Tyranny of King George III and Ohio Government

American Revolution was a revolution against tyranny and for self-governance...at least in principle. Colonists faced not only the tyranny and oppression of the King of England, George III, but the King’s two “arms.” The one was the British military that used its police power to maintain social “order” in the colonies and later waged war to maintain the King’s supremacy. The other arm was the British “crown” corporations (i.e. Massachusetts Bay Company, Carolina Company, Maryland Company, etc.) which received their authority through charters from the sovereign (the King) to politically and economically rule on behalf of George III and their own corporate interests.

The American Revolution, the anniversary we’ll celebrate this weekend, was a declaration of independence not simply against George III, but also against his military and corporate arms. People demanded that they become “sovereign,” independent or democratic -- able to rule themselves free from military intimidation and corporate authority.

The tyranny that is corporate rule and inability of citizens to govern themselves has seen a reincarnation in the form of many laws passed by those currently in charge of Ohio government — the Governor and General Assembly. Laws which are anti-democratic. Laws which are injurious to people and communities. Laws which usurp the authority of people and communities to decide for themselves.

As stated in the Declaration of Independence, “[t]o prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world”:

- They have allowed for 20 charter schools (most run by business corporations) to apply directly to the Ohio Department of Education for operation without having a nonprofit sponsor. The pace and race to corporatize public education continues.
- They have refused to eliminate $7 billion in tax loopholes, most benefiting corporations — which all by itself would have solved the state’s budget deficit. In fact, they have added to the state budget an “Invest Ohio” tax credit to corporations up to an additional $100 million.
- They have slashed funding to the state’s Local Government Fund by $455 million. They have also abolished the estate tax which provides another $250 million to local governments. These funding cuts will financially squeeze many municipalities and increase the drive to sell, lease or transfer public assets to business corporations, thereby, reducing public control.
- They have prohibited communities from governing themselves by outlawing local laws seeking to increase food quality (thereby protecting the interests of fast food corporations). This continues a state trend in recent years of state preemption of local control, including prohibiting communities from banning risky horizontal hydraulic drilling for natural gas (fracking).
- They have permitted 6 state prisons to be turned over (sold) to business corporations. The record of privatization/corporatization of public assets is one of reduced services, jobs and control and increased rates and fees.
- They have abolished collective bargaining for public employees. Senate Bill 5 is actually about reducing the rights and powers of people at their workplace to defend themselves against their employers. Provisions of the bill include a restriction on public workers contributing to a political action committee through a payroll deduction, a ban on requiring “fair share” fees – union dues paid by union workers who decide not to join their union, and a provision to make it easier to decertify a union.
- They have supported the lease of the profitable state liquor operations to one or more business corporations and use the money to fund JobsOhio, a quasi corporation also created by the state to replace the Ohio Department of Development. JobsOhio is being challenged in the courts on constitutional grounds.
- They have approved the exploration of corporatizing the profitable state Turnpike.
- They have ruled that oil and gas drilling can begin in Ohio’s state parks.
- They have suppressed the ability of citizens to vote by reducing the number of days people can vote absentee and have prohibited mass-mailing of absentee ballots to registered voters by county boards of elections.
- They have defending corporate agents not simply lobbying public officials but actually working with the Ohio Legislative Service Commission to write laws for public officials.
- They have capped the penalty for destruction of government documents at $10,000 in total, whether 1, 1000 or 1 million documents are destroyed. The old cap was $1000 per document. This removes the deterrent to destroy documents that citizens may request, essential to maintaining public oversight of their government. Having the right to know is essential to acquiring the right to decide.
- They have continued, if not expanded, the anti-democratic practice of bringing in brand new proposals into the final budget reconciliation process. These proposals have not been seen by the public or the media. The budget reconciliation process if meant to settle or reconcile differences between already-passed House of Senate versions of bills. It is not a place for a brand new proposal that the public has not had an opportunity to comment on.

There were other examples of Ohio Government tyranny proposed by either the Governor, the Ohio House or Ohio Senate, but not enacted, either due to public opposition, shame by the media and/or disagreement between the different government branches. These include:

- Requiring voters supply a photo ID at the polls
- Corporatizing the Ohio Lottery -- In an blatantly and galling undemocratic move, the Senate budget bill called for turning over the state lottery to the GTECH corporation, which hoped to manage the state’s $2.5 billion daily operation. The language in the bill was drafted by the GTECH corporation, which once ran a portion of the state’s lottery system. The Senate language was virtually unchanged from the GTECH corporation draft. There was no public hearing. The proposal simply was inserted into the Senate bill.
- Prohibiting the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel from taking positions, "contrary to the development of competitive markets in Ohio, including state policies pertaining to natural gas." Also not enacted was a provision barring consumers’ counsel contact information from customer bills and notices.

These modern day forms of tyranny need to be replaced with modern day forms of self-governance, self-rule, democracy. What are its elements?
- A system where We the People have a legitimate opportunity to shape implement and evaluate decisions affecting our lives.
- The voice of every person counts. All votes are equal.
- All people have adequate time and information to make decisions.
- Whether the issues are local regional national or global; political social or economic decisions made without our direct or indirect legitimate input are illegitimate.
- The more directly we're involved in decisions which directly affect us the more democracy or self-governance exists.
- Only human beings possess “inalienable human rights.” Corporations are not people and should not possess Bill of Rights and other constitutional rights.
- Money is property, not speech. Money must be regulated in elections. If money is speech, then those who possess the most money possess the most speech. Such a system is plutocratic, not democratic.

A few things to keep in mind as you participate this Independence Day weekend in hot dog eating contests, watch parades or sit in the sun.

Projecting the Newest Trend in New Jobless Claims

A quick story in three charts. First, here are the primary trends we've observed in the seasonally-adjusted initial unemployment insurance claims figures produced by the BLS since January 2006, through the most recently reported data:

Next, here is the residual distribution of the same data, which accounts for the changing level of the new jobless claims data due to the trends we've observed:

Finally, here is a closeup view of the residual distribution for the current trend in new filings for unemployment benefits, which we've projected forward through the end of July 2011, so you can get a sense of what figures to expect the U.S. federal government to report through the end of the next month. We expect these values to hold while the current trend remains in effect:

More information about the major trends in new U.S. layoffs is available here.

Chinese, U.S. Economies Both Decelerating

Previously on Political Calculations, we discovered that we can use international trade data to diagnose the relative health of national economies.

The way this works is to consider that a growing economy will demand more goods - a portion of which will be imported from outside the country. By measuring the growth rate of both imports and exports between two nations, we can determine how relatively "healthy" the economies of both nations are.

Our favorite two nations to look at are the U.S. and China. When we looked at the international trade through May 2010 between these two nations, we found that both the U.S. and China had growing economies following recessions and that China's economy seemed to be driving the U.S. economy.

Today, nearly a year later, we find that both nations would appear to have growing economies, but that after the Chinese economy surge in the last quarter of 2009, and the U.S. economy surging in the first half of 2010, both the U.S. and Chinese economies are growing much more slowly.

A special concern now is that the rate of growth of U.S. imports from China is slowing, which indicates that economic growth in the U.S. is comparatively weaker than it is in China.

We confirm that outlook in examining our doubling rate chart showing the level of U.S. imports from China from January 1985 through April 2011.

Here, we see that it has been more than five years since the U.S. doubled the amount that it imports from China, which is significantly more than the 3 to 4 years that these imports doubled in the twenty years from 1985 through 2005.

By contrast, see that the value of U.S. exports to China has almost doubled since January 2009, which is putting the period since that time on a pace to potentially beat the shortest doubling time recorded for the value of U.S. exports to China of 32 months, which was set between January 2001 and July 2003.

We suspect that this extremely rapid rate of growth for U.S. exports to China is being largely driven by the China's massive economic bubble, so we would anticipate that U.S. exports may drop considerably once that bubble enters into its deflation phase.

Which like all economic bubbles, will happen. It's only a matter of when and how.

Trends in the Number of Bank Tellers and ATMs in the U.S.

Say what you will about President Barack Obama, he lets nothing stand in the way of his vision. Especially reality.

While we've known about the President's primary character flaw for some time, we were still highly amused when he decided to blame technological change for putting bank tellers out of work in the United States. Once again, we have another clear cut example of the President's highly cloistered worldview, which only seems to apply in some other world that no one else is able to observe.

But don't take our word for it. Here is the President, in the President's own words, from back on 14 June 2011:

"There are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers. You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM, you don't go to a bank teller, or you go to the airport and you're using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate."

Well, we decided to put that claim about bank tellers and ATMS to the test. The chart below shows what we found when we dug up the relevant data:

What we find is that the number of both bank tellers and ATMs have generally risen over the past 10 years. The number of both bank tellers and ATMs has fallen in recent years, most likely due to the closure of failed banks, given the distress in that industry since 2008.

So we see that ATMs have been losing work during Obama's presidency too!

Not that President Obama pays attention to these kinds of things. We're sure he's focused on "better" things. Like perhaps new green ATM job programs!

Data Sources

First, here's the annual data for the number of tellers, from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics:

• 1999 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates, 43-3071 Tellers


• 2000 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates, 43-3071 Tellers


• 2001 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates, 43-3071 Tellers


• 2002 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates, 43-3071 Tellers


• 2003 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates, 43-3071 Tellers


• 2004 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates, 43-3071 Tellers


• 2005 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates, 43-3071 Tellers


• 2006 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates, 43-3071 Tellers


• 2007 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates, 43-3071 Tellers


• 2008 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates, 43-3071 Tellers


• 2009 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates, 43-3071 Tellers


• 2010 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates, 43-3071 Tellers

Here are our sources for the number of automated teller machines in the U.S. for the years from 1999 through 2009 (at this writing, we're not aware of the figure for 2010):

• ATM Use in the United States - 1999-2008


• ATMs by the Numbers - 2009

MONETARY HISTORY CALENDAR -- June 27-July 3

JUNE 30

1812 – FIRST US TREASURY NOTES AUTHORIZED BY THE UNITED STATES
Treasury notes are promise to pay notes to borrowers to raise revenue. The US needed funds to fund the War of 1812. Rather than print US money (such as “Continentals” – an interest- and debt-free money issued by the Continental Congress to pay for the Revolutionary War), the US government followed a different course – to issue notes to borrowers with promises to pay the principal with interest at a later date. The original interest rate was 5.4%. Wars cause indebtedness. Bankers tend to like wars since they tend to create financial dependency of nations to bankers. Thomas Edison would later say about Treasury bonds, “If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good...”

JULY 1

1818 – SECOND NATIONAL BANK OF US TRIGGERS RECESSION/DEPRESSION
The Second National Bank of the United States (a private financial institution) on this day reversed its financial course from monetary expansion to contraction. They called in loans and cut future loans. They required payments from state banks in gold alone. This caused deflation, leading to a two-year recession/depression – called the “Panic of 1819.” This is what happened time and again when private financial corporations control a nation’s money system instead of We the People through their government.

1944 – BRETTON WOODS CONFERENCE BEGINS
The United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, known as the Bretton Woods Conference was a meeting of 44 Allied nations in New Hampshire, where the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank were created. Participant nations agreed to fix their currencies to a set value of gold. Debtor nations were to be helped with payments. The actual program was the use of loans (to be paid back with interest) to create political and economic dependence to loaning countries and their bankers. Agreements to receive further loans were often conditioned on “Structural Adjustment Programs” which called for privatization/corporatization of public services, wage cuts, and perversion of economies to service debt payments.

1967 – US POSTAL SAVING SYSTEM ENDS
Because of opposition from the commercial banks the postal savings system does not develop in a substantial way. The United States Postal Savings System was a postal savings system operated by the United States Postal Service from January 1, 1911 until July 1, 1967

JULY 2

1787 – LETTER TO JAMES MADISON FROM GOUVENEUR MORRIS, ONE OF THE PRIMARY ARCHITECTS OF THE US CONSTITUTION
In describing the motives of the owners of the new Bank of North America, Morris stated,
“The rich will strive to establish their dominion and enslave the rest. They always did. They always will…They will have the same effect here as elsewhere, if we do not, by [the power of] government, keep them in their proper spheres.”

1881 – PRESIDENT JAMES A. GARFIELD SHOT. HE DIED 10 WEEKS LATER
"Whosoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce, and when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.”

1890 – SHERMAN ANTITRUST ACT BECOMES LAW
The Sherman Act was an attempt to prevent unlawful restraint of trade and commerce and prevent monopolies – including banking monopolies. The Act was more aggressively enforced under President Teddy Roosevelt, including against the corporate practices of JP Morgan, the most powerful banker, if not corporate titan, of the day. In response to this increased enforcement of the Sherman Act and the Hepburn Act, Morgan created a financial panic by having his banks and those he controlled call in loans and refusing to grant new ones. The economic crash of 1907 followed. The “Panic of 1907” was a direct cause for the creation of the Federal Reserve System several years later.

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Why this calendar? Many people have questions about the root causes of our economic problems. Some questions involve money, banks and debt. How is money created? Why do banks control its quantity? How has the money system been used to liberate (not often) and oppress (most often) us? And how can the money system be “democratized” to rebuild our economy and society, create jobs and reduce debt?
Our goal is to inform, intrigue and inspire through bite size weekly postings listing important events and quotes from prominent individuals (both past and present) on money, banking and how the money system can help people and the planet. We hope the sharing of bits of buried history will illuminate monetary and banking issues and empower you with others to create real economic and political justice.
This calendar is a project of the Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee. Adele Looney, Phyllis Titus, Donna Schall, Leah Davis, Alice Francini and Greg Coleridge helped in its development.
Please forward this to others and encourage them to subscribe. To subscribe/unsubscribe or to comment on any entry, contact monetarycalendar@yahoo.com For more information, visit http://www.afsc.net/economiccrisis.html

The S&P 500 Gets Spooked

Two weeks ago, we revealed that the earnings future data for the S&P 500 was suggesting that 2012 would a year of little to no earnings growth for the private sector of the U.S. economy.

Over the past week, the future outlook for investors in 2012 took a turn for the worse as the expected future dividends data for the S&P 500 began to deteriorate.

The change marks the first time since early 2010 that we've seen anything resembling a sustained downward trend in this particular data stream. The negative change comes after the S&P 500's expected future dividends per share essentially went flat after 22 May 2011. It is especially significant in that changes in the growth rate of dividends per share provides the fundamental signal for driving changes in the growth rate of stock prices.

The bottom line is that if the stock market's dividend futures have gone negative, so has the real outlook for the U.S. economy in 2012.

Welcome to the Jungle....

Sometimes, you just need to go for the ride....

2CELLOS Luka Sulic and Stjepan Hauser playing their arrangement of Welcome To The Jungle by Guns N' Roses (HT: Innocent Bystanders).

Transparency in Government

Due to our campaign of developing and advocating for political campaign contribution limits and other reforms in the new Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) charter, I was asked by the leader of the upcoming TAP Summit on Transparency in Cleveland in July to offer reflections on the general topic.

http://tapsummit.org/post/6802649989/northeast-ohio-american-friends-service-committee  

The Unintended Consequences of High Payroll Taxes

What are the unintended consequences of taxing U.S. businesses so much more on their payrolls than their corporate incomes?

This isn't necessarily an intellectual exercise - this is something that has been the case since 1978, when the amount of taxes paid by U.S. businesses first began regularly exceeding the amount of taxes they collectively paid on their business incomes.

Yesterday, we hypothesized that U.S. businesses would respond by shifting jobs outside of the United States, since that would be the most likely way they could preserve their revenues while avoiding the employers' portion of U.S. payroll taxes.

Today, we'll go a step further - we'll hypothesize that the jobs that would most likely be displaced in this way would most likely be in manufacturing. The reason why is because manufacturing is something that isn't necessarily location specific, as most service type occupations are.

For example, it doesn't really matter much where your mobile phone is manufactured - it could be in Europe, or Asia, here in America or in Africa for that matter - no matter where it might have been produced, it will still be the same mobile phone.

By contrast, the service occupations that support your mobile phone will be location specific. You can likely easily find local outlets for your service provider, which must be fairly close to where the customers for mobile phone service are.

To find out what's happened since 1978, we've created a chart showing the number of people who have been recorded as being employed in manufacturing in the United States from 1960 through 2010 (indicated on the left scale), against which we are showing the amount of U.S. direct investment abroad over the same period (indicated on the right scale), which indicates how much American businesses have invested in places other than the U.S.

Since that money has gone outside of the U.S., we're showing that value as a negative quantity. Aside from that, we've scaled our chart so that the numbers of manufacturing employees and the amount of U.S. direct investment abroad for 1978 are close to each other on the chart, and then we adjusted the vertical scales so that the horizontal gridlines on both scales would line up. Here are our results:

What we observe is that when federal payroll tax collections on businesses were lower than corporate income taxes, the number of Americans employed in manufacturing generally rose.

After 1978 however, as federal tax collections on U.S. employer payrolls have steadily risen to become the dominant form of taxation on U.S. businesses, the number of manufacturing employees has generally fallen. We see that there appears to be somewhat of a correlation between the two data streams.

There's more to it than just taxation however, as is pointed out in Andrew Butter's insider look, which is absolutely essential reading, at what other factors induced U.S. manufacturers to move out of America. We'll simply observe for our part that the disproportionate taxation of U.S. businesses on their payrolls would provide an ongoing financial incentive to drive such a change.

Data Sources

Bureau of Economic Analysis. U.S. International Transactions Accounts Data. Table 1. U.S. International Transactions [Millions of dollars] - Line 51. Release Date: March 16, 2011.

Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. All Employees: Manufacturing (MANEMP), Thousands, Monthly, Seasonally Adjusted. Accessed 19 June 2011.

The Link Between Business Taxes and U.S. Business Investment Abroad

Let's say that you run your own business, which is located in the United States. If you've been running your own business since 1978, you've probably noticed that you pay a lot more taxes in the form of the employers' portion of federal payroll taxes than you do in outright corporate income taxes.

That's perhaps not so surprising, since the U.S. federal government has pretty much traded employer payroll taxes for corporate income taxes going back all the way to 1946. Over that time, as the amount of money the government collects from taxes on employer payrolls has increased, the amount of money the government collects from corporate income taxes has decreased, almost dollar for dollar.

Now, as a business owner who is always looking to reduce your expenses, how might how you pay your taxes affect how you go about doing that with your annual tax bill?

If the majority of taxes you pay to the federal government is in the form of the employers' portion of federal payroll taxes, you would likely consider one of the following options:

1. Reduce the incomes of the people on your payroll.


2. Reduce the number of people on your payroll.

The first option is difficult to pull off in practice. Thanks to the effect of inflation over time and competition for your employees services, it's unlikely that you'll ever negotiate a pay cut for your employees that would stick for long.

The second option though might be more viable. You can perhaps work to make your employees become more productive, doing more with fewer people.

But there are limits to how productive you can make your employees, especially if you work in a competitive environment where your competitors are making similar investments, where the gains you might make might be very short-lived.

And then, what if the work your employees do is such that you must still maintain a good number of people on your payroll. Especially if having too few people would means your business would lose out on business, and revenue, that it might otherwise earn.

One way to get around that obstacle would be to keep people on your payroll, but to put them on your payroll in a way that avoids your having to pay U.S. federal payroll taxes on them. The obvious solution here would be to outsource work to other firms, particularly to those outside the jurisdiction of U.S. tax laws.

You might get lucky and find foreign firms who can already do the work that your business needs to have done, but then, you might not get lucky and you'll have to find a way to build a portion of your business over again, but in a foreign land.

That takes money. A lot of money. And since 1978, that's exactly what a lot of U.S. businesses appear to have done. The chart below reveals the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis' data on the exponential growth of U.S. business direct investment abroad since 1960.

From 1960 through 1977, U.S. direct investment abroad grew at an average annual rate of 9.69%, which means that the total amount of U.S. investments abroad would double once roughly every 7.4 years. But then, that was before the amount of taxes that businesses pay on their payrolls in the U.S. regularly began exceeding the amount of their corporate income tax bills.

From 1978 through 2010, as the amount of taxes businesses have to pay for having employees has grown and grown, businesses have increased the amount of their investments in their businesses outside of the U.S. at a much faster pace. Since 1978, U.S. direct investment abroad has grown at an average annual rate of 11.24%, which means that the amount of direct investment by U.S. businesses outside of the U.S. has been doubling every 6.4 years.

The growth rate of U.S. direct investment abroad is even steeper than that if we use 1982 as our starting point. Since 1982, U.S. direct investment abroad has grown at an average rate of 12.25%, which corresponds to direct investment abroad doubling in size every 5.9 years.

The period since 1982 is significant because the very next year marked a significant and permanent increase in the tax rates that apply for federal payroll income taxes. On 20 January 1983, the National Commission on Social Security Reform recommended hiking payroll taxes to prepare for the retirement of the Baby Boom generation. On 20 April 1983, those recommendations became law as the Social Security Amendments of 1983.

These payroll tax increases could well have provided the increased financial motivation for U.S. businesses to increasingly invest so much more outside the United States, where they could avoid the U.S.' relatively higher taxes. We'll soon check into the unintended consequences to the U.S. economy from this single change in U.S. tax policy and its incentive effect upon U.S. businesses.

Supreme Court blocks massive sex-discrimination suit against Wal-Mart

With the decision, the Supremes are saying corpses are not only too big to fail, but too big to sue...

Supreme Court blocks massive sex-discrimination suit against Wal-Mart
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/supreme-court-blocks-massive-sex-discrimination-suit-against-wal-mart/2011/06/20/AGCQ81cH_story.html

Corporate Income and Payroll Taxes, 1960-2010

Looking back over the past fifty years, we find that before 1978, U.S. corporations and businesses paid the largest portion of their taxes in the form of federal corporate income taxes. After 1978, they paid the largest portion of their taxes in the form of the employers' portion of federal payroll taxes.

Despite these changes, the total amount that U.S. corporations and businesses pay in federal taxes as a percentage of annual GDP has been fairly steady through all that time, typically ranging between 4.5% and 5.5% of annual GDP, at least outside of the deep recessions or short-lived economic booms that have taken place since 1960.

Food for thought: For the years since 1978, what is the most significant outcome of that single change in how U.S. corporations pay the majority of their taxes?

Jobs Disaster in the US

By the Numbers

Percentage increase per year of jobs in private/corporate sector from late 1980’s to late 1990’s: 2
Percentage increase per year of jobs in private/corporate sector since: declining
Percentage increase per year of jobs in private/corporate sector in 2009: 0

Employment by private companies in March 2010: less than 110 million
Average annual percent growth of economy (GDP) during last ten years: 1.9
Average annual percent growth of economy (GDP) during Great Depression: 1.3
Annual percent growth of economy (GDP) needed to add large numbers of jobs in private/corporate sector: 3 to 4 or more

At the start of 2011, number of unemployed persons per job opening: more than 4

As of March, 2011, percentage of 16-19 year olds unemployed: nearly 25
As of March, 2011, percentage rate of unemployment among blacks: 15.5
As of March, 2011, percentage rate of unemployment among those with less than a high school education: 13.7

Number of people who had reached the maximum 99 weeks of receiving unemployment as of March, 2011: 2 million

As of March, 2011, officially defined as unemployed: 13.5 million
As of March, 2011, persons not in the labor force but a wanting a job: 6.5 million
As of March, 2011, persons working part time but desiring full-time work: 8.4 million
Total: 28.4 million

Figures from The Jobs Disaster in the United States, Fred Magdoff, Monthly Review, June 2011

Ohio To Become “Publicopoly” if Kasich and Co Have Their Way

Governor Kasich and his corporatization cohorts in the State House and Senate are currently engaged in “Publicopoly” -- a term coined by the pro-corpoate think tank, American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

Plans to corporatize turnpikes, prisons, education, alcohol sales and the lottery in the state budget are right from the ALEC playbook.

See http://www.alec.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=publicopoly

Click on any “Game Square.” There’s several choices: Government Operations, Education, Transportation & Infrastructure, Public Safety, Environment, Health, and Telecommunications. What public service/asset not yet proposed for sale, rent, or lease will probably soon be...unless we resist.

2010 Median Earnings by College Major

The Chronicle of Higher Education came out with a cool interactive graphic showing the economic value of a bachelor's degree by college major.

But, there's a problem with presenting data like this - it makes the user one-step removed from being able to quickly visualize where their major of interest ranks among others. Worse, because when you highlight over a given academic category to drill down into the actual major of interest, the pop-up display that appears covers over the adjacent majors, making it time-consuming to see how it compares to those other fields.

Now, it's not anywhere near as pretty, but we've compiled all the data presented in the Chronicle's interactive graphic into the dynamic table below, which will allow you to sort the data by academic category, major and even the median salary by clicking the column headings (if you're accessing this post through an RSS feed, you'll need to click through to our original post to gain that functionality!)

We've also added the U.S. Census' data for 2009 on the median earnings of all income earners, as well as all those who work in full-time, year round occupations, and also those who have earned bachelor degrees and who work in full-time, year round occupations for comparison purposes. Enjoy!

Median Salaries by Occupation, 2010

Category	Major	Median Salary
Agricultural and Natural Resources	Food Sciences	$65,000
Agricultural and Natural Resources	Agricultural Economics	$60,000
Agricultural and Natural Resources	Forestry	$60,000
Agricultural and Natural Resources	Agricultural Production and Management	$50,000
Agricultural and Natural Resources	Natural Resources Management	$50,000
Agricultural and Natural Resources	Plant Science and Agronomy	$50,000
Agricultural and Natural Resources	Agriculture (Miscellaneous)	$47,000
Agricultural and Natural Resources	Agriculture (General)	$45,000
Agricultural and Natural Resources	Animal Sciences	$44,000
Arts	Film, Video and Photographic Arts	$46,000
Arts	Commercial Arts and Graphic Design	$45,000
Arts	Fine Arts	$45,000
Arts	Music	$42,000
Arts	Drama and Theater Arts	$40,000
Arts	Studio Arts	$40,000
Arts	Visual and Performing Arts	$40,000
Biology and Life Science	Microbiology	$60,000
Biology and Life Science	Biochemical Sciences	$53,000
Biology and Life Science	Environmental Science	$51,000
Biology and Life Science	Biology (General)	$50,000
Biology and Life Science	Biology (Miscellaneous)	$50,000
Biology and Life Science	Zoology	$50,000
Biology and Life Science	Molecular Biology	$45,000
Biology and Life Science	Physiology	$45,000
Biology and Life Science	Ecology	$44,000
Biology and Life Science	Botany	$42,000
Business	Business Economics	$75,000
Business	Actuarial Science	$68,000
Business	Management Information Systems and Statistics	$67,000
Business	Finance	$65,000
Business	Operations Logistics and e-Commerce	$65,000
Business	Accounting	$63,000
Business	Business (General)	$60,000
Business	Business Management and Administration	$58,000
Business	Marketing and Marketing Research	$58,000
Business	Human Resources and Personnel Management	$55,000
Business	International Business	$55,000
Business	Business (Miscellaneous)	$53,000
Business	Medical Administration	$53,000
Business	Hospitality Management	$50,000
Communications and Journalism	Journalism	$51,000
Communications and Journalism	Advertising and Public Relations	$50,000
Communications and Journalism	Communications	$50,000
Communications and Journalism	Mass Media	$45,000
Computers and Mathematics	Mathematics and Computer Science	$98,000
Computers and Mathematics	Applied Mathematics	$76,000
Computers and Mathematics	Computer Engineering	$75,000
Computers and Mathematics	Computer Science	$75,000
Computers and Mathematics	Mathematics	$67,000
Computers and Mathematics	Information Sciences	$66,000
Computers and Mathematics	Computer and Information Systems	$62,000
Computers and Mathematics	Computer Programming and Data Processing	$56,000
Computers and Mathematics	Computer Adminstration Management and Security	$55,000
Computers and Mathematics	Computer Networking and Telecommunications	$55,000
Computers and Mathematics	Communication Technologies	$50,000
Education	Education (Miscellaneous)	$50,000
Education	Secondary Teacher Education	$46,000
Education	Physical and Health Education Teaching	$45,000
Education	Mathematics Teacher Education	$45,000
Education	Science and Computer Teaching Education	$44,000
Education	Scoence and Computer Teacher Education	$43,000
Education	Art and Music Education	$42,000
Education	Education (General)	$42,000
Education	Language and Drama Education	$42,000
Education	Social Science or Teacher Education	$42,000
Education	Special Needs Education	$42,000
Education	Teacher Education (Multiple Levels)	$41,000
Education	Elementary Education	$40,000
Education	Early Childhood Education	$36,000
Engineering	Petroleum Engineering	$120,000
Engineering	Aerospace Engineering	$87,000
Engineering	Chemical Engineering	$86,000
Engineering	Electrical Engineering	$85,000
Engineering	Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering	$82,000
Engineering	Mechanical Engineering	$80,000
Engineering	Metallurgical Engineering	$80,000
Engineering	Mining and Mineral Engineering	$80,000
Engineering	Civil Engineering	$78,000
Engineering	Engineering Mechanics, Physics and Science	$78,000
Engineering	Environmental Engineering	$75,000
Engineering	Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering	$75,000
Engineering	Environmental Engineering	$70,000
Engineering	Engineering (General)	$70,000
Engineering	Materials Engineering and Materials Science	$69,000
Engineering	Engineering (Miscellaneous)	$69,000
Engineering	Biomedical Engineering	$68,000
Engineering	Electrical Engineering Technology	$68,000
Engineering	Architectural Engineering	$65,000
Engineering	Industrial Production Technologies	$65,000
Engineering	Mechanical Engineering-Related Technologies	$64,000
Engineering	Architecture	$63,000
Engineering	Engineering Technologies (Miscellaneous)	$62,000
Engineering	Engineering Technologies (General)	$60,000
Engineering	Biological Engineering	$55,000
Health	Pharmacy Pharmaceutical Sciences and Administration	$105,000
Health	Nursing	$60,000
Health	Treatment Therapy Professions	$60,000
Health	Medical Technologies Technicians	$58,000
Health	Medical Assisting Services	$56,000
Health	Health and Medical Adminstrative Services	$55,000
Health	Community and Public Health	$48,000
Health	Nutrition Sciences	$46,000
Health	Medical and Health Services (General)	$45,000
Health	Miscellaneous Health Medical Professions	$42,000
Health	Health and Medical Preparatory Programs	$40,000
Humanities and Liberal Arts	United States History	$57,000
Humanities and Liberal Arts	Art History and Criticism	$50,000
Humanities and Liberal Arts	History	$50,000
Humanities and Liberal Arts	English Language and Literature	$48,000
Humanities and Liberal Arts	Humanities	$48,000
Humanities and Liberal Arts	Liberal Arts	$48,000
Humanities and Liberal Arts	Other Foreign Languages	$48,000
Humanities and Liberal Arts	Philosophy and Religious Studies	$48,000
Humanities and Liberal Arts	Anthropology and Archaeology	$45,000
Humanities and Liberal Arts	Area Ethnic and Civilization Studies	$45,000
Humanities and Liberal Arts	Composition and Speech	$45,000
Humanities and Liberal Arts	French, German, Latin, and Other Common Foreign Language Studies	$45,000
Humanities and Liberal Arts	Linguistics and Comparative Language and Literature	$45,000
Humanities and Liberal Arts	Intercultural and Internatinoal Studies	$44,000
Humanities and Liberal Arts	Theology and Religious Vocations	$38,000
Industrial Arts and Consumer Services	Construction Services	$70,000
Industrial Arts and Consumer Services	Transportation Sciences and Technologies	$64,000
Industrial Arts and Consumer Services	Electrical and Mechanic Repairs and Technologies	$57,000
Industrial Arts and Consumer Services	Cosmetology Services and Culinary Arts	$46,000
Industrial Arts and Consumer Services	Physical Fitness, Parks, Recreation, and Leisure	$43,000
Industrial Arts and Consumer Services	Family and Consumer Sciences	$40,000
Law and Public Policy	Public Administration	$59,000
Law and Public Policy	Criminal Justice and Fire Protection	$50,000
Law and Public Policy	Prelaw and Legal Studies	$49,000
Law and Public Policy	Public Policy	$48,000
Physical Sciences	Oceanography	$70,000
Physical Sciences	Physics	$70,000
Physical Sciences	Physical Sciences	$69,000
Physical Sciences	Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology	$67,000
Physical Sciences	Geology and Earth Science	$62,000
Physical Sciences	Chemistry	$58,000
Physical Sciences	Science (Multidisciplinary or General)	$55,000
Physical Sciences	Nuclear, Industrial-Radiology and Biological Technologies	$52,000
Psychology and Social Work	Industrial and Organizational Psychology	$53,000
Psychology and Social Work	Psychology (Miscellaneous)	$45,000
Psychology and Social Work	Psychology (General)	$45,000
Psychology and Social Work	Communication Disorders Sciences and Services	$40,000
Psychology and Social Work	Social Work	$39,000
Psychology and Social Work	Human Services and Community Organization	$38,000
Psychology and Social Work	Couseling Psychology	$29,000
Social Science	Economics	$70,000
Social Science	Statistics and Decision Science	$67,000
Social Science	Political Science and Government	$59,000
Social Science	Geography	$54,000
Social Science	Social Sciences (Miscellaneous)	$51,000
Social Science	International Relations	$50,000
Social Science	Social Sciences (General)	$49,000
Social Science	Criminology	$48,000
Social Science	Social Sciences (Interdisciplinary)	$48,000
Social Science	Sociology	$45,000
Median Income	All Income Earners in 2009	$26,134
Median Income	Full Time, Year Round Income Earners in 2009	$42,401
Median Income	Full Time, Year Round Bachelor Degree Holding Income Earners in 2009	$56,864

We may be tweaking the presentation of data in the median earnings column, where our dynamic table sorting routine has trouble may have trouble properly ranking six-figure incomes.