Category Archives: Labor

UPDATED: Liars at Labor (40,000 New Reasons For More Joblessness)

As a more realistic index of unemployment, we’ve always reported the U-6 unemployment index, which includes the unemployed and people who would like to work but who have not looked for a job recently, as well as those involuntarily working part-time. But at 13.1 percent, the U-6 is overly optimistic. The “actual unemployment rate is 37.2 percent.”

Via Washington Examiner:

David John Marotta calculates the actual unemployment rate of those not working at a sky-high 37.2 percent, not the 6.7 percent advertised by the Fed, and the Misery Index at over 14, not the 8 claimed by the government.

Marotta, who recently advised those worried about an imploding economy to get a gun, said that the government isn’t being honest in how it calculates those out of the workforce or inflation, the two numbers used to get the Misery Index figure.
Sign Up for the Paul Bedard newsletter!

“The unemployment rate only describes people who are currently working or looking for work,” he said. That leaves out a ton more.

“Unemployment in its truest definition, meaning the portion of people who do not have any job, is 37.2 percent. This number obviously includes some people who are not or never plan to seek employment. But it does describe how many people are not able to, do not want to or cannot find a way to work. Policies that remove the barriers to employment, thus decreasing this number, are obviously beneficial,” he and colleague Megan Russell in their new investors note from their offices in Charlottesville, Va.

MORE.

UPDATE: Here are 40,000 new reasons for more unemployment. These lousy laws will also make you an outlaw, if violated.

Minimum Wage ‘Pulverizes The Poor’

Economy, Free Markets, Labor, Law

Minimum-wage legislation fixes the price of labor above its productivity, making it less likely that the young and the unskilled will be hired. Those who claim to represent the interests of unemployed youngsters—whose labor-participation rate has been in decline—and other unskilled laborers don’t much care that such legislation circumvents voluntary exchanges in the marketplace. Because government has fixed the price of labor, economic actors are prevented from engaging in mutually beneficial, voluntary exchange.

Still less is the hike justified because it impoverishes. Government can set wages above market value (productivity), but it cannot compel business to hire (and lose money), the outcome of which is unemployment among the young and the poor.

USA Today reports that “13 states are raising pay for minimum-wage workers at the start of 2014.” Another site more savvy than the Seattle Times—almost any website on the WWW qualifies—pegs the additional labor costs to the City of Seattle of “a $15 minimum wage” at “nearly $700,000.

Get rid of the minimum wage altogether says Prof. Walter Block, and jail those who pass it for the crime of “pulverizing the poor.”

$6.3 Trillion: The Cost Of The GOF8’s Amnesty Plot

Debt, Economy, IMMIGRATION, Labor

Trust Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation to do the job the open-border “Treason Lobby” won’t do: crunch the numbers to come up with the price of the bipartisan (for some strange reason), Gang of Eight amnesty plot to reel-in “undocumented Democrats.” (It is supported by pillars of the Gof8, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio.)

Bullet points:

* These targeted ‘undocumented Democrats’ are ‘net tax consumers’: “The benefits they receive exceed the taxes they pay. These households generate a ‘fiscal deficit’ that must be financed by taxes from other households or by government borrowing.”

* “the typical unlawful immigrant has only a 10th-grade education. Half of unlawful immigrant households are headed by an individual with less than a high school degree, and another 25 percent of household heads have only a high school degree.”

* “unlawful immigrants at present do not have access to means-tested welfare, Social Security, or Medicare. This does not mean, however, that they do not receive government benefits and services. Children in unlawful immigrant households receive heavily subsidized public education. Many unlawful immigrants have U.S.-born children; these children are currently eligible for the full range of government welfare and medical benefits. And, of course, when unlawful immigrants live in a community, they use roads, parks, sewers, police, and fire protection; these services must expand to cover the added population or there will be “congestion” effects that lead to a decline in service quality.”

* “In 2010, the average unlawful immigrant household received around $24,721 in government benefits and services while paying some $10,334 in taxes. This generated an average annual fiscal deficit (benefits received minus taxes paid) of around $14,387 per household. This cost had to be borne by U.S. taxpayers. Amnesty would provide unlawful households with access to over 80 means-tested welfare programs, Obamacare, Social Security, and Medicare. The fiscal deficit for each household would soar.”

* “As noted, at the current time (before amnesty), the average unlawful immigrant household has a net deficit (benefits received minus taxes paid) of $14,387 per household.”
* ” During the interim phase immediately after amnesty, tax payments would increase more than government benefits, and the average fiscal deficit for former unlawful immigrant households would fall to $11,455.”
* “At the end of the interim period, unlawful immigrants would become eligible for means-tested welfare and medical subsidies under Obamacare. Average benefits would rise to $43,900 per household; tax payments would remain around $16,000; the average fiscal deficit (benefits minus taxes) would be about $28,000 per household.”
* “Amnesty would also raise retirement costs by making unlawful immigrants eligible for Social Security and Medicare, resulting in a net fiscal deficit of around $22,700 per retired amnesty recipient per year.”

* “Under current law, all unlawful immigrant households together have an aggregate annual deficit of around $54.5 billion.”
* “In the interim phase (roughly the first 13 years after amnesty), the aggregate annual deficit would fall to $43.4 billion.”
* “At the end of the interim phase, former unlawful immigrant households would become fully eligible for means-tested welfare and health care benefits under the Affordable Care Act. The aggregate annual deficit would soar to around $106 billion.”
* “In the retirement phase, the annual aggregate deficit would be around $160 billion. It would slowly decline as former unlawful immigrants gradually expire.”
* “If amnesty is enacted, the average adult unlawful immigrant would receive $592,000 more in government benefits over the course of his remaining lifetime than he would pay in taxes.”

Over a lifetime, the former unlawful immigrants together would receive $9.4 trillion in government benefits and services and pay $3.1 trillion in taxes. They would generate a lifetime fiscal deficit (total benefits minus total taxes) of $6.3 trillion.

“These costs would have to be borne by an already overburdened U.S. taxpayer. (All figures are in 2010 dollars.)”

ONE QUESTION: What’s with the “unlawful immigrant” bit of finessing?

Rand Paul’s Goofy ‘Case’ For Amnesty

IMMIGRATION, Labor, libertarianism, Reason, Republicans, Ron Paul

Not so long ago I wondered whether Rand Paul was “Action Hero, Or Political Performance Artist?” “Like most Americans,” the column ventured, “I like an action hero. I am just incapable of telling whether Rand Paul is such a hero, or whether he is no more than a political performance artist.”

Soon a determination will be possible. A picture is emerging of a deft political player.

Rand’s dad, Ron Paul, called for an “End [to] Illegal Immigration”:

A nation without borders is no nation at all. After decades of misguided policies America has now become a free-for-all. Our leaders betrayed the middle class which is forced to compete with welfare-receiving illegal immigrants who will work for almost anything, just because the standards in their home countries are even lower.
If these policies are not reversed, the future is grim. A poor, dependent and divided population is much easier to rule than a nation of self-confident individuals who can make a living on their own and who share the traditions and values that this country was founded upon.

The Center for Immigration Studies paints “A Bleak Picture” of high “unemployment and non-work” among “American citizens, especially less-educated citizens (those with no more than a high school education). The less-educated are the most likely to compete with illegal immigrants,” say the Center’s scholars.

Rand Paul, however, has joined the Gang of Eight (Gof8), in whose states the plight of low-skilled Americans is especially dire. Now Rand is on the offensive, defending against allegations from Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh:

In an appearance on Fox News Channel’s “America Live” on Thursday, Kentucky Republican Sen. Paul told host Bill Hemmer that Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh are wrong to criticize him for working to provide legal status to illegal immigrants.

Rand Paul’s apparently goof-proof “case” for amnesty appears to be that “de facto amnesty” must give way to amnesty de jure—that given the reality on the ground, legislators must take action to turn it into a legal reality.