FriedRiceNSpice
Captain
Much higher salaries than currently, which would serve to boost the quantity and also quality of the high tech labor pool.
American Economics Thread
- Thread starter Bernard
- Start date
Jura The idiot
General
LOL everyone wants a higher salary, I guess
got some list with current typical salaries in biotech?
asking because
Yesterday at 8:33 PM
now googled
Biotech Engineer Salary
$71,549
Avg. Salary
Biotechnology Technician Salary
$47,500
Avg. Salary
Last edited:
FriedRiceNSpice
Captain
One occupation that is critical to technological advancement is software engineering. If you compare average or median salaries between the US and China, then it appears engineers in the US receive much higher salaries. But in first tier cities in China, experienced top notch engineers can earn over 1-2M RMB annually, while in the US the best engineers will not earn more than 200-300USD. While these figures are roughly comparatble in absolute and exchange rate terms, the Chinese figures are much much better in relative and purchasing power terms. As a result, China will develop much more quickly an adequately sized pool of skilled engineers which will help drive it's efforts in the technological race and be much more competetive in the future. On the other hand, the US will struggle to meet the ever increasing demand for skilled engineers needed in the high tech sector.
Higher salaries won't do anything to boost the quality of and quantity of the labor pool. People cannot just switch from being a lawyer, nurse practitioner or other thing into working in technology, being a programmer, architect, etc. Anything you do, aside from making it easier to get the best and brightest from outside the US will take a long time to see any change.
The real root cause of US tech/STEM workers quality and quantity issues is not wages, its education. The US does a horrible job, from start of school age to the end training its kids in STEM. Some school in China are teaching AI and programming starting at Kindergarten. Many countries in the world have far higher requirements for math and technology than the US does. We need to change THAT if we want to improve the labor supply.
FriedRiceNSpice
Captain
Education is of course a critical component too. One thing that is effective for China is to make entrance to better schools dependent on academic performance and test results as soon as middle school. This is an extremely effective policy. On the other hand, in the US educational efficiency has been hampered by debates on school districts and affirmative action. For example, previously in New York city, there was a small number of high schools were admittance were based on test scores and academic performance. However, this year a mentally challenged mayor ruled that these schools must begin to consider non academic factors and begin practicing affirmative action. Such idiocy will cripple the US ability to stay competetive technologically and economically in the future.
On the other hand, higher salaries in specific, critical high tech fields will definitely also help. Like you said, it won't help in the short term. But in the long term, perceived career prospects and economic considerations are major influencers in what fields your future workforce will gravitate towards, such as what fields college students will choose to pursue. While lawyers won't be able to just switch to being an engineer, college freshman can decide to pursue a STEM degree instead of planning for law school. Lastly, it should at least help improve the quality of the existing workforce in the short to medium term.
Another thing that affects American education is the politicization of educational methodology as well, such as the debate over "New Math", literacy through phonics and arguments over rote vs creative learning, because it inhibits consistency in execution of educational policy.
Bernard
Junior Member
I am quite proud to still have a thread going. After almost being away more than a yr. American Economy doing very well at the moment!!
Most Economists See Tariff Effects on U.S. Economy as Limited
Forecasters surveyed by The Wall Street Journal say the amount of imposed tariffs so far is relatively small
Harriet Torry
Sept. 13, 2018 10:00 a.m. ET
Tariffs have yet to meaningfully affect the U.S. economy because of the relatively small amounts imposed so far, but trade tensions remain the biggest risk to the economic outlook, according to forecasters surveyed by The Wall Street Journal.
More than three quarters of economists surveyed between Friday and Tuesday, 78.4%, said the reason why tariffs on U.S. imports and exports so far don’t seem to be having much of an effect on the strength of the U.S. economy was because the amount hasn’t been significant.
Is America's economy crushing it?
Case in point, on Wednesday second-quarter GDP was revised up to 4.2 percent from the initial 4.1 percent read, the strongest since the second quarter of 2014, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Earlier in the week, consumer confidence for August rocketed to an 18-year high and , an up-to-date tracker monitored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, is now forecasting third-quarter growth of 4.6 percent.
Still, not everyone is convinced the U.S. economy can maintain growth above 4 percent, right now anyways.
“I don’t expect it will continue at the clip it did in the second quarter, but it will probably be higher than we’ve seen last year,” said Kansas City Federal Reserve President Esther George during an interview with FOX Business at the annual economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. George, who still described the U.S. economy as “firing on all cylinders,” has ratcheted up her annual GDP estimates to 3 percent from 2 percent.
The National Association of Business Economists shares that view, with the majority, 68 percent, forecasting annual growth of 2.1 percent to 3 percent.
Economic bulls have been starved for robust growth over the past few years. U.S. GDP peaked at 5.2 percent during the third quarter of 2014, before tapering back to levels economists describe as subpar through the first quarter of this year.
Still, the flow of positive economic data points over the past few months has been delighting President Trump, who continues to tout the economy’s progress under his watch. “Our economy is setting records on virtually every front,” he tweeted last Friday.
Trump is the unsung hero of the world economy
Washington's huge fiscal and monetary stimuli will give the world economy an estimated $600 billion shot in the arm this year.
That amount represents the difference between the expected U.S. purchases and sales of goods and services in world trade. Technically, you can call it the U.S. current account deficit.
Some people may recall that this is exactly the opposite of what President promised in 2015 and has repeated ever since.
The data published earlier this month show that Trump is nowhere close to delivering on that promise. In fact, China, Japan and Europe are getting a big piece of his tax cut in their during the first six months of this year. That is an 8.2 percent increase from what they got out of a more sluggish American economy a year ago.
In spite of that, , and the keep complaining about U.S. protectionism, accusing Trump of allegedly destroying the multilateral trading system.
Testing Trump's patience
And they don't even have the courtesy to recycle some of their surplus dollars in purchases of American IOUs that are fueling their economic growth.
In the first half of this year, Japan, China and Germany by $31.1 billion, $6.2 billion and $1.1 billion respectively. Washington — and the national security strategists, in particular — may wish to think about what those countries did with all the dollars they got from dumping their goods and services on U.S. markets.
In fact, Trump is playing nice with those trading partners. Unfortunately, while doing that, he is also saddling generations of Americans with the soaring and debilitating public debt that will inevitably lead to slowing growth of jobs and incomes at home.
Uncharacteristically, the U.S. president is taking too much nonsense. Instead of saying, or tweeting, that those large and systematic trade surplus countries are ripping off the rest of the world, he is allowing them to call themselves — with the help of international organizations richly funded by U.S. money — the leaders and main contributors to global economic growth.
Most Economists See Tariff Effects on U.S. Economy as Limited
Forecasters surveyed by The Wall Street Journal say the amount of imposed tariffs so far is relatively small
Harriet Torry
Sept. 13, 2018 10:00 a.m. ET
Tariffs have yet to meaningfully affect the U.S. economy because of the relatively small amounts imposed so far, but trade tensions remain the biggest risk to the economic outlook, according to forecasters surveyed by The Wall Street Journal.
More than three quarters of economists surveyed between Friday and Tuesday, 78.4%, said the reason why tariffs on U.S. imports and exports so far don’t seem to be having much of an effect on the strength of the U.S. economy was because the amount hasn’t been significant.
Is America's economy crushing it?
Case in point, on Wednesday second-quarter GDP was revised up to 4.2 percent from the initial 4.1 percent read, the strongest since the second quarter of 2014, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Earlier in the week, consumer confidence for August rocketed to an 18-year high and , an up-to-date tracker monitored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, is now forecasting third-quarter growth of 4.6 percent.
Still, not everyone is convinced the U.S. economy can maintain growth above 4 percent, right now anyways.
“I don’t expect it will continue at the clip it did in the second quarter, but it will probably be higher than we’ve seen last year,” said Kansas City Federal Reserve President Esther George during an interview with FOX Business at the annual economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. George, who still described the U.S. economy as “firing on all cylinders,” has ratcheted up her annual GDP estimates to 3 percent from 2 percent.
The National Association of Business Economists shares that view, with the majority, 68 percent, forecasting annual growth of 2.1 percent to 3 percent.
Economic bulls have been starved for robust growth over the past few years. U.S. GDP peaked at 5.2 percent during the third quarter of 2014, before tapering back to levels economists describe as subpar through the first quarter of this year.
Still, the flow of positive economic data points over the past few months has been delighting President Trump, who continues to tout the economy’s progress under his watch. “Our economy is setting records on virtually every front,” he tweeted last Friday.
Trump is the unsung hero of the world economy
Washington's huge fiscal and monetary stimuli will give the world economy an estimated $600 billion shot in the arm this year.
That amount represents the difference between the expected U.S. purchases and sales of goods and services in world trade. Technically, you can call it the U.S. current account deficit.
Some people may recall that this is exactly the opposite of what President promised in 2015 and has repeated ever since.
The data published earlier this month show that Trump is nowhere close to delivering on that promise. In fact, China, Japan and Europe are getting a big piece of his tax cut in their during the first six months of this year. That is an 8.2 percent increase from what they got out of a more sluggish American economy a year ago.
In spite of that, , and the keep complaining about U.S. protectionism, accusing Trump of allegedly destroying the multilateral trading system.
Testing Trump's patience
And they don't even have the courtesy to recycle some of their surplus dollars in purchases of American IOUs that are fueling their economic growth.
In the first half of this year, Japan, China and Germany by $31.1 billion, $6.2 billion and $1.1 billion respectively. Washington — and the national security strategists, in particular — may wish to think about what those countries did with all the dollars they got from dumping their goods and services on U.S. markets.
In fact, Trump is playing nice with those trading partners. Unfortunately, while doing that, he is also saddling generations of Americans with the soaring and debilitating public debt that will inevitably lead to slowing growth of jobs and incomes at home.
Uncharacteristically, the U.S. president is taking too much nonsense. Instead of saying, or tweeting, that those large and systematic trade surplus countries are ripping off the rest of the world, he is allowing them to call themselves — with the help of international organizations richly funded by U.S. money — the leaders and main contributors to global economic growth.
Bernard
Junior Member
India, other major countries casualties of booming American ..
Read more at:
In a Sign of the Economy’s Strength, Jobs and Wages Moved Higher in August
By
\\ that wages in August sprinted forward at their fastest pace since the recession ended and that the job creation streak extended to 95 months.
“You could tell the story that protectionism is taking some toll here,” Mr. Gapen said. “In most of the manufacturing indices, all showed a drop-off in new export orders.”
But other analysts warned against drawing too many conclusions from the latest payroll report — which excludes agriculture, an industry that is very vulnerable to trade tensions. While some businesses will keenly feel the effects of tariffs, the mammoth United States economy is primary driven by domestic demand.
“Manufacturing employment creation was still pretty good” in previous months, said Carl Tannenbaum, chief economist at Northern Trust. “The impact of the tariffs that are in place now are annoying but modest in size and limited in scope, though the risk is certainly there. If tariffs broaden, we could see business activity impaired much more significantly.”
Finally, a wage increase
Most of Friday’s report illustrated the economy’s resilience.
“This is the strongest labor market in a generation of workers,” said Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist at the career site Glassdoor.
The latest figures relieved some of the persistent anxiety about sluggish wages, with an increase of 0.4 percent in average hourly earnings last month. The report most likely helped clear the way for the Federal Reserve to lift its benchmark interest rate this month.
Amy Glaser, a senior vice president at the staffing company Adecco, said she had noticed a significant change in employers’ willingness to increase hourly wages. “Now clients are talking in terms of dollars instead of cents for wage increases,” she said.
During the busy holiday season, employees often jump from one business to another for an additional 50 cents an hour, Ms. Glaser said. Companies are trying to head off that exodus, she said, by starting seasonal hiring earlier — in August, instead of September and October — and by offering higher starting pay.
In Louisville, Ky., where there are many distribution centers, jobs that have paid $12 to $13 an hour are reaching the $15 level, Ms. Glaser said. “The race for talent is just so tight, employers are trying to get any step ahead of their competition,” she said.
At the same time, employers are doing more to develop their work forces.
Customer call centers in the retail and financial sectors are devoting more money to training, Ms. Glaser said. Because of the prevalence of texting and social-media slang, many service agents — who typically earn $12 to $17 an hour, depending on the area and the job — lack the required typing skills and professional telephone style.
Our columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin and his Times colleagues help you make sense of major business and policy headlines — and the power-brokers who
Some companies, like Blue Ridge HealthCare in North Carolina, are taking more aggressive steps. Entry-level certified nursing assistants still earn $9 to $9.50 an hour, but the company has focused on training and incentives, said Cindy Cross, the system manager of recruitment and retention.
“There are individuals who really want to go back to school but can’t pay for it,” she said, so the company covers tuition and books, and then guarantees them a job after graduation. If staff members want further training to move up the career ladder, Blue Ridge will pay for that as well, Ms. Cross said.
Read more at:
In a Sign of the Economy’s Strength, Jobs and Wages Moved Higher in August
By
\\ that wages in August sprinted forward at their fastest pace since the recession ended and that the job creation streak extended to 95 months.
- But the Labor Department’s latest bulletin also hinted that President Trump’s tariffs could be starting to take a toll on manufacturing jobs.
“What’s worth noting is that even though there still remains a lot of headline noise around politics and protectionism, underneath that, the U.S. economy — and that includes labor markets — is doing quite fine,” said Michael Gapen, chief United States economist at Barclays.
“You could tell the story that protectionism is taking some toll here,” Mr. Gapen said. “In most of the manufacturing indices, all showed a drop-off in new export orders.”
But other analysts warned against drawing too many conclusions from the latest payroll report — which excludes agriculture, an industry that is very vulnerable to trade tensions. While some businesses will keenly feel the effects of tariffs, the mammoth United States economy is primary driven by domestic demand.
“Manufacturing employment creation was still pretty good” in previous months, said Carl Tannenbaum, chief economist at Northern Trust. “The impact of the tariffs that are in place now are annoying but modest in size and limited in scope, though the risk is certainly there. If tariffs broaden, we could see business activity impaired much more significantly.”
- But the Labor Department’s latest bulletin also hinted that President Trump’s tariffs could be starting to take a toll on manufacturing jobs.
“You could tell the story that protectionism is taking some toll here,” Mr. Gapen said. “In most of the manufacturing indices, all showed a drop-off in new export orders.”
But other analysts warned against drawing too many conclusions from the latest payroll report — which excludes agriculture, an industry that is very vulnerable to trade tensions. While some businesses will keenly feel the effects of tariffs, the mammoth United States economy is primary driven by domestic demand.
“Manufacturing employment creation was still pretty good” in previous months, said Carl Tannenbaum, chief economist at Northern Trust. “The impact of the tariffs that are in place now are annoying but modest in size and limited in scope, though the risk is certainly there. If tariffs broaden, we could see business activity impaired much more significantly.”
Finally, a wage increase
Most of Friday’s report illustrated the economy’s resilience.
“This is the strongest labor market in a generation of workers,” said Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist at the career site Glassdoor.
The latest figures relieved some of the persistent anxiety about sluggish wages, with an increase of 0.4 percent in average hourly earnings last month. The report most likely helped clear the way for the Federal Reserve to lift its benchmark interest rate this month.
Amy Glaser, a senior vice president at the staffing company Adecco, said she had noticed a significant change in employers’ willingness to increase hourly wages. “Now clients are talking in terms of dollars instead of cents for wage increases,” she said.
During the busy holiday season, employees often jump from one business to another for an additional 50 cents an hour, Ms. Glaser said. Companies are trying to head off that exodus, she said, by starting seasonal hiring earlier — in August, instead of September and October — and by offering higher starting pay.
In Louisville, Ky., where there are many distribution centers, jobs that have paid $12 to $13 an hour are reaching the $15 level, Ms. Glaser said. “The race for talent is just so tight, employers are trying to get any step ahead of their competition,” she said.
At the same time, employers are doing more to develop their work forces.
Customer call centers in the retail and financial sectors are devoting more money to training, Ms. Glaser said. Because of the prevalence of texting and social-media slang, many service agents — who typically earn $12 to $17 an hour, depending on the area and the job — lack the required typing skills and professional telephone style.
Our columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin and his Times colleagues help you make sense of major business and policy headlines — and the power-brokers who
Some companies, like Blue Ridge HealthCare in North Carolina, are taking more aggressive steps. Entry-level certified nursing assistants still earn $9 to $9.50 an hour, but the company has focused on training and incentives, said Cindy Cross, the system manager of recruitment and retention.
“There are individuals who really want to go back to school but can’t pay for it,” she said, so the company covers tuition and books, and then guarantees them a job after graduation. If staff members want further training to move up the career ladder, Blue Ridge will pay for that as well, Ms. Cross said.
Bernard
Junior Member
Corporations brought home $350 billion after tax cut, but they haven’t put it to work
Published: July 3, 2018 8:32 a.m. ET
White House says tax cut has already transformed economy, but that’s pure politics
Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
Kevin Hassett, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers
By
Columnist
The Trump White House is using meaningless statistics to falsely claim that its big corporate tax cut is working even better than hoped. Donald Trump’s economic adviser says the tax cut has fundamentally transformed the economy after just six months, deceptively claiming that U.S. corporations are no longer investing in their foreign operations.
Kevin Hassett, the chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, to expand on the administration’s big lie that cutting taxes for corporations
In the first quarter, U.S. corporations repatriated more than $350 billion in profits from their overseas affiliates in response to the new tax law.
Hassett told Maria Bartiromo that U.S. multinationals have in overseas profits and have reduced their direct investment overseas by $400 billion. The first fact is trivially true, while the second is misleading — it’s a one-time drop that‘s due to the accounting change.
The administration wants to plant a seed one day and harvest the crop the next.
The reality is that it is much too soon to tell whether lower tax rates have worked, as promised, to increase corporations’ productive domestic investments in a way that would create a new Golden Age of American Prosperity. Even if temporary stimulus does cause the economy to grow at a 4%-plus rate in the current quarter as economists now expect, there is no support for the idea that the economy has been permanently upgraded already.
The administration wants to plant a seed one day and harvest the crop the next.
But it doesn’t work like that. Corporations don’t change their minds suddenly and decide to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in capital equipment, facilities and technology. Any change in corporate investment behavior would take many months or many years to unfold. If you want to fundamentally change the structure of the economy, you need patience.
But the White House cannot be patient, because polls show with voters and the November midterm elections are rushing toward us. So must persuade voters that the trickle-down tax cut has already succeeded, and they must show that the economy is doing fine despite the disruption from President Donald Trump and his threats to ignite a large-scale trade war.
U.S. growth is stuck around 2% for two fundamental reasons: Slow population growth is holding back the number of hours worked, and slow productivity growth is restraining the output per hour worked. We could fix the population problem by allowing in more immigrants. But no one knows exactly how to increase productivity, other than to invest like crazy in new technologies, more and better equipment, newer factories, better training — and hope for the best.
It’s certain that companies aren’t investing enough. Net investment by businesses is only 2.8% of GDP, about half what it was during the best times for U.S. productivity. Business investment perked up in the first quarter, but preliminary reports on capital spending have been weakening in recent months.
Hassett says the investment problem has been solved. “We’ve got a capital spending boom going on right now,” he said.
Why? Because, he says, of the tax cuts, particularly the change in the way the U.S. taxes multinational corporations.
“U.S. firms that used to build their factories overseas in order to avoid U.S. taxes, they stopped in their tracks because of the tax bill, they are bringing all the money home,” Hassett told Fox Business recently. Hassett cited Commerce Department data that showed U.S. corporations’ overseas operations returned more than $300 billion in retained profits to their U.S. parents in the first quarter alone.
And he said that U.S. multinational companies had reduced their overseas investments by more than $400 billion in those three months.
“This is a fundamental game changer,” Hassett crowed.
Unfortunately for Hassett, the Commerce Department figures reflect a legal change in accounting methods, not a real change in corporate behavior. Yes, the corporations did change the entries on their books, because the tax law meant they no longer had to maintain the fiction that these profits were earned overseas. But bringing back that cash doesn’t mean the corporations are suddenly free to invest in U.S. operations, and it certainly doesn’t mean that American companies will no longer invest in foreign operations.
.
The whole idea that the American economy was constrained because corporations couldn’t touch their overseas cash
The corporations that had all that cash on their overseas books have been able to do anything they wanted, whether it’s buying back billions of dollars of shares, paying large dividends, making huge merger-and-acquisition deals, or even investing back into their own company’s operations. They could (and did) fund those activities with their internal U.S. cash flow, or with funds easily borrowed.
Published: July 3, 2018 8:32 a.m. ET
White House says tax cut has already transformed economy, but that’s pure politics
Kevin Hassett, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers
By
Columnist
The Trump White House is using meaningless statistics to falsely claim that its big corporate tax cut is working even better than hoped. Donald Trump’s economic adviser says the tax cut has fundamentally transformed the economy after just six months, deceptively claiming that U.S. corporations are no longer investing in their foreign operations.
Kevin Hassett, the chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, to expand on the administration’s big lie that cutting taxes for corporations
In the first quarter, U.S. corporations repatriated more than $350 billion in profits from their overseas affiliates in response to the new tax law.
Hassett told Maria Bartiromo that U.S. multinationals have in overseas profits and have reduced their direct investment overseas by $400 billion. The first fact is trivially true, while the second is misleading — it’s a one-time drop that‘s due to the accounting change.
The administration wants to plant a seed one day and harvest the crop the next.
The reality is that it is much too soon to tell whether lower tax rates have worked, as promised, to increase corporations’ productive domestic investments in a way that would create a new Golden Age of American Prosperity. Even if temporary stimulus does cause the economy to grow at a 4%-plus rate in the current quarter as economists now expect, there is no support for the idea that the economy has been permanently upgraded already.
The administration wants to plant a seed one day and harvest the crop the next.
But it doesn’t work like that. Corporations don’t change their minds suddenly and decide to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in capital equipment, facilities and technology. Any change in corporate investment behavior would take many months or many years to unfold. If you want to fundamentally change the structure of the economy, you need patience.
But the White House cannot be patient, because polls show with voters and the November midterm elections are rushing toward us. So must persuade voters that the trickle-down tax cut has already succeeded, and they must show that the economy is doing fine despite the disruption from President Donald Trump and his threats to ignite a large-scale trade war.
U.S. growth is stuck around 2% for two fundamental reasons: Slow population growth is holding back the number of hours worked, and slow productivity growth is restraining the output per hour worked. We could fix the population problem by allowing in more immigrants. But no one knows exactly how to increase productivity, other than to invest like crazy in new technologies, more and better equipment, newer factories, better training — and hope for the best.
It’s certain that companies aren’t investing enough. Net investment by businesses is only 2.8% of GDP, about half what it was during the best times for U.S. productivity. Business investment perked up in the first quarter, but preliminary reports on capital spending have been weakening in recent months.
Hassett says the investment problem has been solved. “We’ve got a capital spending boom going on right now,” he said.
Why? Because, he says, of the tax cuts, particularly the change in the way the U.S. taxes multinational corporations.
“U.S. firms that used to build their factories overseas in order to avoid U.S. taxes, they stopped in their tracks because of the tax bill, they are bringing all the money home,” Hassett told Fox Business recently. Hassett cited Commerce Department data that showed U.S. corporations’ overseas operations returned more than $300 billion in retained profits to their U.S. parents in the first quarter alone.
And he said that U.S. multinational companies had reduced their overseas investments by more than $400 billion in those three months.
“This is a fundamental game changer,” Hassett crowed.
Unfortunately for Hassett, the Commerce Department figures reflect a legal change in accounting methods, not a real change in corporate behavior. Yes, the corporations did change the entries on their books, because the tax law meant they no longer had to maintain the fiction that these profits were earned overseas. But bringing back that cash doesn’t mean the corporations are suddenly free to invest in U.S. operations, and it certainly doesn’t mean that American companies will no longer invest in foreign operations.
.
The whole idea that the American economy was constrained because corporations couldn’t touch their overseas cash
The corporations that had all that cash on their overseas books have been able to do anything they wanted, whether it’s buying back billions of dollars of shares, paying large dividends, making huge merger-and-acquisition deals, or even investing back into their own company’s operations. They could (and did) fund those activities with their internal U.S. cash flow, or with funds easily borrowed.
Jura The idiot
General
how you doing Bernard, you back?