see if I can dig up anything on that

Have you ever waited tables, answered phones as a service rep for some corporation?

And then there is the awful and true fact that a service economy does not produce products that can be sold abroad. To some extent, I believe our horrible, horrendous, awful, spectacularly outrageous NEGATIVE BALANCE OF TRADE is due to the fact that our economy has deteriorated into a service economy that does not produce enough products to sell to other countries.

Manufacturing is EVERYTHING in a robust economy.

Your charts do not take into account the negative balance of trade we have, its effect on our wages, its effect on the propensity of Americans to incur more debt than they can ever pay back, and the fact that, as was predicted in a discussion in Congress about free trade that took place in 1985, Americans are just handing hamburgers back and forth. Handing hamburgers back and forth creates a lot of economic activity. But it does not create value. It does not create products that American can sell abroad.

NAFTA has greatly contributed to the declining economy in the US.

Some of the areas in which a manufacturing economy is superior to service economy are in job security, availability of full-time employment as opposed to part-time employment (raw numbers and statistics on percentages of jobs and numbers of people working do not reflect things like health insurance paid for by job, a pension, union membership, the quality of the workplace, workplace safety, etc and all of those aspects of work especially pensions have declined in our service economy; that is McDonalds does not provide pensions for its waiters and dishwashers while Ford Motor Co. did).

If you look at the trade balance between the US and China it is some 5x worse than with Mexico.

https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c2010.html

https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html

I think NAFTA and TPP are a response to the way the society is moving. We want cheap goods made by slave labor, and we want to sit in office jobs doing spreadsheets and taking phone calls for a living. NAFTA makes up a paltry 5% of the trade deficit. China's "free trade" (unfettered trade without agreements) makes up 40%.

That's why NAFTA and TPP have nothing to do with jobs (though Recursion makes a compelling case, the quality of jobs has declined and it has had no positive effect on the wealth gap; 20 million new jobs should've resulted in a much larger increase in income). They're geopolitical entities to favor some countries over others.

Tariffs against Chinese goods would be extremely unpopular with our consumer society. We want those cheap goods.

So what's the solution? You got to lower the corporate tax rate to Germany's, close the tax loopholes completely, give tax incentives for people making jobs here, and eventually you're going to have to address a living wage concept as automation increasingly takes over production. Because manufacturing across the board is going to want to employee less and less people with automation whether we like it or not. Eventually even the burger flippers will be replaced by robots.

That's probably a big difference.

In the Case of GE, they destroyed almost the entire sector of middle manufacturing of Aircraft parts. Jobs that paid 70-80k a year to workers in the 1990's. Great pay, companies that were around 100 employees. Family business'.


http://tech.mit.edu/V120/N8/GE8.8n.html
http://www.developmentgap.org/uploads/2/1/3/7/21375820/no_laughter_in_nafta.pdf

I lived in Germany and Austria for a number of years -- on the economy.

The tax system is different from ours.

They have a pretty high VAT tax. Corporate taxes may appear to be lower, but the VAT taxes mean that all products are taxed. We tax profits -- earnings.

They tax products at the point of purchase.

The current Germany VAT (Value Added Tax) is 19.00%.

The VAT is a sales tax that applies to the purchase of most goods and services, and must be collected and submitted by the merchant to the Germany governmental revenue department.

Of the thirty four countries tracked, sixteen have a higher maximum VAT rate then Germany.Countries with similar VAT rates include Slovenia with a VAT of 20%, Austria with a VAT of 20% and Czech Republic with a VAT of 20%.

http://world.tax-rates.org/germany/sales-tax

So that VAT tax is in addition to any taxes that Germany imposes on corporations. The VAT taxes products and services.

DUers think that tax is regressive. But since Germany uses the proceeds to help fund its very generous government programs, it actually is less regressive than just having very high income taxes. Among other things, the VAT tax discourages a lot of borrowing and consumerism just for the sake of spending money.

About the German corporate taxes:

Corporate rate is 15%. Solidarity surcharge of 5.5% also levied on corporate
income tax. Municipal trade tax imposed at rates between 14% and 17%, with
rates determined by municipalities. Combined rate (i.e. corporate income tax,
trade tax, solidarity surcharge) approximately 30% to 33%.

http://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/global/Documents/Tax/dttl-tax-corporate-tax-rates-2014.pdf

In theory, the US tax rate for corporations is higher, but in practice it probably is not higher for very large corporations that have attorneys who help them avoid taxes.

About US taxes:

Federal corporate income tax applies to bands of taxable income at rates
between 15% and 35%. Branch profits tax imposes additional 30% tax on
foreign corporations engaged in US trade or business. Alternative minimum
tax also imposed. Separate taxes levied at state and municipal levels.

http://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/global/Documents/Tax/dttl-tax-corporate-tax-rates-2014.pdf

If you add the 20% VAT tax to the 15% and more corporate taxes in Germany, you get pretty much the maximum 35% US corporate tax.

But the VAT taxes are imposed on imports to the same extent that they are imposed on domestic product, so they raise the prices people actually pay for imports and give domestic manufacturers a bit of a better chance.

Companies don't just sink it and eat the VAT. That's why DUers don't like VAT because it fucks with prices.

Oh, and like I said, Americans love their consumer society and cheap consumer goods.

Lowering the corporate tax rate of course makes no sense if you don't close the loopholes. As it stands now the largest corporations in the US have a low effective tax rate. It's ridiculous.



Two companies hit the 35% mark. They should all be paying their fair share. Like Warren Buffet said, his secretary has a higher effective rate than himself. That's inexcusable.

But it's easily maintained when people are distracted about almost irrelevant policy issues.

with the revenue. The price of products including the VAT has to be low enough to be affordable to a good number of people or the corporations lose sales and thus money. It evens out. The VAT is probably easier to collect -- from the point of sale -- than corporate taxes that are subject to all kinds of deductions, exceptions, etc.

If the revenues from the VAT are used to provide things like inexpensive health care, good education, etc. then it is not regressive. If we had the VAT of 20% we might be able to provide free higher education to those who want it and can qualify for it. Maybe free pre-school education.

Se Reversion's post also answering the post you answered on this thread.

I'm talking about the practicalities of implementing it. Even you say DUers would be against it. If DU, of all places, would be against a VAT, then how can you expect it to pass legislation?

for making sure that we do collect enough taxes to pay for the things we need as a country while gorging ourselves on all kinds of imported goods.

Our balance of payments deficit is frightful. But we merrily proceed to go broke buying imports. Meanwhile, the Chinese are buying our real estate. I have nothing against the Chinese except that our country, our people, is not well enough organized or sophisticated enough to devise an economic and trade policy to play the free market game with the grown-ups in other countries.

Having lived in Germany and Austria, knowing how their good newspapers seriously discuss matters like the details of tax and budget policy and then comparing that with the endless trivia about the Kardashians (did I spell that right) and violence on TV and in the house next door, I just think we in America are babes in the woods when it comes to international trade. We don't know how to tie our shoes. Our corporations, most of them international and strategizing their internal tax policy so as to hurt the US economy and tax revenues as much as possible, are entrusted with the details of the TPP negotiation, but ordinary citizens are excluded. No wonder we are so naive about what is really involved and what measure of hard work, strategy and commitment we need to put into developing products that people in other countries want to buy.

Sorry I am on a rant. But we are getting into free trade agreements that benefit the likes of Walmart and Apple and most Americans have no clue as to what issues are involved in the decisions being made behind their backs. They don't realize that things are likely to get much worse in many respects in this country if we enter into the TPP.

You can sell it, potentially, by calling for a lower corporate rate and closing loopholes.

Republicans (and more fiscally conservative Democrats) might vote for it because no one can say they're "raising taxes." It would lower taxes on the working class, raise taxes on the multimillionaires, and the loopholes would prevent all of those corporations from having an effective tax rate lower than many Americans.

That being said, as I initially noted, yes without progressive legislation in lieu of these trade policies, they don't have a positive effect for the American people. I still disagree with Recursions argument that wages went up because of NAFTA. Wages went up because Clinton's administration raised them. Notably, Clinton failed to even address Ted Kennedy and Ron Wyden's proposals on the minimum wage (bring it back up to 1970 rates and perpetually link it to inflation, so it would never be below inflation). Had Clinton followed Kennedy and Wyden's proposal we probably wouldn't even be discussing NAFTA right now. (And of course, that's why Krugman doesn't apologize for NAFTA because he thought something like that would happen.)

Why did Clinton do it? They wanted it as a wedge issue for the upcoming elections. If they didn't even attempt to fix the minimum wage problems Gore could use it in his campaign. It was a mistake. Not that they had the votes for it, of course.

Another thing I liked about it from Austria is that it's just on the price tag to begin with rather than tacked on at the register.

As I'm sure you know, Austria also has a holiday schedule that Americans might find insane -- IIRC there are only two grocery stores open in all of Vienna on Sundays and the 26 Federal holidays. And a much shorter work week, longer paid vacations, sick leave, and a government health service supplemented by optional for-pay amenities (IIRC you can get a shared hospital room for free or pay to get your own room or to go to a private clinic with shorter waiting times).

If we were to take a national VAT and do that with it (along with nationalizing education and a few other things) I'd be all for it. Though more likely it would just fall down into the money pit that is DHS.

the European average is about 20%; yet Germany is reportedly doing better than most of Europe.

http://www.kpmg.com/global/en/services/tax/tax-tools-and-resources/pages/corporate-tax-rates-table.aspx

And Germany trades at a level about 3 times greater than the US does and has "free trade" agreements with 35 countries compared to US' 20 countries. It does not seem that trade, 'free trade' or FTA's have decimated their economy, their unions or their middle class. To the contrary they are quite strong.

From what we have learned about the TPP, there is much more involved than trade issues.

In fact, "trade" apparently represents very little of the massive agreement.

When you factor in the fact that corporate lobbyists are the authors of this agreement with little to no oversight, and you then factor in how very badly these large corporations have been acting over the past decade or two (ONLY cares about their short-term bottom lines), how is it so difficult for you (and some others) to understand why so many of us are so strongly and passionately against the TPP?

The veil of secrecy around it in combination with some of the information that has been both leaked and discussed about from a few Democratic Congress members makes opposition not only a no-brainer, but an absolute must.

Our opposition is about so much more than trade issues. You have to know that by now, so you can stop painting our opposition as such.

NEGATIVE BALANCE OF TRADE, so that is why I referenced trade in my post.

I understand that the TPP is not primarily about trade but many posters refer to the effects of past trade deals and state or imply that this one is just like the others.

You kill me…

FRED's on the board of governors of the Federal Reserve. What do they look at for "industry"?

… Why, the Industrial Production Index, Index 2007=100, Seasonally Adjusted (INDPRO). That tell you exactly what? Let's see… a dataset that uses for its' estimating the following factors, which have been tweaked themselves -

1) Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items (seasonally adjusted)

2) 10-Year Treasury Constant Maturity Rate (NOT seasonally adjusted)

3) Civilian Unemployment Rate (do we stop counting this after persons stop applying?)

4) Effective Federal Funds Rate (why don't you explain this one on an economy that is based on fractional reserves)

5) St. Louis Adjusted Monetary Base (again, a monthly seasonally adjusted rate)

6) Crude Oil Prices: West Texas Intermediate (WTI) - Cushing, Oklahoma (dollars per barrel)

7)
Billions of Dollars, Monthly, Seasonally Adjusted1959-01 to 2014-11 (3 days ago)

8) All Employees: Total nonfarm
Thousands of Persons, Monthly, Seasonally Adjusted1939-01 to 2014-11 (Dec 5)
nation usa monthly sa bls headline figure employment establishment survey nonfarm payrolls

9) Trade Weighted U.S. Dollar Index: Major Currencies
Index March 1973=100, Monthly, Not Seasonally Adjusted1973-01 to 2015-01 (18 hours ago)

10) Month Treasury Bill: Secondary Market Rate
Percent, Monthly, Not Seasonally Adjusted1934-01 to 2014-12 (19 hours ago)
nation usa nsa monthly frb interest rate h15 treasury 3-month bills secondary market

11) Moody's Seasoned Aaa Corporate Bond Yield©
Percent, Monthly, Not Seasonally Adjusted1919-01 to 2014-12 (19 hours ago)

Hey… nobody ever fucks with the interest rate yield in the corporate bonds Moody's aaa!

12) M1 Money Stock
Billions of Dollars, Monthly, Seasonally Adjusted1959-01 to 2014-11 (Dec 29)
nation usa monthly sa frb monetary aggregates h6 m1

Industrial Production Index
Index 2007=100, Monthly, Seasonally Adjusted1919-01 to 2014-11 (Dec 15)
nation usa monthly sa frb headline figure indexes g17 ip

So, I think depending on what Moody's Seasoned Corporate Bond Yield are, the housing starts, and personal consumption expenditures tied to CHAIN TYPE PRICE INDEX… I think what we have here is a non-starter for how much better those dollars purchase goods and services for those who CONSUME them, thus lubricate the middle class economy.

WHAT BUNCH OF HOG WASH

It doesn't look like they tie industrial production to any of that: http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/IpNotes.htm

My initial post discusses manufacturing as percent of GDP, it can go down while manufacturing goes up, if other industries take over a higher percent of GDP.

… but THIS data set DID that. Please go to the actual source of the OP and read how the data set is calculated.

It's there, so look all that you need to do is read how the local members of the Federal Reserve calculated it.

You have not established that specific dataset represents your post.

Have another cup of coffee and follow what I replied to. When you see the graphs the OP used, you'll see that reference.

It's a good rule to check the reference when you see someone using graphs. The OP's graphs come from a local member of the Federal Reserve Board. It's pretty obvious in the OP.

I'm unconvinced you've said anything here that makes sense.

Do you have an alternate dataset that compiles numbers in that vein?

How ridiculous.

If you made an effort to see it, that would be one thing, but you haven't, so go have a nice day. I have other things to do.

Okay, josh, before I head out to work today, let's see ….

1) Did you see the source of the OP's 2nd graph?

2) Did you link to it?

3) What was that source?

I went to your link, which address serial data from the Federal Reserve. However, the OP's graph was a different source, in that his was data was presented from one of those member banks. Do you see the acronym on that 2nd graph. If so, did you go to that reference. If so, you would see the same list that comprised how they "indexed" it.

I have to leave for work now, so, have a nice day.

I looked up the data for the graph posted in #168. It did not meet your criteria. I'm not going to run around in circles because I don't like dishonesty in data presentation. I initially did believe your original allegations, did the research, and discovered they were false.

… I also responded to pampango's post #154 in my post (#162), in which I highly criticized the authenticity of the graph showing how data sets on worker wages and the industrial production for U.S. non-supervisory workers. I believe those graphs DO make things look much better for NAFTA. The employment data consumer price index, etc of workers, using this data had nothing to do with improving poverty. But if you tweak the data points, it could.

I don't like dishonesty either, so if you want to say that my allegations were dishonest, I wonder how that can be. The FRED (one of the fed reserve bank members) had presented data on an Industrial Production Index. What they used to represent that data had little to support how good NAFTA was (that graph was also in the OP) for our industrial markets. I listed the particular data that represented this graph after visiting that website to examine better what went into this index. IT was dishonest to support the benefits of what the OP claimed about NAFTA.

Hey, your eyes are no different in reading this, so you can believe or disbelieve what I might say, on whatever you think my criteria was. But, don't disbelieve what that FRED graph is based on. I cut and pasted from this link right here.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/INDPRO/

On edit: See left column on that page of link, under "related categories", then, "Macro Dataset for Estimating Factors" to link to these categories.

"Germany trades at a level about 3 times greater than the US does and has "free trade" agreements with 35 countries compared to US' 20 countries. It does not seem that trade, 'free trade' or FTA's have decimated their economy, their unions or their middle class. To the contrary they are quite strong."

I posted on this previously, perhaps in response to one of your posts.

I lived in Germany and Austria (also faring pretty well in the world trade environment). On the economy and for a number of years.

Here's the deal. Germany and Austria impose taxes on incomes but also have a VAT -- a national value added tax that permits Germany and Austria to tax imports at the same level that they tax products made and sold in their countries. That eliminates some of the advantage that those who rely on income from imports have -- that is the lack of tax revenue coming from taxes on imports. t makes imports and domestic products taxed a little more evenly and fairly. There is less advantage in producing a product in the Philippines and importing into Germany because the cost differential at the point of sale is slightly less. VAT taxes were quite high when we lived there. Thanks to the VAT tax, Germany and Austria can afford to fund social services that help keep their economy productive and their social problems at a minimum.

One of the ways they keep their economy productive is to train young people who will potentially work in industry or business from beginning at an early age --jr. high to high school years through a combination of apprenticeships and schooling. Their workforce is well trained, very efficient and well organized. They are respected all over the world for the quality of their products. Just say the words Mercedes and Siemens and you get a sense of the respect that excellent German and Austrian workmanship receive around the world. We could do that. We don't. We don't want to spend the money and we don't have the long tradition of guilds and trade unions that dates back to the Middle Ages in what we now call Germany.

Higher education in Germany is, if not entirely free, nearly so. The best and brightest in Germany do not graduate from college or grad school with a yoke of debt around their necks. Thus, the young in Germany can afford to be more optimistic and to focus on building their careers and having a family, etc. Our best and brightest are worried about how they are going to pay back their student debt.

The pension system in Germany and Austria is fantastic. Working people get a month or so off from work as a matter of law. Young mothers get paid vacation leave.

The schools are great although in my opinion, based on the experience of my children while living there, with the exception of German and Austrian kindergartens which are just amazingly wonderful, the teaching methods in the schools do not encourage the kind of creativity that is encouraged here. On the other hand, the German language is phonetic and very easy to learn to spell and write, so German students have an advantage over English-speakers in that area. And by the way, German kids learn English almost as a matter of course and at an early age.

Note that Germany has already put in place an aggressive program to promote the use of solar energy -- with state subsidies.

I don't know if the program is still in place, but Germany and Austria had Bausparkasse programs when we lived there. They encourage people to save by matching a certain amount of the money that eligible people place in a bank savings account.

Of course, Germany and Austria have single payer health insurance. When we were there private insurance could be bought if you wanted a private room and certain perks in your health care.

I could go on and on, and I must add that the kindergarten system in Germany and Austria is marvelous. We had half-day free kindergarten starting at age 3. I am convinced that if we instituted such a program for ALL children, not just poor kids, in our country, we could sharply reduce the amount of money we have to spend on prisons.

Funny you would ask me how Germany does it. They work together. They plan. When we lived there maybe 30 years ago, Austrians were already discussing how they, such a small country, could find a niche in the increasingly global marketplace. They talked about focusing on producing products that are unusual and cannot be produced on a large scale if I remember correctly.

We do not talk about how to compete in the global marketplace. We just chastise ourselves because we are not competing. We act as if kids who want an education and whose parents can't pay for it out of pocket are a nuisance, just trying to freeload. We don't spend enough on education, especially not on pre-school education beginning at three years.

So that is just a little bit of my answer to your question.

And that is why I oppose these free trade agreements. Our country is so divided, so completely disorganized when it comes to trade, workers' rights (remember employees are represented on the boards of directors of large German companies), education and just about everything else that frankly I don't think we have the maturity as a nation to live in peace in the global economy. We are like kindergarten kids trying to play baseball with professionals.

We have to change a lot here before we should enter into any trade agreements.

I agree that the VAT, though somewhat regressive in nature, is a progressive policy largely because it is used to "fund social services that help keep their economy productive and their social problems at a minimum." I don't think it does much to discourage imports however since it increases the cost of domestic and imported goods by the same percentage. Evidence of this is that imports are about 34% of Germany's economy while imports are only 13% of the US economy.

adverse to any recognition of our social interdependence. I believe that interdependence is a fundamental part of our human nature.

We should be teaching our children about social interdependence beginning at age 3. We aren't. And so many people never learn that pre-school lesson.

It is our failure to impart an understanding of social values early in life that contributes to several of our most serious problems -- crime -- racial and other intolerance -- excessive greed in some parts of our society -- and poor education.

Austrians who live in the mountains hunt. They have guns. Guns aren't the problem that they are here. Here, whether people should have the ability to walk down a street with a gun in their pocket and shoot anyone they are afraid of or convince themselves they are afraid of is actually a political issue. That's crazy. Guns are a problem here because people have no sense of how to interact socially.

And out of that inability to accept each other and interact socially in a healthy way grow many of the other problems we are talking about.

I fear that our trade agreements will not only impoverish us as a nation but lead us into even more violent international confrontations. That's because we just are not a very mature people in terms of our social structures.