Why did the US send so much work overseas?

Quote from Cache Landing:


When Clinton left office the Median Individual income was $26,900. During the Bush term it peaked in 2007 @ $27,650 but then dropped down to $26,513 in 2008.

Isn't using median income like saying in a group of 29 paupers and 1 billionaire everybody is a median millionaire?
 
Quote from ByLoSellHi:

In the 1930s, there was a light at the end of the tunnel: WWII, where we had more than full employment, as even women were building tanks and fighter planes and bombers, due to the shortage of male labor.

When the men got back after WWII, Japan, Germany, England, Russia, France, Italy - all decimated with factories blown to smithereens - America was the only center of production available, and we built everything, from cars to planes to TVs to washers and dryers and christmas tree lights, for a long, long time.

Light at the end of the tunnel?? That's a very unique perspective you have there. Sure it was good for US industries and jobs... but it came at a price WAY too high to pay... Tenths of millions of lifes ended during that conflict.
And the risks were off the chart, fortunately the world was a much larger place in 1939 than it is today, otherwise you would've seen blitzcrete in the continental US... and once war gets out of the TV and into your reality... well... it stops being "light at the end of the tunnel" by any measure.
 
Quote from MarketMasher:

Isn't using median income like saying in a group of 29 paupers and 1 billionaire everybody is a median millionaire?

No, you've mixed up median and mean.

Median is the point at which 50% of the people are above it and the other 50% are below it.

The mean is where everyone comes out to be a millionaire.
 
Quote from Cache Landing:

No, you've mixed up median and mean.

Median is the point at which 50% of the people are above it and the other 50% are below it.

The mean is where everyone comes out to be a millionaire.

Yep - you're right!
 
Quote from Cache Landing:

To illustrate the problem with using household income a little better. During the Clinton terms, the number of women in the work force increase by almost 9%. While during the Bush terms, the number of women in the work force increased by only 4.5%.

Only a bit more research shows that there was a pretty significant shift in work force demographics from the Clinton terms to the Bush terms.

The proportion of single workers (never married) rose by 7% under Bush.

The proportion of Married workers in which the spouse was present fell by 3% under Bush.

The proportion of divorced workers rose by 5.5% under Bush.

All of these cause the median household income to fall , even though the median individual income is rising.
 
Quote from Cache Landing:

Only a bit more research shows that there was a pretty significant shift in work force demographics from the Clinton terms to the Bush terms.

The proportion of single person (never married) households rose by 7% under Bush.

The proportion of Married households in which the spouse was present fell by 3% under Bush.

The proportion of divorced households rose by 5.5% under Bush.

All of these cause the median household income to fall , even though the median individual income is rising.

The decadence of family values in western civilization can hardly be blamed on the chimp... this is a trend that's been going on for decades, not only in the US but all over the west.
 
Quote from eusdaiki:

The decadence of family values in western civilization can hardly be blamed on the chimp... this is a trend that's been going on for decades, not only in the US but all over the west.

You're right, the numbers were presented in response to a ridiculous article that tried to blame Bush policies for lower household incomes. I felt I should provide the real numbers since I'm a bit bored right now.

The nail in the coffin for that article are the stats for the number of workers per household.

As a proportion of the total number of households from the Clinton to the Bush era.

Single income households increased by 15%.

Two income households remained pretty flat.

Three income households fell 7%.

And 4+ income households fell 10%.

Contrast that with the change during the Clinton years.

Single income = +17%
2 Income = +13%
3 Income = +10%
4+ Income = +16%

There were simply a lot of people during Clinton pulling in a little extra money via the internet and working from home.

I just wanted to make a case for the fact that if a person is going to believe and cite an article they had better double check the basis of the numbers.
 
Quote from Cache Landing:

Low interest rates and low unemployment are both characteristics of expansionary phases in the business cycle. One doesn't necessarily cause the other.

Besides, I'm talking about the fact that unemployment has averaged 5-6% for the last 100 years. Only spiking temporarily during significant contraction phases. That doesn't bode well for the crowd who insists that outsourcing is costing us millions of jobs.

So why does it take two working parents to live a middle class when one working parent could do?
 
Quote from KINGOFSHORTS:

So why does it take two working parents to live a middle class when one working parent could do?

The answer lies in the definition of middle class. Americans are in a race to become upper class, and will send more workers into the market to achieve it. Real individual incomes are increasing over time as I've demonstrated above. But that isn't enough for us. As a population we want to be upper class, not middle class.

But that really doesn't have anything to do with unemployment. If you ask me, it is amazing that unemployment numbers have remained low even though we've had a massive influx of workers into the market, and "outsourced millions of American jobs" as the government likes to say.
 
So you are saying Americans can achieve home ownership, family car and TV set, food on the table 3 kids and capacity to afford health care with just one person working and the other staying home?


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