I kid you not, here it is an economic site focused on middle class, the "rest of us", economics and I personally completely forgot about labor day.

*That* is how badly the holiday and labor are forgotten, into the dust with a heap of historical labor photographs when there was a labor movement in the world.

A restaurant in San Francisco ("Eatsa") is the first in a restaurant chain with national ambitions: To be almost fully automated.

There are no waiters or even an order taker behind a counter. There is no counter. There are unseen people helping to prepare the food, but there are plans to fully automate that process, too, if it can be done less expensively than employing people.

Automation is transforming every industry. Business owners look to substitute machines for human labor. It happened to blue-collar workers in factories and white-collar workers in banks and even law firms. With self-driving vehicles, it may happen in the taxi and trucking industries. Robots and artificial intelligence machines are expected to transform health care.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/09/upshot/restaurant-of-the-future-servic...

"Virtual manufacturers" (aka “factoryless goods producers” aka “wholesale traders”) are companies that don't do any actual domestic manufacturing themselves, because they outsourced everything offshore (e.g. Apple, Nike, Cisco, etc.)

Now, U.S. federal agencies (involved in economic data) are proposing to reclassify these “wholesale traders” as “domestic manufacturers.” This means that their sales would be counted as U.S. production and their products that are made offshore and imported into the U. S. for sale would no longer be counted as imports.

http://economyincrisis.org/content/why-it-is-important-to-know-where-pro...

i'm using Exhibit 10 in the full pdf for this report, which shows monthly imports & exports in chained 2009 dollars, so presumably all that adjusting with the import/export price indices has already been done to arrive at those figures...i've done it the long way, which is tedious and as you know, often inaccurate...

the caveat here of course is that July is just one month, and these same trade figures would have to be maintained through August & September my GDP estimates to play out...that's still 2 months away

I need to go calculate all of the LPR's, this is astounding and cannot possibly be just baby boomers.

I hate covering the advance report for it's always revised. Why does Wall Street jump on this when they know it won't hold?

National Employment Law Project (NELP: Sept. 2, 2015)

Occupational Wage Declines Since the Great Recession: Low-Wage Occupations See Largest Real Wage Declines

"Most workers have failed to see improvements in their paychecks. In fact, taking into account cost-of-living increases since the recession officially ended in 2009, wages have actually declined for most U.S. workers. Inflation-adjusted or “real” wages reflect workers’ true purchasing power; as real wages decline, so too does the amount of goods and services workers can buy with those wages. The failure of wages to merely keep pace with the cost of living is not a recent phenomenon. The declines in real wages since the Great Recession continue a decades-long trend of wage stagnation for workers in the United States."

http://www.nelp.org/publication/occupational-wage-declines-since-the-gre...

11-page paper:

http://www.nelp.org/content/uploads/Occupational-Wage-Declines-Since-the...

From a recent New York Times article "The Neverending Fight to Save Social Security"

Becaused the disability trust fund in projected for a shortfall next year, instead of a reallocation from the old age fund, Republicans are floating the idea of forcing the disability fund to borrow the money it needs from the retirement fund. They seem to think that borrowing is more fiscally responsible than reallocation. It’s not. In fact, borrowing would make the disability situation worse, because without more tax revenue going into the system – the solution Republicans refuse to consider – there would be no way to repay the loan. Taking out a loan with no ability to repay would only dig the hole deeper. And when the hole is deep and dark and getting deeper, you can be sure that Republicans will sound the alarm over the fund’s immense debt, for which draconian benefit cuts are the only answer they can think of.

IN OTHER SOCIAL SECURITY NEWS...

The latest annual report from the Social Security trustees is projecting no COLA for 2016, because the price of oil has fallen so much it’s undercut all the other expenses considered when determining how much seniors get to live on. But it is projecting a big increase in Medicare premiums, which is going to hurt no matter how you look at it.
http://www.benefitspro.com/2015/08/14/no-social-security-cola-likely-in-...

From a recent report: "The adjustment for January 1, 2016 is based on the increase in the CPI for the third quarter of 2015 over the third quarter of 2014. As shown in Figure 1, the CPI-W dipped substantially from the 2014 third-quarter average of 234.2 and, although it has turned around, is still below that benchmark ... The 2015 Social Security Trustees Report released last month assumed that there will be no cost of living adjustment (COLA) for recipients of Social Security benefits in 2016 due to this year’s low inflation rate."
http://crr.bc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/IB_15-14.pdf

So seniors or those on disability who don’t drive at all (or those who drive very little) and doesn't benefit from cheap oil, won’t get an increase in their COLAs next year.

But Federal workers are on track to get 1.3 percent pay hike in January. Several federal employee organizations, with support from some Democrats in Congress, are pushing for a 3.8 percent increase.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2015/08/31/1-3-percen...

But those on disabilities and seniors are getting a finger shoved up their arse – with some facing hikes in Medicare premiums.

Now federal workers have launched a White House petition for a ‘meaningful pay raise’ above the 1.3 percent Obama is giving.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2015/09/01/federal-wo...

Government workers are so lucky to have good-paying jobs with great benefits ---and they’re getting a COLA too! --- but still they're complaining!!! (Like the GOP, I’m starting to turn against government workers.)

We need to realize that Reagan increased Social Security taxes 33 years ago in anticipation of today. There is a 2.7 trillion dollar surplus owed Social Security by the Federal Government. This debt is a direct result of Republican tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy and, under Bush II, the middle class as well. Social Security revenues are down because job killing trade treaties are reducing both employment and wages. Corporate America and the uber wealthy have benefited from both. Further the Boskin Commission under Clinton recalculated the way inflation and Social Security adjustments were measured resulting in lower rates that are bogus.

The truth is that both Social Security and Medicare are funded separately from the Federal Government. They were included in the overall Federal budget under Johnson to hide the true cost of the Vietnam War. Virtually the entire deficit is due to everything except Social Security and Medicare. The truth is Republicans are against Social Security because they are deadbeats. The Government shutdowns prove they simply don’t want to pay the bills they themselves have run up. The Social Security income cap must be eliminated and unearned income (rents, dividends, interest, royalties and capital gains going mostly to the wealthy) must be made subject to the Employee portion of both Social Security and Medicare. Social Security payments should be adjusted upward and the inflation calculation returned to reality. In short the truth is the exact opposite of what the Republicans say and the only way that today’s young people will not receive their Social Security is if they allow the Republicans to take it away from them.