GUNS, GUNS, GUNS - AGAIN, AGAIN, AGAIN

I really have said all I have to say on guns* and hunting** before.

First there was the murder of two African Americans by police (in St. Paul, MN, and New Orleans, LA) and then the murder of five police officers in Dallas, TX.  But while the news media stopped reporting on everything else to dwell on these murders, two bailiffs in Michigan were murdered and, in another community, several in Bristol, TN along with an average of 25-30 gun murders a day in the U.S.  So the drum beat of murders continues.  The saturation coverage by the news media on certain mass murders might be worth it if it led to some sort of action, but no.  Even a mild gun law that will supposedly be voted on in the House keeps being put off.

I'm indebted to the Daily Kos for publishing the following piece.  Though the reference title is long, it works.

Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt thought that cherry-picking some mass killings and saying “radical Islam” would be enough to undo any argument in favor of stronger gun laws and devastate his Democratic challenger, Jason Kander. Not so much. Kander had this response to Blunt’s accusation that “Despite Ft. Hood, Boston & Orlando,@JasonKander won’t acknowledge the root of threats we face: radical Islam

The argument about semantics is a stupid one—Republicans running around screaming “SAY RADICAL ISLAM” while the reality is that, between 2001 and 2013, 3,380 Americans were killed by terrorism while 406,496 were killed by guns—but Blunt shouldn’t have wanted any part of this argument. Does he really believe that the “R” beside his name makes him the winner any time terrorism is invoked? And does Blunt really want to give Kander a chance to highlight his time in Afghanistan in comparison to Blunt’s three Vietnam-era draft deferments? Way to give Kander an opening there, genius.*

* http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2015/06/guns-and-illegal-terrorists-in-america.html
http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2016/01/death-and-injuries-by-guns-in-us.html;
http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2016/01/us-has-most-of-everything-including.html
** http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2014/04/prey-animals-and-predator-animals.html
*** http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/6/21/1540931/-Sen-Roy-Blunt-gets-a-lesson-in-why-he-should-think-before-you-tweet?detail=email&link_id=3&can_id=af3794f2758d0c72ac0763afb2350d28&source=email-church-whose-pastor-praised-orlando-shootings-is-being-asked-to-leave-by-landlord&email_referrer=church-whose-pastor-praised-orlando-shootings-is-being-asked-to-leave-by-landlord&email_subject=church-whose-pastor-praised-orlando-shootings-is-being-asked-to-leave-by-landlord

GUNS, GUNS, GUNS - AGAIN, AGAIN, AGAIN

I really have said all I have to say on guns* and hunting** before.

I'm indebted to the Daily Kos for publishing the following piece.  Though the reference title is long, it works.

Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt thought that cherry-picking some mass killings and saying “radical Islam” would be enough to undo any argument in favor of stronger gun laws and devastate his Democratic challenger, Jason Kander. Not so much. Kander had this response to Blunt’s accusation that “Despite Ft. Hood, Boston & Orlando,@JasonKander won’t acknowledge the root of threats we face: radical Islam

The argument about semantics is a stupid one—Republicans running around screaming “SAY RADICAL ISLAM” while the reality is that, between 2001 and 2013, 3,380 Americans were killed by terrorism while 406,496 were killed by guns—but Blunt shouldn’t have wanted any part of this argument. Does he really believe that the “R” beside his name makes him the winner any time terrorism is invoked? And does Blunt really want to give Kander a chance to highlight his time in Afghanistan in comparison to Blunt’s three Vietnam-era draft deferments? Way to give Kander an opening there, genius.*

* http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2015/06/guns-and-illegal-terrorists-in-america.html
http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2016/01/death-and-injuries-by-guns-in-us.html;
http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2016/01/us-has-most-of-everything-including.html
** http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2014/04/prey-animals-and-predator-animals.html
*** http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/6/21/1540931/-Sen-Roy-Blunt-gets-a-lesson-in-why-he-should-think-before-you-tweet?detail=email&link_id=3&can_id=af3794f2758d0c72ac0763afb2350d28&source=email-church-whose-pastor-praised-orlando-shootings-is-being-asked-to-leave-by-landlord&email_referrer=church-whose-pastor-praised-orlando-shootings-is-being-asked-to-leave-by-landlord&email_subject=church-whose-pastor-praised-orlando-shootings-is-being-asked-to-leave-by-landlord

THE BASIC INCOME CONTROVERSARY

Regarding the minimum guaranteed basic income,* Jason Furman,** the top White House economist, says we shouldn't give up on jobs for a basic income, but we should try to increase the skills of the workforce.

What he doesn't realize is that thousands upon thousands of jobs are just going to disappear.  Just think how disruptive it will be when the driverless car is a reality.  Countless thousands of truck and taxi drivers are going to be put out of work.  What kind of jobs are out there waiting to be filled by these people even with increased training and how many of these people can take advantage of increased training.?

Even now there is degree escalation going on for jobs where formerly jobs requiring limited skills are now filled by those with some college or even degrees. I know of a lady with a college degree (with honors) who is working as a hostess in a hotel.  Tour direct didn't used to have a college degree required, but now they do.

And further automation of routine tasks alongside adoption of increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence will almost certainly disrupt the labor market, pushing many workers out of a job and potentially out of the labor force.  A 2013 paper by Oxford University’s Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne concluded that 47% of the total employment is at risk from computerization.**

* http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2016/07/miimum-guaranteed-income.html
** http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2016/07/07/top-white-house-economist-dismisses-the-idea-of-a-universal-basic-income/?mod=djemRTE_h

WAGES AND COLLEGE TUITION COSTS OF AMERICANS

Apparently there will be a plank in the Democratic Party Convention that proposes free college tuition for in-state public colleges for families making up to $125,000 (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/07/us/politics/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-education.html?_r=0).  If such a family at the top has one earner making $125,000/yr, the family is in the upper 5% of all wage earners.  Thus the free tuition will cover nearly everyone.  The costs will be limited by restricting tuition payments to in-state tuition and only for public colleges and universities.

According to the College Board, the average cost of tuition and fees for the 2015–2016 school year was $32,405 at private colleges, $9,410 for state residents at public colleges, and $23,893 for out-of-state residents attending public universities. Tuition at community colleges is considerably less at $3435 (https://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tables/average-published-undergraduate-charges-sector-2015-16).

Though tuition is a major expense of going to college, it is hardly the only one.  Tuition does not include fees (heath service, library student union, and room an board, etc.). However, free tuition should be a boon to the average family where the student can attend a near-by community college and live at home because:

-51 percent of all American workers made less than $30,000 last year.*
And:

The current median household income for the United States is $53,657 [2014]. Real median household income peaked in 2007 at $57,936 and is now $4,279 (7.39%) lower. From a post peak low of $52,970 in 2012, real median household income for the United States has now grown by $687 (1.30%).**

(Click on figure to enlarge)

But the increase in rents is disturbing:**

(Click on figure to enlarge)

*https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/netcomp.cgi?year=2014
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/10/goodbye-middle-class-51-percent-of-all-american-workers-make-less-than-30000-dollars-a-year.html
** http://www.deptofnumbers.com/income/us/ (Not a Federal department.)

THE ONE PERCENT AND THE REST

Turns out that 1% of the families have 20.1% of the income  The percentage reached a low in the 1970s and has been increasing rather rapidly in a zig-zag pattern ever since.  It seems strange to me that the low point in the 1% income compared to the rest occurred during the end of the Nixon, Ford and Carter years.  The bottom came in 1978 under Carter.  The top at 25% occurred in 1929 (no less).  Reagan started off the climb in percentage income of the wealthy with little change during Bush-41's one term then continued upward during the Clinton years.  The wealthy also did well during Obama's first term.

(click on the figure to enlarge)

http://www.epi.org/multimedia/unequal-states-of-america/
http://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/a-guide-to-statistics-on-historical-trends-in-income-inequality
http://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/SaezZucman2014Slides.pdf

HOW DO WORKFORCE DROPOUTS SURVIVE?

A shrinking workforce percentage of those eligible has been shown for a long time, maybe as much as 25 yrs.  I have long wondered, how do these people survive?  For a while they get unemployment insurance that is about 30% of their previous salary (How do they pay their mortgage on their home?), but then what? Many, I guess, retire that otherwise would have worked for several or many more years.  But there is a residual that can' retire yet.

Some unemployed may survive on some else's wages (married couples, for example). Many of those who can't retire yet must have jobs not counted.  They can do "under the table" work like mow lawns, do handyman work, do house cleaning, etc., and perhaps are Uber drivers (I'll use Uber to represent the entire private drivers business like Flyt).  I have been unable to find out how the Dept. of Labor counts Uber drivers.  Can you be an Uber driver and still be counted as unemployed?

The next disruptive job to go will probably be taxicab and Uber drivers when self-driving cars becomes available..  This is going to affect many, many thousands of workers.

An increasing number of people are claiming disability.:

Another culprit behind the shrinking workforce participation rate may be a more serious issue: the rise of illness and disability. About 16.3 million Americans said they couldn't work because of health issues in 2014, up from 12.4 million a decade ago.

While even younger Americans increasingly claim health problems for sidelining them, the biggest bulge is among men and women between 55 to 64 years old, the BLS said. About one out of eight Americans in that group said they aren't able to work because of illness or disability, compared with slightly more than one out of 10 in 2004.*

Some other interesting articles on the workforce dropouts are cited below .**

* http://www.cbsnews.com/news/behind-the-rise-in-americas-workforce-dropouts/
** http://www.examiner.com/article/recruiters-respond-to-the-unemployed-need-not-apply
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janice-harper/long-term-unemployment_b_5678959.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/what-do-the-jobless-do-when-the-benefits-end/2014/02/11/e135d74a-8eb7-11e3-b227-12a45d109e03_story.html

MINIMUM GUARANTEED INCOME

For some time I have thought that there should be some sort of minimum income for adults, enough to keep someone in a modest home, keep in basic foods, and maybe a tiny bit for extras (i.e. have a modest TV, and, perhaps,  going to a movie once a month or something like that).  The reason for this is that automation is eliminating many jobs (letting your fingers do the walking on the telephone)  and others are now turned over the the consumer (e.g. pumping your own gas) not to be spent on booze, beer, or cigarettes.   Of course there are the jobs off-shored to low wage countries, and it would be poor to eliminate the low cost products as a result. Most adults won't be satisfied with minimal living and will seek work, but if the work is not available, they have this safety net.

Well it turns out just this sort of thimg has been proposed by others:

A tsunami of economic disruption is barreling toward the United States, and, as Pimco co-founder Bill Gross observed in his May "Investment Outlook," "No one in 2016 is really addressing the future as we are likely to experience it … Virtually every industry in existence is likely to become less labor-intensive in future years as new technology is assimilated into existing business models."
A 2013 Oxford University study concluded that 47 percent of jobs in the U.S. are at risk of being eliminated due to software, robotics and machines learning artificial intelligence. A McKinsey Global Institute study delivered similar results and went further to say that, if artificial intelligence progresses and is able to process and understand natural language a little better, that number could quickly jump to 58 percent of work activities that are automatable.*
..................................................................
Here's what I propose to both finally end poverty now and as insurance later to ease the difficult transition of what the experts are predicting in job loss — a universal basic income. Universal basic income may be the biggest "new" idea of the 21st century, although it traces its history to Thomas Paine, Milton Friedman and Richard Nixon, whose bill twice passed the U.S. House of Representatives.
How would it work? Each month, every adult would get a check for $1,000 — that's $12,000 a year, just above the poverty line. It's that simple. A form of universal basic income has been in place in Alaska since 1976, paid as a dividend from oil revenues from the North Shore. In 2014, that dividend provided $1,884 to 640,000 individuals using funds from a single revenue stream. By eliminating 126 current welfare programs that would be made redundant by UBI; instituting a financial transaction tax, which our country already had for 50 years; eliminating many, or all, federal tax expenditures and levying a value added tax (VAT), we could provide the funding necessary for a UBI.

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/22/why-we-should-give-every-adult-1000month-for-free-commentary.html