Bolton?

You're welcome!

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You seem to think you have a clear view of sociological ladders, try this one:

https://www.russellsage.org/news/new-chartbooks-social-ine******y-available-rsf-website

,,,
Your blindness or unwillingness to see the t***h proves my point. QED

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Nothing like data to expose your inability to process facts rather than having to shift the conversation to cultural events that you don't like and assuming the world of others and their wrung on some mythical ladder that you create. Here is a real ladder based on facts:

https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/

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The non-levelness of the playing field tilts the economy away from capitalism toward oligarchy:
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746

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Don,
You and I rarely agree on anything, and that is OK. It is a learning situation when done in the right frame.

Me Angst? :) The only Angst I will have is if I don't get to v**e against Trump in 2020.

We do agree in part on Reagan. I v**ed for him in his first e******n. But not in the second; no pol, right or left, should govern from a landslide. It creates problems as it did for Reagan. In that period, they posted the eastern results as they came in rather than waiting until polls closed as they do now. I was in the west, and I could see how it was going to turn out. It wasn't his silver tongue that impressed me; it was his sincere desire to bring the country together. Some of his ideas were good--firing the air traffic controllers. Some were not good--trickle down, which his budget director showed would not work. And of course Iran-Contra. Reagan was not the brightest guy, but less corrupt and more moral than most. It will not surprise you to hear me say that Trump is the antithesis of Reagan in virtually everything positive.

It was a conervative commentary that I quoted that said Smoot-Hawley, according to most economists, added to the length of the Great Depression. I have no opinion as to whether this oinion or yours about being not enough goods to have an effect.

As I said, the boom years of the 50s-60s could not be identified with either political party, so I guess we agree on that.

I find it somewhere between inconsistent and hypocritical for someone to say that it is commendable, even morally obligatory (ala Milton Friedman), for companies to make the maximum profits and therefore take production out of the US to foreign countries in order to increase profits and at the same time say it is not appropriate (even unpatriotic) for the American consumer to pay more for the more costly American product. Why not chastise Apple for not being patriotic to produce in the US? I don't think that is a "whine," it is good economics: produce at the lowest cost, buy at the lowest price. It has nothing to do with quality as someone spuriously brought into the argument. Apple is quality.

My appreciation to you and Rad3 for providing data and making this thread at least about opinion based on facts the way you see them. For me, the subject of this thread has been squeezed dry.

Danke.

t

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Wenn du mitten in Angst wandelst, go back to the beginning title of the thread for direction.

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"How cheap" seems to be the mantra of US CEOs who take their companies to Mexico or overseas to produce higher profits. Certainly those CEOs are not Democrats.

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Thanks for the eco lesson, Don.

Actually I probably remember the 60's better than you since I was around in the 40's.

Yes, I noticed you said jobs. But workers are more interested in wages, especially in full employment. If a person has to work two jobs to make ends meet (especially in full employment), he is more interested in wages.
Based on the party in office, it is hard to bless or blame party for your Golden Age of 1950s-1960s.
1950-1952: D
1953-1960: R
1961-1968: D
1969-1976: R
1977-1980: D

Here is a another version of eco history from a source you will probably not castigate https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/americas-tumultuous-history-with-tariffs/

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Then came the Great Depression and the disastrous Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930, which raised duties on some 20,000 imported goods, in some instances to record levels. Many economic historians believe this legislation deepened and lengthened the Great Depression.

If so, it also contributed to the political eclipse of the Republican Party and its traditional protectionism. With Democrats now enjoying a commanding position in American politics, tariff rates began a steady decline that would last for decades. A free-trade consensus prevailed, even among Republicans. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was established in 1947 to reduce trade barriers and promote unfettered trade among capitalist nations. In 1995, that organization became the World Trade Organization. This regimen of open markets and low tariffs dominated worldwide commerce through the postwar era, including the period following the collapse of Soviet c*******m.

But protectionist sentiments bubbled up from time to time, most notably in the 1980s when Japanese industrial production battered various American manufacturers, starting with electronic appliances and eventually slamming U.S. automakers and their workers. It was a serious matter, both politically and economically. U.S. factories were being shut down, workers laid off, industrial towns and cities devastated. Labor unions clamored for some kind of protection.

President Reagan, far more deft on far more issues than he has received credit for, crafted an approach that precluded the blunt instrument of the old-fashioned tariff. Instead he worked towards voluntary restrictions based on import quotas arrived at through diplomatic agreements (not unlike McKinley’s reciprocity concept). As the Wall Street Journal’s Holman W. Jenkins Jr. wrote the other day, Reagan “slapped import quotas on cars, motorcycles, forklifts, memory chips, color TVs, machine tools, textiles, steel, Canadian lumber and mushrooms. There was no market meltdown.” There also were no trade wars.

That was before, as Jenkins notes, the rise of China (far more ominous than Japan’s industrial emergence in the 1970s and ‘80s) and before “the globalization of the world’s assembly line.” But Reagan’s approach reflected an appreciation for the sensitive nature of the trade issue and the need to mesh the imperatives of international commerce with the requirement of assuaging domestic political anger. That required finesse.

The fluctuating history of U.S. trade policy demonstrates that, while this issue may seem settled for extended periods, it will never remain under control indefinitely. The decline of industrial America, and the devastation it has wreaked in so many heartland areas of the country, has spawned a powerful backlash that contributed to the e******n of Donald Trump.

Whether Trump’s old-fashioned tariff approach can reverse that devastation and revive America’s industrial capacity remains an open question. But it seems clear that, if he can’t find a way to incorporate some of the reciprocity thinking of William McKinley and Ronald Reagan, he will almost surely fail.
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Are we in the process of reincarnating Smoot-Hawley?
This history seems to indicate that what is needed is a nuanced thinker like Reagan---nuance and finesse are hardly Trump's suits.
This conservative history ends with the conclusion (last paragraph) that is not nearly as enthusiastic about Trump's approach as you seem to be.

I guess you forgot to include the proof data.

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I am glad it is going up. Here is a quote from your article in the Times:

"..The faster growth at the bottom is probably being fueled in part by recent minimum-wage increases in cities and states across the country. Research from the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal-leaning think tank, found that over the past five years, wages for low-wage workers rose 13 percent in states that raised their minimum wages, compared with 8.4 percent in states that did not."

I guess you forgot to read the entire article or maybe you agree with an increase in the minimum wage for low wage workers.

Well, Swabbie, you got only two things wrong:
1) I a neither left nor right on yours or anybody's spectrum;
2) I don't h**e Trump, but I sure don't like what he is doing to our country.

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Thank you for the "simple" explanation, Rad3.
You said:
"Therefore you saved that tax of $62,500,000,000 (billion).That was their savings.
The company re-invested that savings to expand the business. They hired more people to work for the expansion. The expanded business generate added revenue for the company. That revenue will again generate tax of 25% for the federal government.
Likewise all the people hired in the business expansion will be paying federal taxes as well. They will be paying IRS for income tax, SS and Medicare taxes.
Every year the company grows, employees salaries are also given a growth salary rate from 3% to 5%."

That is the theory. Here is what actually happened:https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-10-companies-buying-back-the-most-stock-2019-03-25

What is absent from your analysis is that CEOs did exactly what they said they would: they bought back their stock with the tax savings rather than investing it as you seem to think they did or should. Neither did they increase wages except for a token expression a day after the tax package was passed. The only people who might possibly benefit were the more wealthy who own stock, and even that is only a possibilty if higher dividends are not declared.

(Maybe that is the problem, Rad; maybe you are a c**pon clipper and only see value for you on the stock side rather than the wages side of the problem).

I don't know what your claim to economic expertise is, Rad3, but thanks for the lessons in theoretical trickle-down theory. I am not trained as an economist, but I can read, and the items I have posted are not
singular and seem to follow the trend of reporting on the effect of Trump's tax package: the rising tide that supply-siders like to claim lifts all boats is a poor metaphor here because it doesn't fit; dynamic scoring was a sham, and real wages (a economic technical term--see my first citation above) have not gone up during Trump's tenure and long before as well (see the first graph above). The better metaphor is the sparrows eating the undigested oats in the horse manure, those horses having very good digestive tracts that leave very little undigested.

...I guess you are on your boat, Seth, and forgot to look at the data. Since you also have never contributed anything that looks like data, your opinion is no better than anyone else's, so you are adding nothing to this conversation--so we lose nothing in your leaving. Have a good weekend.