The Wall Street Journal ran a piece about how manufacturers are finding it increasingly difficult to find the skilled workers that they need. The problem is that their current workforce is nearing retirement while relatively few younger workers have the necessary skills. The employers featured in the article even talk about how they have been raising wages to get and keep workers.
Of course the wages discussed in the article are not the sort that would sound high to most WSJ readers. According to the article, one of the manufacturers starts workers at full-time jobs paying between $25,000 and $50,000 a year. This is probably a somewhat lower wage than WSJ readers envision for their children.
More importantly, the charts accompanying the article do not show manufacturing wages rising rapidly. In fact, the chart actually shows that average nominal compensation in manufacturing has been flat or even declining slightly. This indicates that real hourly compensation has been falling over the last few years. This means that if the employers discussed in this article really are raising pay, then they are the exceptions. Most employers in the manufacturing sector are cutting pay in real terms, indicating that there is an excess supply of labor, not a shortage.
The Wall Street Journal ran a piece about how manufacturers are finding it increasingly difficult to find the skilled workers that they need. The problem is that their current workforce is nearing retirement while relatively few younger workers have the necessary skills. The employers featured in the article even talk about how they have been raising wages to get and keep workers.
Of course the wages discussed in the article are not the sort that would sound high to most WSJ readers. According to the article, one of the manufacturers starts workers at full-time jobs paying between $25,000 and $50,000 a year. This is probably a somewhat lower wage than WSJ readers envision for their children.
More importantly, the charts accompanying the article do not show manufacturing wages rising rapidly. In fact, the chart actually shows that average nominal compensation in manufacturing has been flat or even declining slightly. This indicates that real hourly compensation has been falling over the last few years. This means that if the employers discussed in this article really are raising pay, then they are the exceptions. Most employers in the manufacturing sector are cutting pay in real terms, indicating that there is an excess supply of labor, not a shortage.
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This is the question that readers of a Washington Post article on the administration’s efforts to lower the value of the dollar should be asking. The article tells readers that the Obama administration and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke probably both want a lower dollar to help correct the U.S. trade imbalance and create jobs, but that they can’t say so openly for fear of upsetting financial markets.
Since the delay in lowering the dollar to a more sustainable level is causing millions of workers to be unemployed, it would be worth asking how many workers should be forced to suffer unemployment for long, just to keep the financial markets from being troubled. Economists believe that in the long-run financial markets respond to the fundamentals in the economy, so the worst that is likely to result from a bit of concern is a period of excessive volatility in the financial markets. This can lead to some traders losing or gaining large amounts of money; the long-term impact on the economy is likely to be trivial.
It is a very damning statement about the Fed and the administration if, as this article implies, they care so much about financial markets that they are forcing millions of workers to be out of work just to avoid a short period of uncertainty.
This is the question that readers of a Washington Post article on the administration’s efforts to lower the value of the dollar should be asking. The article tells readers that the Obama administration and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke probably both want a lower dollar to help correct the U.S. trade imbalance and create jobs, but that they can’t say so openly for fear of upsetting financial markets.
Since the delay in lowering the dollar to a more sustainable level is causing millions of workers to be unemployed, it would be worth asking how many workers should be forced to suffer unemployment for long, just to keep the financial markets from being troubled. Economists believe that in the long-run financial markets respond to the fundamentals in the economy, so the worst that is likely to result from a bit of concern is a period of excessive volatility in the financial markets. This can lead to some traders losing or gaining large amounts of money; the long-term impact on the economy is likely to be trivial.
It is a very damning statement about the Fed and the administration if, as this article implies, they care so much about financial markets that they are forcing millions of workers to be out of work just to avoid a short period of uncertainty.
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Reporters have full time jobs reporting the news. This means that they are supposed to have the time to learn about the issues on which they are reporting. This is in contrast to their audience who generally have full time jobs doing something else.
This means that reporting both sides of an issue does not mean writing “Joe said the X” and “Jane said not X.” It means that reporters are supposed to take a few minutes to find out whether or not X is true, and then share this information with readers.
This issue comes up with regard to Republican plans to “drill here, drill now” in response to the recent run up in gas prices. The Republicans claim that if we just allowed the oil companies to drill everywhere they want, it would get the price of gas back down to an acceptable level. Environmentalists and some Democrats have argued that given the size of the world oil market, any additional drilling can only have a minimal impact on oil prices.
The NYT, WAPO, and NPR have all reported this one as a he said/she said leaving it to their audience to determine who is right. By contrast, the Huffington Post did a bit of homework. They talked to some experts in the field. These experts told their audience that even if we make very generous assumptions about the potential increase in domestic oil production it will take at least 5 years to notably increase output and that it would have minimal impact on gas prices.
This is the way a real news organization deals with issues.
Reporters have full time jobs reporting the news. This means that they are supposed to have the time to learn about the issues on which they are reporting. This is in contrast to their audience who generally have full time jobs doing something else.
This means that reporting both sides of an issue does not mean writing “Joe said the X” and “Jane said not X.” It means that reporters are supposed to take a few minutes to find out whether or not X is true, and then share this information with readers.
This issue comes up with regard to Republican plans to “drill here, drill now” in response to the recent run up in gas prices. The Republicans claim that if we just allowed the oil companies to drill everywhere they want, it would get the price of gas back down to an acceptable level. Environmentalists and some Democrats have argued that given the size of the world oil market, any additional drilling can only have a minimal impact on oil prices.
The NYT, WAPO, and NPR have all reported this one as a he said/she said leaving it to their audience to determine who is right. By contrast, the Huffington Post did a bit of homework. They talked to some experts in the field. These experts told their audience that even if we make very generous assumptions about the potential increase in domestic oil production it will take at least 5 years to notably increase output and that it would have minimal impact on gas prices.
This is the way a real news organization deals with issues.
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Laura Tyson, the former chair of President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers, had a column in the NYT today urging patience in addressing the over-valuation of the dollar relative to the Chinese yuan. The heading of the piece identifies Tyson only by her role as a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley and her former position in the Clinton administration.
The NYT’s identification did not mention that Ms. Tyson is also currently a member of the board of directors of Morgan Stanley. She received almost $350,000 in compensation for her work in this position last year.
This is relevant to the piece because Morgan Stanley has extensive business dealings in China. It is likely that Morgan Stanley would benefit from having the dollar remain high against the Chinese yuan, since this means that its dollar assets will go further in China. In other words, the position being advocated by Ms. Tyson in this piece happens to coincide with the interests of the company on whose board she sits.
It is entirely possible that Ms. Tyson came to her views on the dollar and yuan without any consideration of its impact on Morgan Stanley. However, the NYT should have informed readers of this potential conflict of interest.
As far as the substance, her argument that there is little link between the value of the dollar against the yuan and the U.S. trade deficit with China is weak. When China raised the value of its currency against the dollar in 2005, many other nations followed suit. This led to a substantial decline in the U.S. trade deficit measured as a share of GDP. (The only relevant measure.) It matters little to workers in the United States whether the improvement in the deficit came in trade with China or other countries.
Also the plea for patience must be seen in a context in which tens of millions of workers are unemployed or underemployed with little hope for any improvement in sight. Deficit hawks in both political parties (including many of Ms. Tyson’s former colleagues in the Clinton administration) have closed off the option of further fiscal stimulus. The current political context also seems to offer little hope for more expansionary monetary policy.
Given the options, an improvement in the trade balance seems the best hope for a more rapid increase in employment. It is understandable that those struggling to get by in a downturn that resulted from a combination of Wall Street greed and incompetent economic policy may not be as patient as Ms. Tyson.
Laura Tyson, the former chair of President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers, had a column in the NYT today urging patience in addressing the over-valuation of the dollar relative to the Chinese yuan. The heading of the piece identifies Tyson only by her role as a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley and her former position in the Clinton administration.
The NYT’s identification did not mention that Ms. Tyson is also currently a member of the board of directors of Morgan Stanley. She received almost $350,000 in compensation for her work in this position last year.
This is relevant to the piece because Morgan Stanley has extensive business dealings in China. It is likely that Morgan Stanley would benefit from having the dollar remain high against the Chinese yuan, since this means that its dollar assets will go further in China. In other words, the position being advocated by Ms. Tyson in this piece happens to coincide with the interests of the company on whose board she sits.
It is entirely possible that Ms. Tyson came to her views on the dollar and yuan without any consideration of its impact on Morgan Stanley. However, the NYT should have informed readers of this potential conflict of interest.
As far as the substance, her argument that there is little link between the value of the dollar against the yuan and the U.S. trade deficit with China is weak. When China raised the value of its currency against the dollar in 2005, many other nations followed suit. This led to a substantial decline in the U.S. trade deficit measured as a share of GDP. (The only relevant measure.) It matters little to workers in the United States whether the improvement in the deficit came in trade with China or other countries.
Also the plea for patience must be seen in a context in which tens of millions of workers are unemployed or underemployed with little hope for any improvement in sight. Deficit hawks in both political parties (including many of Ms. Tyson’s former colleagues in the Clinton administration) have closed off the option of further fiscal stimulus. The current political context also seems to offer little hope for more expansionary monetary policy.
Given the options, an improvement in the trade balance seems the best hope for a more rapid increase in employment. It is understandable that those struggling to get by in a downturn that resulted from a combination of Wall Street greed and incompetent economic policy may not be as patient as Ms. Tyson.
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Deficit reduction is all the craze now that it is official policy in Washington to ignore the downturn and the tens of millions unemployed and underemployed. (Hey, how many of these people have advanced degrees and went to Ivy League schools?)
Harvard economist and former AIG director Martin Feldstein made his contribution to the effort today in a column on tax reform in the NYT today. Feldstein wants us to “raise taxes, but not rates.” His proposal is to limit deductions for tax expenditures to 2 percent of total income.
Feldstein tells readers:
“What’s the result? Taxpayers with incomes of $25,000 to $50,000 would pay about $1,000 more in taxes; those with incomes of more than $500,000 might pay $40,000 more.”
Before anyone gets too excited over this former Reagan economist pushing progressive tax reform, it’s worth considering this one a bit more closely. Let’s put the average income in the $25k-50k group at $38,000. The promised $1,000 tax increase for these folks is about 2.6 percent of their income. The average income for people earning over $500,000 is around $1.7 million. The $40,000 Feldstein expects to get from this group comes to 2.3 percent of their income.
In other words, insofar as this tax reform proposal is progressive, it is very trivially progressive. Comparing the $40,000 additional tax take with the $500,000 bottom end cutoff may confuse people here. Given that more than 8 percentage points of GDP ($1.2 trillion annually) has been redistributed upward to the top 1.0 percent over the last three decades, we might hope to do a little better with our tax reform.
But wait, it gets worse. It is worth asking who would get nailed by Feldstein’s proposed caps. Most people in that middle $25k to $50k group take the standard deduction. The most common deductions for this group are the mortgage interest deduction and the deduction for health care expenditures, including employer paid health care.
While there is a good argument for limiting the mortgage interest deduction (if someone wants a big home, why should the rest of us share the bill), if these people have a large deduction for health care expenses, it is likely because they have a serious illness in their family. Taxpayers with a large health care deduction are likely families with a chronically ill child or a severe medical condition, like cancer.
Of course, we can argue that there are better ways to pay for health care than through the tax code, but remember we’re cutting back on government health care spending too. So don’t anticipate that we fix any inequities created by Feldstein’s tax reform on the expenditure side.
In short, what we have from Feldstein is exactly what we expect from those on the right: an effort to lift more money out of the pockets out of the middle class, the poor, and the sick to make the wealthy even wealthier.
Deficit reduction is all the craze now that it is official policy in Washington to ignore the downturn and the tens of millions unemployed and underemployed. (Hey, how many of these people have advanced degrees and went to Ivy League schools?)
Harvard economist and former AIG director Martin Feldstein made his contribution to the effort today in a column on tax reform in the NYT today. Feldstein wants us to “raise taxes, but not rates.” His proposal is to limit deductions for tax expenditures to 2 percent of total income.
Feldstein tells readers:
“What’s the result? Taxpayers with incomes of $25,000 to $50,000 would pay about $1,000 more in taxes; those with incomes of more than $500,000 might pay $40,000 more.”
Before anyone gets too excited over this former Reagan economist pushing progressive tax reform, it’s worth considering this one a bit more closely. Let’s put the average income in the $25k-50k group at $38,000. The promised $1,000 tax increase for these folks is about 2.6 percent of their income. The average income for people earning over $500,000 is around $1.7 million. The $40,000 Feldstein expects to get from this group comes to 2.3 percent of their income.
In other words, insofar as this tax reform proposal is progressive, it is very trivially progressive. Comparing the $40,000 additional tax take with the $500,000 bottom end cutoff may confuse people here. Given that more than 8 percentage points of GDP ($1.2 trillion annually) has been redistributed upward to the top 1.0 percent over the last three decades, we might hope to do a little better with our tax reform.
But wait, it gets worse. It is worth asking who would get nailed by Feldstein’s proposed caps. Most people in that middle $25k to $50k group take the standard deduction. The most common deductions for this group are the mortgage interest deduction and the deduction for health care expenditures, including employer paid health care.
While there is a good argument for limiting the mortgage interest deduction (if someone wants a big home, why should the rest of us share the bill), if these people have a large deduction for health care expenses, it is likely because they have a serious illness in their family. Taxpayers with a large health care deduction are likely families with a chronically ill child or a severe medical condition, like cancer.
Of course, we can argue that there are better ways to pay for health care than through the tax code, but remember we’re cutting back on government health care spending too. So don’t anticipate that we fix any inequities created by Feldstein’s tax reform on the expenditure side.
In short, what we have from Feldstein is exactly what we expect from those on the right: an effort to lift more money out of the pockets out of the middle class, the poor, and the sick to make the wealthy even wealthier.
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In one of his debates with President Carter in 1980, Ronald Reagan famously quipped that everyone who supported abortion has already been born. In the same vein, it is probably worth noting that everyone who works for the Washington Post has a job. This may explain its fixation with reducing the deficit while virtually ignoring the most prolonged period of high unemployment since the Great Depression.
A front page article told readers that:
“With voters growing increasingly anxious about the debt, Republicans and some Democrats are refusing to approve additional borrowing without an explicit strategy to reduce deficit spending.”
Actually polls consistently show that jobs are far and away voters main concern. Furthermore, the most likely reason that voters might be “growing increasingly anxious about the debt” is that the media is constantly bombarding them with hysterical and often largely untrue pieces about the debt and its consequences.
This article refers to Representative Ryan’s plan for privatizing Medicare. It would have been useful to note that the Congressional Budget Office analysis of this policy projects that it would add more than $34 trillion (almost 7 times the size of the projected Social Security shortfall) to the cost of buying Medicare equivalent policies over the program’s 75-year planning horizon.
In one of his debates with President Carter in 1980, Ronald Reagan famously quipped that everyone who supported abortion has already been born. In the same vein, it is probably worth noting that everyone who works for the Washington Post has a job. This may explain its fixation with reducing the deficit while virtually ignoring the most prolonged period of high unemployment since the Great Depression.
A front page article told readers that:
“With voters growing increasingly anxious about the debt, Republicans and some Democrats are refusing to approve additional borrowing without an explicit strategy to reduce deficit spending.”
Actually polls consistently show that jobs are far and away voters main concern. Furthermore, the most likely reason that voters might be “growing increasingly anxious about the debt” is that the media is constantly bombarding them with hysterical and often largely untrue pieces about the debt and its consequences.
This article refers to Representative Ryan’s plan for privatizing Medicare. It would have been useful to note that the Congressional Budget Office analysis of this policy projects that it would add more than $34 trillion (almost 7 times the size of the projected Social Security shortfall) to the cost of buying Medicare equivalent policies over the program’s 75-year planning horizon.
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The Post apparently believes that its readers have more time and expertise to evaluate the claims of politicians than its reporters. How else can one explain the he said/she said piece on jobs programs that the Post ran today?
The article featured Democrats demanding new government programs to create jobs while the Republicans insisted that excessive regulation was the problem. If the latter were true it would be necessary to explain why excessive regulation did not prevent the economy from creating 3 million jobs a year from 1996 to 2000. A real newspaper would have devoted some space to evaluating the competing claims of the two parties.
The Post apparently believes that its readers have more time and expertise to evaluate the claims of politicians than its reporters. How else can one explain the he said/she said piece on jobs programs that the Post ran today?
The article featured Democrats demanding new government programs to create jobs while the Republicans insisted that excessive regulation was the problem. If the latter were true it would be necessary to explain why excessive regulation did not prevent the economy from creating 3 million jobs a year from 1996 to 2000. A real newspaper would have devoted some space to evaluating the competing claims of the two parties.
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USA Today told readers that rents are now rising rapidly because of an improving job market. That should raise suspicions, since the job market is not really improving much.
If we check out the data from our friends at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), we don’t see much of story. Here’s the trend for owner’s equivalent rent (OER). This is a measure of rent that looks at the implicit rental value of owner occupied homes. The BLS index for OER has risen by less than 1 percent over the last two years. There’s not much of a story of rising rents here.
We get a little different picture if we go to the BLS index for rent proper which measures the increase in the price paid by people who are actually renting their home. This shows that rents have risen by 1.4 percent over the last two years, with most of the increase coming in the last year.
The likely reason for the difference is that the index for the rent paid on rental units includes utilities that are provided by landlords under the rent contract. Since the cost of heating and electricity have risen substantially in the last year, it is not surprising that a rental index including these utilities would rise more rapidly than one that does not.
Still, the 1.0-1.5 percent increase shown by the BLS index is far below the 4.0-5.0 percent increases reported in the article. There are 3 likely reasons for this difference. First, the BLS index is nationwide. USA Today has focused on a few cities that were likely selected because they had rapidly rising rents.
The second reason is that the indexes USA Today cites refer to open units on the market. In any given year only a fraction of rental units turn over. These units are likely to experience larger rent increases than units where the tenant does not change. Typically landlords are reluctant to raise rents on current tenants since they don’t want to risk driving them out.
The third reason is that the USA Today indexes don’t control for the mix of units. If the units coming on the market are disproportionately new units that have just been built then it is reasonable to believe that they are in better condition and have more amenities that the rental housing stock as a whole. This means that the index might be showing an increase simply because the units in it this year are better on average than the units that were in it last year.
These three factors likely explain the gap between the modest rate of rental inflation reported in the USA Today article and the very low inflation rate reported by BLS. In short, rents are likely very much under control, with much of any increase in market rents being attributable to higher utility costs.
USA Today told readers that rents are now rising rapidly because of an improving job market. That should raise suspicions, since the job market is not really improving much.
If we check out the data from our friends at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), we don’t see much of story. Here’s the trend for owner’s equivalent rent (OER). This is a measure of rent that looks at the implicit rental value of owner occupied homes. The BLS index for OER has risen by less than 1 percent over the last two years. There’s not much of a story of rising rents here.
We get a little different picture if we go to the BLS index for rent proper which measures the increase in the price paid by people who are actually renting their home. This shows that rents have risen by 1.4 percent over the last two years, with most of the increase coming in the last year.
The likely reason for the difference is that the index for the rent paid on rental units includes utilities that are provided by landlords under the rent contract. Since the cost of heating and electricity have risen substantially in the last year, it is not surprising that a rental index including these utilities would rise more rapidly than one that does not.
Still, the 1.0-1.5 percent increase shown by the BLS index is far below the 4.0-5.0 percent increases reported in the article. There are 3 likely reasons for this difference. First, the BLS index is nationwide. USA Today has focused on a few cities that were likely selected because they had rapidly rising rents.
The second reason is that the indexes USA Today cites refer to open units on the market. In any given year only a fraction of rental units turn over. These units are likely to experience larger rent increases than units where the tenant does not change. Typically landlords are reluctant to raise rents on current tenants since they don’t want to risk driving them out.
The third reason is that the USA Today indexes don’t control for the mix of units. If the units coming on the market are disproportionately new units that have just been built then it is reasonable to believe that they are in better condition and have more amenities that the rental housing stock as a whole. This means that the index might be showing an increase simply because the units in it this year are better on average than the units that were in it last year.
These three factors likely explain the gap between the modest rate of rental inflation reported in the USA Today article and the very low inflation rate reported by BLS. In short, rents are likely very much under control, with much of any increase in market rents being attributable to higher utility costs.
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Weekly unemployment claims jumped to 474,000 last week, an increase of 43,000 from the level reported the previous week. This is seriously bad news about the state of the labor market. It seems that the numbers were inflated by unusual factors, most importantly the addition of 25,000 spring break related layoffs in New York to the rolls due to a changing vacation pattern, however even after adjusting for such factors, claims would still be above 400,000 for the fourth consecutive week.
This puts weekly claims well above the 380,000 level that we had been seeing in February and March. This suggests that job growth is slowing from an already weak level. This is news that should be reported prominently.
Weekly unemployment claims jumped to 474,000 last week, an increase of 43,000 from the level reported the previous week. This is seriously bad news about the state of the labor market. It seems that the numbers were inflated by unusual factors, most importantly the addition of 25,000 spring break related layoffs in New York to the rolls due to a changing vacation pattern, however even after adjusting for such factors, claims would still be above 400,000 for the fourth consecutive week.
This puts weekly claims well above the 380,000 level that we had been seeing in February and March. This suggests that job growth is slowing from an already weak level. This is news that should be reported prominently.
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Those who thought that the Washington Post (a.k.a. Fox on 15th Street) couldn’t get any worse, have just been proven wrong yet again. The Post ran a little primer telling readers about Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
The Post tells readers:
“a GAO report found that total government health-care spending in the United States is somewhere in the middle. In the United States, spending on public health was 6.9 percent of gross domestic product in 2005, while it was 8.9 percent in France, 8.2 percent in Germany and 7.2 percent in the United Kingdom. On the lower end of the spectrum, Australia spent 6.4 percent of GDP on health care and Canada spent 6.9 percent. Some of the countries that spend more have had a demographic shift to an older population sooner than the United States.”
Okay, boys and girls, can anyone see the problem with this discussion?
That’s right! All the other countries included in this discussion have public health care systems. The figures cited for public health care spending comprise the bulk of their national spending on health care. Only in the United States do we have a large private health care sector that spends roughly the same amount as the public sector.
This means that rather being in the middle of the pack, as this discussion implies, we are way over the top. To pay for most of the health care needs of our seniors and our poor, our government pays almost as much Germany, Canada, and the U.K. do to provide for the health care needs of their entire population.
Of course this point should have been central to this whole primer. The reason that Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are projected to “usurp much of the revenue from federal taxes,” is that health care costs in the United States are out of control. If the U.S. paid the same amount per person for health care as any of these other countries it would be looking at huge budget surpluses in the long-term, not deficits.
There is one other especially striking item in this piece. It told readers:
“The last major change to Social Security happened in 1984, when President Ronald Reagan raised the Social Security tax rate (the percentage of income under the maximum taxable earnings limit that is subject to tax) and the full retirement age from 65 to 67.”
Umm, the year was 1983, not 1984. This primer is not ready for prime time.
Those who thought that the Washington Post (a.k.a. Fox on 15th Street) couldn’t get any worse, have just been proven wrong yet again. The Post ran a little primer telling readers about Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
The Post tells readers:
“a GAO report found that total government health-care spending in the United States is somewhere in the middle. In the United States, spending on public health was 6.9 percent of gross domestic product in 2005, while it was 8.9 percent in France, 8.2 percent in Germany and 7.2 percent in the United Kingdom. On the lower end of the spectrum, Australia spent 6.4 percent of GDP on health care and Canada spent 6.9 percent. Some of the countries that spend more have had a demographic shift to an older population sooner than the United States.”
Okay, boys and girls, can anyone see the problem with this discussion?
That’s right! All the other countries included in this discussion have public health care systems. The figures cited for public health care spending comprise the bulk of their national spending on health care. Only in the United States do we have a large private health care sector that spends roughly the same amount as the public sector.
This means that rather being in the middle of the pack, as this discussion implies, we are way over the top. To pay for most of the health care needs of our seniors and our poor, our government pays almost as much Germany, Canada, and the U.K. do to provide for the health care needs of their entire population.
Of course this point should have been central to this whole primer. The reason that Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are projected to “usurp much of the revenue from federal taxes,” is that health care costs in the United States are out of control. If the U.S. paid the same amount per person for health care as any of these other countries it would be looking at huge budget surpluses in the long-term, not deficits.
There is one other especially striking item in this piece. It told readers:
“The last major change to Social Security happened in 1984, when President Ronald Reagan raised the Social Security tax rate (the percentage of income under the maximum taxable earnings limit that is subject to tax) and the full retirement age from 65 to 67.”
Umm, the year was 1983, not 1984. This primer is not ready for prime time.
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