Yes, lets be completely closed minded to ideas outside the box. Let's stick to what we know because it has worked out so well so far. I mean, after all, economists with all their great wisdom and understanding of the subject have done so well in advising politicians around the world in how to manage currencies.

I don't understand any of it and I probably never will.

I mean, after all, meteorologists with all their great wisdom and understanding of the subject have done so well in advising politicians around the world in how to stop hurricanes and tornadoes.

couldn't

Not that it really has any bearing on the discussion but both meteorologists and economists often suck at the day to day stuff also.

On aggregate they've probably done better than you think

Are you guys trying to deny that there is a political reality to this situation? For example, even though reducing agricultural tariffs and subsidies would be better for our country, and would significantly help the less fortunate in the third world, and most economists would be on board, what politician is going to say "Go for it!" when you've got people screaming "HEY BUT THAT MEANS LESS JOB HERE IN AMERICA". Almost the entire economic profession will tell you that rent control is awful, yet cities all around the country do it and hurt the people they are trying to help, and politicians advocate it because it gets them votes. Even the most liberal of the liberal, Paul Krugman, despises rent control.

There were MULTIPLE economists who had predicted this crisis in the early 2000s, and had written extensive literature about it. Ben Bernanke himself, chairman of the Fed, recognized the exact situation we are in today 12 years ago in Japan, yet he's doing nothing about it right now. It would help if he grew a pair of balls, but honestly, I think he faces some political pressure right now. If he inflates the money supply slightly, most of the public will be outraged (even though they have no idea that this would be a good thing given our current state). You wanna know why our economy is so uncertain? Because nobody has come out and given direction. The Fed came out last month and said "yeah, thinks look bad for the next 2 years". No inflation target, no NGDP target, no new tools announced. People are reluctant to invest because they have absolutely NO idea what is coming.

Seems to me it's politicians ignoring economists, because like most people,they have no idea what the mechanisms of transactions are in an economy, and probably never took even an intro to micro course.

Stop thinking INSIDE THE BOX, mscbuck.

Ron Paul 2012.

Speaking of Krugman, he chimed in.

O RLY?

Good luck paying with plastic on this side of the ocean.

Europeans don't trust credit cards. Only expensive and exclusive places take them as payment.

Wow, isn't that a precious little gem! So now the rest of the wolves are telling the sheep, "oh... Um yeah! Were on your side!!!"

Not good PR for the system, there, Jon. "Hard times are as uncontrollable as hurricanes."

Whereas I'm pretty sure it would be a good thing to actually plan something once in a while to make sure that doesn't happen, instead of fiscal chaos.

WELCOME TO REALITY!

For first-time visitors I recommend the scenic Pits of Despair, or you can try climbing Gnosis Peak where you can see that everything here slopes upwards to the left.

I mean, what the **** do you think happens? A large part of the economy is dependent on good weather - e.g. agriculture, tourism, construction, labor. Controlling the weather is literally a sub-problem of controlling economic "hard times."

Dammit, not again. I thought I managed to escape for good.

Well the Democrats aren't really jumping on it quite yet. They haven't found a good way to co-opt it quite yet. Unions have endorsed it and brought out tens of thousands of people on Wed. I think union support is crucial, while Democrat's support is harmful.

Does anyone else find it hilarious that unions are coming to support Occupy Wall Street, but OWS is protesting against excessive earnings?

No. Unions don't represent the CEOs. OWS is not protesting against unionized employees. And union employees don't make excessive earnings.

I've never heard of Europeans not trusting credit cards or only expensive and exclusive places accepting them, but then again, I'm a Finn instead of a real European. :/

I don't find it hilarious at all. Unions exist to prevent employers from ****ing over their employees.

Unions in NYC?

Ha. They are corrupt as hell.

I'm probably generalizing. Muha.

I'm serious about The Netherlands though. Most people just pay either in cash or with a simple bankcard with PIN code. I know only a few people with a credit card. I know from two of them that they avoid websites that require payment with a credit card, preferring iDeal + bankcard instead.

Also, simple places for everyday groceries, small diners, cinemas, etc. generally don't accept credit cards over here.

Just places where you can buy lots of expensive things like clothing shops and such.

There's a difference between making decent wages and excessive earnings

pfft. Without doing any real investigation, I'd probably agree that unions generally result in wages that are "too high," but it's also clear that unions are necessary in order to avoid wages that are unreasonably low. In many industries there are very few firms and very many households, so the individual laborer has a disproportionately low ability to set the price for his work. You need something like a labor union to prevent this market failure and raise wages to the true equilibrium wage. You never defined what you consider excessive, but I think it's trivial that earnings must be greater than the equilibrium in order to qualify as excessive.

(I don't think 'greater than the equilibrium' is a good definition for excessive, either. If I understand efficiency wages correctly, it means that workers in highly competitive industries are going to be paid more than the equilibrium wage. I'm not comfortable saying that retail workers are being paid an excessive amount.)

I must say that I've only been in France for a few months but I haven't met a single person yet that has a credit card (this includes many small business owners). As a matter of fact, my wife had never heard of such a thing, until she came to the U.S. They certainly do exist here but it appears to be a bit rare. However, they do have Carte Bleue, which is essentially a bank card. Many smaller establishments here will only accept cash. This article goes in to more detail.

I actually have a semi-humorous story to tell about this. I used to cut up those ridiculous credit card advertisements that would come in the mail. I always told my wife to cut them up if she saw them. However, I failed to mention to her that I did have 2 credit cards in my name (I only use them on big items like computers to increase my credit score & this is quite rare). I noticed that my wife was cutting up what she thought was an advertisement once. I went over to thank her & noticed that it was actually a replacement credit card. This is when I had to sit her down & explain to her that America sucks & why (as if she wasn't already aware, due to the American healthcare joke).

I find it unlikely that anyone that has studied the history of labor unions in the U.S. for more than 5 minutes, other than a Republican, would find them unnecessary. The citizens of the U.S., especially those involved in labor unions, are almost single-handedly responsible for the few worker rights that you do have & they weren't afraid to use force when necessary.

The labor unions & socialist parties are more at home in this protest than anyone...it's their forte.

Yeah, I only know a few people that actually have credit cards and even then they rarely use them.

Weirdos and your no credit cards. 99% of stuff I buy goes on a credit card. More Amazon rewards points that way!

So what do you guys do, write checks for everything over $100?

i actually do find it humorous that OWS is ok with labor unions swelling their ranks. from what i understand one of their big beefs is with corporations buying off politicians with bribes/ campaign contributions. many politicians are just as beholden to unions as corporations, and because of the exact same thing! campaign contributions! why are they ok with this??? Its turning out that occupy wall st. is NOT the other 99%, its turning into just another liberal protest.

and for the record i do not have a problem with private sector labor unions. if you contract for better wages, good on ya! if the company you work for cant afford your first generation of retirees pensions and the new generations high wages and you end up having to sue and the company goes belly up short changing everyone... as long as i dont have to pay to help bail you out.

public sector unions though... whole different story.

Why? Do they make more than $350,000 a year?

Bank cards, cash or check.

Let's define some ideas real quick. Are we talking ceo's and top paid people within corporations? Or rank and file employees? Based on you figures(350,000$) your talking about the highest paid in these organizations.

Well for CalPERS ...


The chief investment officer as of 2009 made 425,000$

This is only what I could find in a few minutes. This does NOT include the considerable bonuses that executives get, and they do get them. Or the political contributions OR the unfunded pension liability that is getting completely out of control.

We are talking about public sector unions w.r.t. OWS. Your complaint is that public sector unions should not attend because the movement does not represent their interests. OWS, however, professes to represent the bottom 99% of the American population.

The top income percentile is (roughly) greater than $350,000 a year. This is well in excess of the incomes of virtually all union workers except maybe the executive staff of the union itself and a few specialists.

I'm not sure what the rest of your reply has to do with the subject we are discussing.

This is quite low for a senior actuary.

This is somewhat high, but not unusual for the position.

Ok we seem to be talking about 2 different things. The OWS people seem to have a gripe with the highly paid executives or the top 1%, A: grabbing up all the money and not sharing the wealth and B: corporations buying votes in congress.
I am saying that the executives of a lot of the public employee unions are cast from the same mold so why are they perfectly fine with them?
The bit about unfunded liability is really just a personal gripe and admittedly not directly related to the topic, yet.

Because the unions directly represent the interests of many more lower-earning workers than the few higher-paid professionals those workers hire to run the thing.

The amount of money the union leaders get paid also isn't as big a deal as you're making it out to be. Every time this "union leaders are overpaid!!!!" crap comes up in the news, it's always about a union leader making something like $200k to $400k a year. In my opinion that is extremely little pay for a job that is so important to the organization, and if you spend some time reading about what is required of a good CEO you'd probably agree with me. In the United States, especially, that pay is extremely modest: the mean compensation for a CEO is about $11,000,000 pa*.

I'd really hope that most of the people in OWS, or anywhere else, wouldn't have a problem with someone making a lot of money as long as they're doing something to earn it. I'm really stuck on that actuary example you gave, because that was just terrible. You need to study for many years and take many exams to become an actuary, in addition to an undergraduate degree in mathematics, statistics or the actuarial sciences. You probably won't become fully certified until you've been doing it for more than 10 years. It's also time-consuming, grueling, lonely work. If it didn't pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a year nobody would EVER do it.

(*I wanted to find statistics for the median because it is more informative, but I could only find a median salary of $700,000. The above statistics for the mean included a mean salary of $1,000,000. I would guess the median compensation for all CEOs is going to be around $8 million a year, on the assumption that most CEOs receive their compensation in similar proportions.)

ok NOW we are getting somewhere!

as for the compensation for executives in the unions, their pay doesnt actually bother me, in fact i quite agree, for the job their doing it rather low. the only reason i brought up compensation was you asked if they made over 350,000 a year. and yes some do.
my real problem with this is not that I[/i] care about how much they are paid, but that their compensation DOES put some of them in the top 1 percent... who the OCW guys are supposedly against. and more importantly (to me at least) is that unions are just as bad when it come to buying politicians votes. to me this really makes it seem more like a movement to advance a leftist agenda than a movement to oust corruption. this is just turning into the left wing version of the tea party.

When people talk about the top 1%, they definitely aren't talking about union managers and actuaries. They're talking about the owner class. It's probably more correct to talk about the 99.999% and the 0.001%.

ok, that seems reasonable.

These Waltons are in the 0.01%.
These Waltons are in the 99.9%.

Well, what do you know... Europeans do distrust credit cards. I should generalize more often.